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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
44th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (35th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (12th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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…
Carlos Camargo - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 initial setup was straightforward, without complexity."
"Its price and the flexibility to deploy are the most valuable. Flexibility is very important, and you can scale from very basic to more complex. This solution is a part of a complete suite of management tools. So, it can be integrated with other solutions for monitoring networks, which is very important. You can expand it or interconnect it with many other tools, which is a powerful feature. We have a very good and long relationship with ManageEngine support guys. They provide very good support for us."
"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's installation is pretty easy."
"We do not have pricing constraints as an organization, because we do have reservations about ManageEngine being functionally scalable."
"ITSM is a valuable feature, it complies with the requirements in Pakistan."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."
"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."
"Management Console - Managing service to each server enrolled in the Solarwinds is much easier. Using a web base console, you can control your service much convenient way. There is no need to login remotely. It save a lot of time and effort."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."
"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
 

Cons

"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 inventory of assets needs improvement."
"I would like the solution to improve the ability to track services."
"The information provided by ManageEngine is not deep-dive like IBM and CA provide."
"The problem is that implementation requires a significant amount of mapping effort."
"The integration process with third party tools poses some challenges; enhancing the robustness of these integrations could greatly improve overall functionality and user experience."
"The dashboards in the interface need a lot of work."
"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 tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."
"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."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ManageEngine Applications Manager has reasonable pricing. It's more affordable than other solutions in the market. My company has an instance-based license for ManageEngine Applications Manager. You can purchase a yearly subscription or a perpetual license. The standard license covers most features, but you can still have some paid add-ons."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"Its price is good."
"The cost of this solution is not too bad, although it could be cheaper considering what you're getting for the price."
"The solution's licensing costs are yearly."
"Price-wise, it is a cheap tool...The solution's licensing model is subscription-based, in which yearly payments are to be made."
"The licensing costs for ManageEngine Applications Manager are around $1,200 per year. For additional monitors, you have to pay extra."
"The solution is noted for its cost-effectiveness, a crucial consideration for potential users."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"The product is expensive."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ManageEngine Applications Manager?
ManageEngine Applications Manager's installation is pretty easy.
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 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: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.