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ManageEngine Applications Manager vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ManageEngine Applications M...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
43rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (38th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ManageEngine Applications Manager is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.4%
ManageEngine Applications Manager0.6%
Other98.0%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Ossama Arab - PeerSpot reviewer
Anomaly detection maintains the system's health and good for monitoring
The primary use case is for services and incident management.   The anomaly detection feature helps with maintaining the system's health. It is regarding our IT incident center.  ManageEngine is for incident management and monitoring.  The inventory of assets needs improvement. The asset…
VIVEK PATHAK - PeerSpot reviewer
Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring
My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I like most about ManageEngine Applications Manager is its price point, apart from its technicalities. The solution is cheaper than its competitors. ManageEngine Applications Manager has helpful documentation that makes setting it up straightforward."
"ManageEngine Applications Manager maintains the historical data and it's easy for us to analyze the trends and patterns and fix them accordingly."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."
"The Service Level Management (SLM) rules engine stands out due to its flexibility and customization capabilities, making it an invaluable tool for tailoring processes to our specific needs."
"The initial setup was straightforward, without complexity."
"The feature that I have found most valuable in ManageEngine Applications Manager is its dashboard."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to be able to monitor Kubernetes."
"ITSM is a valuable feature, it complies with the requirements in Pakistan."
"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."
"The product integrates with Remedy."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"The solution can be deployed quickly."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
 

Cons

"The information provided by ManageEngine is not deep-dive like IBM and CA provide."
"The inventory of assets needs improvement."
"They could probably rearrange the UI so that it would be easy for people who are new to the Application Manager to configure things."
"They can improve the post-processing of the data. AppDynamics has more powerful tools for post-processing or analytics. It has some limitations in more complex environments, but because we are free to use different solutions, we try to find what is best for the customers or the problem we are trying to solve."
"The problem is that implementation requires a significant amount of mapping effort."
"An area for improvement in ManageEngine Applications Manager is artificial intelligence. If AI is integrated into the solution, it'll be a piece of cake. Currently, it's all configured manually."
"The agent often crashes when there is too much load on the application side. If a sudden storm of data comes in, the agent crashes down most of the time."
"Even with the top-notch dashboard, it could be made stronger in order to have an additional plug-in for analytics."
"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, it is a cheap tool...The solution's licensing model is subscription-based, in which yearly payments are to be made."
"The solution is noted for its cost-effectiveness, a crucial consideration for potential users."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"The annual licensing depends on the number of monitors you have connected. Once you get to two hundred monitors you can see the price reflect."
"The licensing costs for ManageEngine Applications Manager are around $1,200 per year. For additional monitors, you have to pay extra."
"Its price is good."
"The solution's licensing costs are yearly."
"The cost of this solution is not too bad, although it could be cheaper considering what you're getting for the price."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"The product is expensive."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ManageEngine Applications Manager?
The solution is noted for its cost-effectiveness, a crucial consideration for potential users.
What needs improvement with ManageEngine Applications Manager?
The integration process with third party tools poses some challenges; enhancing the robustness of these integrations could greatly improve overall functionality and user experience.
What is your primary use case for ManageEngine Applications Manager?
Our primary application of this solution revolves around IT infrastructure monitoring. We focus on alert consolidation from core network and service levels to enhance our service management framework.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

Applications Manager
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Certis Europe, Financial Domain, SaaS Office Suite, On Demand TV, Parliament's IT Systems, Sastra Technologies, UniServity
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about ManageEngine Applications Manager vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.