Microsoft Active Directory vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Microsoft Active Directory vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download the complete report

Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

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

Microsoft Active Directory

Ranking in Active Directory Management

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Single Sign-On (SSO) (8th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Active Directory Management

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), Server Monitoring (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Active Directory is 6.2%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Active Directory Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Active Directory	6.2%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.2%
Other	92.6%

Active Directory Management

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Baruzzi

Owner at Syntlogo GmbH

Mature technology delivers consistent capability and enhances centralized user management

I think Microsoft Active Directory could be more intuitive. My impression of the integration of Microsoft Active Directory with third-party applications is that it can be made better. It's not the tendency of Microsoft to use a standard, but to modify it to their needs. This is catastrophic if you have to integrate other applications that use the same standard. This creates a major problem, so you have to be very careful and implement step by step, knowing that the partner is Microsoft. I would leave Microsoft Active Directory as it is and build possibly interfaces. For example, there is a provisioning protocol standard named SCIM. It seems that Microsoft Active Directory does not yet have a SCIM interface, which is a problem.

Read full review

VIVEK PATHAK

Solutions Architect at Airtel

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Solution's most important feature is that it can merge with a cloud-based active directory via Azure AD Connect."

"Stability and performance are good. So far, we have not observed any major downtime or performance issues since we deployed it."

"The most valuable features are it is easy to use, manage, create a repository, and create the OM."

"The solution's initial setup is straightforward."

"The features I find most useful in Microsoft Active Directory are especially for the Single Sign-On; this is very useful for users, particularly if they have plenty of applications, such as tablet applications, because when they log in to their computer, the application will automatically log in with their credentials."

"One valuable feature is the centralized creation of IDs."

"It is easy to handle, and it gives a hundred percent results with the group policies."

"I find the product makes it easier to enhance various tools with Microsoft Active Directory."

More Microsoft Active Directory pros

"The product integrates with Remedy."

"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."

"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."

"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."

"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."

"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"If Microsoft is going to add anything to the on-prem solution, it should be an updated GUI."

"There could be enough material to learn about the product."

"In my experience, it's difficult to manage Microsoft Active Directory when the server is attacked by a threat or malware."

"Active Directory's user experience is a little dated. Group policy management should be more customizable."

"The interface hasn't changed much over the years. It's suitable for my tastes, but that doesn't mean everybody likes it."

"I did not have a good experience with the product's tech support. First-level support takes a lot of time since they ask many questions."

"We may occasionally experience difficulty integrating some solutions with Microsoft Active Directory, but I am unsure whether the issue lies with Microsoft Active Directory or the other solution."

"The security features could be improved."

More Microsoft Active Directory cons

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."

"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."

"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."

"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."

"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."

"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."

"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"

"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is based on a licensing model."

"It's not overly expensive. It's considered a base function by Microsoft."

"We purchase the license for the solution on a yearly basis."

"My company makes payments every quarter towards the licensing costs of the product."

"The pricing is not very expensive. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"The price of Microsoft Active Directory could improve. We pay annually for the solution."

"I'm unsure about the cost of the solution, as I was never involved in that aspect. However, I don't think it would be expensive. It might be average, around four or five out of ten."

"I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten."

More Microsoft Active Directory pricing and cost advice

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"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."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"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."

"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Active Directory Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	20

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	20

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Active Directory?

The solution is easy to install and has good reliability.

What needs improvement with Microsoft Active Directory?

What is your primary use case for Microsoft Active Directory?

My usual use case for Microsoft Active Directory is to share groups of authorization among many different applications. The other use case for Microsoft Active Directory is the authentication of us...

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

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...

Ping Identity Platform vs Microsoft Active Directory

Comparisons

Compared 23% of the time

ManageEngine ADManager Plus vs Microsoft Active Directory

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Active Directory

Compared 15% of the time

CyberArk Identity vs Microsoft Active Directory

Compared 9% of the time

JumpCloud vs Microsoft Active Directory

Compared 8% of the time

More Microsoft Active Directory Competitors

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 17% of the time

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 15% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

Prometheus-AI Platform vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Active Directory

Download Microsoft Active Directory product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Active Directory stores information about objects on the network and makes this information easy for administrators and users to find and use. Active Directory uses a structured data store as the basis for a logical, hierarchical organization of directory information.

This data store, also known as the directory, contains information about Active Directory objects. These objects typically include shared resources such as servers, volumes, printers, and the network user and computer accounts.

Security is integrated with Active Directory through logon authentication and access control to objects in the directory. With a single network logon, administrators can manage directory data and organization throughout their network, and authorized network users can access resources anywhere on the network. Policy-based administration eases the management of even the most complex network.

Microsoft

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Microsoft Active Directory vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor