Microsoft Configuration Manager vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Zabbix comparison

Microsoft Configuration Man...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Configuration Manager, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, and Zabbix based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, ServiceNow, VMware and others in Server Monitoring.

To learn more, read our detailed Server Monitoring Report (Updated: June 2025).

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Server Monitoring

June 2025

Helped 856,807 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 5.4%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.5%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 28.2%, up from 23.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Monitoring

Featured Reviews

MikeNelson2

IT Infrastructure Coordinator at NSW Government

Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements

While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process

Carlos Camargo

Senior Operations Manager at Sencinet

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.

Enables seamless global client monitoring with reliable remote connectivity

B Ahmed

Manager, Information Technology Zara & Inditex at Cenomi

I use the solution to provide a perfect environment for remote connectivity with my clients. Many tools that I require for system maintenance are included. I can easily monitor all of my clients throughout the world I did not give much thought to it, however, improvements could be made to Zabbix.…

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is very stable compared to older versions."

"The technical support is good."

"The ability to make collections and deploy to them has been great."

"We have found the scalability to be quite good."

"The product is useful for patch management."

"Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is very scalable."

"Patching is very effective and reporting is very good."

"It works well for the endpoints for the customer I'm consulting. It has a bunch of knobs, and you can tune it to do lots of things."

"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."

"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."

"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."

"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."

"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system."

"We detect problems before the customer does and before it actually happens using the predictive functions in Zabbix."

"The resource usage, CPU utilization, disk usage, network monitoring, network performance, and alerting features are invaluable."

"The solution is open-source, easy to manage, and user-friendly making it easy for anyone to use."

"I like being able to use proxy servers for different locations. The agents are pretty cool. They're easy to roll out. The standard out-of-the-box templates are also pretty easy to use. The integration with other learning products is also good. I have, in the past, used Slack, but we've integrated it with Microsoft Teams. We also use it for SMS with a service called Redcoat. It is very flexible. It does what I need it to do, and my manager is very happy because it doesn't cost anything. We are nearing 4,000 hosts inside Zabbix, and we've got another 6,000 access points to add to it. We've thrown everything at it, and it has managed to keep going. I am very impressed with the tool, and I'd shake their hand very hard if I got to say the compliments to the Zabbix team. They keep improving it and doing refreshes, which is one good thing about it. There is also online information as well as books that you can purchase if you're willing to read enough. There is a lot to pick up, but it is a pretty complete solution."

"It provides high scalability, alerting, notification, templating, and end-to-end security."

"The solution allows for good integration with other products."

"Dashboard and the customization of the items and triggers are the most valuable features."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"The database should be made to be more stable and robust, but not so much the configuration."

"The operations could be faster and you need some patience with this tool."

"There is a reboot issue with the patching. Sometimes, if patching runs into any issue whatsoever, it doesn't reboot but it doesn't tell you it errored out. It just sits there and we don't find out until the next day whether it patched or not. That was a big issue for us. We're working through that. They added some stuff in there now where you can actually tell reboot is pending. But we still need some kind of notification that if something fails or is pending, we know. We shouldn't have to go in and look. They don't have anything for that right now."

"I currently need to increase my compliance level in the patching processes which this solution could improve on."

"The product needs to improve scalability."

"In spite of us being a premier customer we find the support unsatisfactory."

"Devices like smartphones and tablets are managed very well on VMware, however, they are absent in SCCM. I could configure iPad from the VMware site and it was done very easily. It should be just as possible on SCCM."

"It is not easy to get good technical support, especially at level one."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager cons

"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."

"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."

"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."

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

"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."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"We would like to see the addition of automatic push functionality to this product. This would save time when monitoring our servers and networks as, at present, we have to manually install the Zabbix agent on any hardware to be monitored."

"The initial setup could be complex if you don't have templates. If creating templates from scratch, it's quite difficult, but if you are using already pre-created templates and setups for your needs, it looks very good."

"An area for improvement would be the ease of doing aggregation from the value or different devices."

"The only issue we have had with Zabbix is when we decided to make an update or upgrade."

"Its UI needs to be improved a little bit more so that an end-user is also able to handle it. I can handle it, but others should also be able to handle it in a better way. It becomes complex when we are growing and need to add proxies. We need more scalability features and documentation for different use cases. A lot of articles are available, but they need to be in proper documentation. For example, when you have thousands of servers that have to be monitored in different regions of the world, there should be some kind of documentation to describe how you can create proxies and add them. Sometimes, when you are using the database, it can get overloaded. When the network is growing, the number of transactions becomes very high, and the database gets overloaded. There should be information about how to reduce the load on the MySQL database, which is what Zabbix is using. The market is growing a lot, and it should be enhanced for a lot more things. We are currently bringing enhancements at our end for different use cases. For example, when dockerization is going on, how can we check the logs inside the Dockers. We should also be able to monitor and check the number of logins and add features such as SSO login and two-factor authentication as a protocol. These are the security features and concerns that we have to deal with. Currently, we are developing modules to add features to Zabbix, but they should also work on these features."

"Zabbix does not draw automatic mapping of the network, this is something they should add in the future. There is a lot of effort that is involved in tailoring some of the settings which could be made easier."

"As far as improvements, sometimes I get a bit frustrated when I move from a previous version to a new one because some configuration has changed—I need to investigate the documentation to deal with some configuration. But it doesn't take much time, so it's okay."

"I would like for this solution to be more cloud-friendly."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is good because they have various options, depending on what you are looking for."

"The price is competitive and reasonable."

"There is not a license needed to use the solution."

"We have a support license from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager and the overall price of the solution is reasonable."

"The solution is expensive. Microsoft Configuration Manager would likely be considered high-priced for small businesses because they may not fully utilize all of its features and capabilities."

"Along with buying a license for MECM, we also have to buy a service called CMG (Cloud Management Gateway) which is a virtual machine in the cloud with which you can link your MECM to the Azure tenant so as to manage teleworkers."

"The solution operates on a licensing model that can be expensive."

"Overall, I think it's fine. It's pretty much in-line because there are ways to offset it with the Office 365 licensing."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pricing and cost advice

"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."

"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

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

"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."

"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."

"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."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"There is a license required for this solution and we pay annually for our license."

"We purchased Zabbix for a good price, including support"

"It’s free of cost."

"There are no licenses."

"We were searching for an open source solution and Zabbix fit the bill because it is free and open source under the GPL license."

"We use the open-source version of Zabbix."

"It is reasonable."

"This solution is completely open-source, so it is quite affordable."

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

28%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

22%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that ...

How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?

ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. Wh...

What do you like most about SCCM?

One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages effi...

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 App...

What do you like most about Zabbix?

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?

We didn't use the commercial version. We used the free version.

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

I think it's the best solution for monitoring. I don't know any better.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

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Product Reports

Microsoft Configuration Manager

May 2025

Download Microsoft Configuration Manager product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

May 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Download Zabbix product report

May 2025

Also Known As

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Configuration Manager helps IT manage PCs and servers, keeping software up-to-date, setting configuration and security policies, and monitoring system status while giving employees access to corporate applications on the devices that they choose. When Configuration Manager is integrated with Microsoft Intune, you can manage corporate-connected PCs and Macs along with cloud-based mobile devices running Windows, iOS, and Android, all from a single management console.

New features of Configuration Manager, such as the support of Windows 10 in-place upgrade, co-management with Microsoft Intune, Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise Servicing Dashboard, integration with Windows Update for Business, and more make deploying and managing Windows easier than ever before.

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

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.