New Relic vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

New Relic and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. New Relic is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2, while SolarWinds is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.0. New Relic holds a 3.8% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of New Relic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

New Relic

Read 176 New Relic reviews

24,526 Views
16,432 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

7,596 Views
4,330 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

New Relic

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and New Relic are both key contenders in application performance monitoring, with SolarWinds being praised for its easy deployment and support, while New Relic is preferred for its advanced features which justify its higher cost.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor excels in comprehensive monitoring capabilities, offering seamless integration with a variety of applications and servers. Its data visualization is intuitive and easy to comprehend, making it quite user-friendly. New Relic shines with its robust APM tools, delivering real-time insights and an extensive range of integrations, especially optimized for cloud environments. The emphasis on detailed real-time analytics provides New Relic with a substantial advantage.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds could enhance its long-term ROI potential by expanding its feature set and leveraging more advanced analytics. Improved cloud integration would also bolster its competitiveness. Refining dashboard customizations could further elevate user experience. New Relic might benefit from enhancing its customer support to offer more personalized service options. Additionally, improving cost transparency and streamlined onboarding processes could address barriers for new users. Offering more flexible pricing models might make advanced features more accessible.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds is recognized for its straightforward on-premise deployment, coupled with reliable support services. This makes it an attractive option for businesses seeking local installations with robust assistance. Conversely, New Relic's SaaS deployment model allows rapid setup and can easily scale, although it offers less personalized customer support compared to its competitor.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds generally offers a more cost-effective entry point to server and application monitoring with lower initial setup costs, yet its long-term ROI might be limited due to narrower feature offerings. On the other hand, New Relic involves higher upfront fees, but its expansive APM functionalities and adaptation to evolving tech landscapes provide substantial long-term ROI potential, making it a more valuable investment despite the higher initial costs.

To learn more, read our detailed New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

August 2026

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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

New Relic

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

176

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd), AIOps (4th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (6th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 3.8%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
New Relic	3.8%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.0%
Other	95.2%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji

System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Real-time alerts have reduced server outage impact and support fast incident response

In the dashboard, if they could show a little more metrics regarding the application and related things, that would be how New Relic could be improved. Currently, there are things showing from the server level and application level, but it can be improved. That is what I felt. Regarding user interface, I do not feel much concern, but for some kind of issues when we are trying to get support from the New Relic team, their SLA seems to be long. They are taking seven to ten working days for resolving some kind of scenario or issue. That is a bit difficult for us. If they could improve the customer support by reducing their SLA within three to five days, if they could remediate everything, that will be so much helpful. When it comes to the customer support part, I felt they need to be a little more improved on that part. The support overall is good, but they can improve. That is the reason I have given it eight out of ten.

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NikhilKalwint

Technical Specialist at ServiceIO

Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility

From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

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

"We have been able to proactively identify failures before they happen."

"Customer Service: Excellent. Technical Support: Excellent."

"New Relic has helped us in terms of optimizing our print and loading times, and it has solved many of our performance issues."

"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."

"My advice is to learn to use it and learn all of the features because it has many of them, not all of which are documented, but they work wonders."

"It does everything we wanted it to do."

"New features are added often."

"The VPN is one of the solution's most valuable features for us."

More New Relic pros

"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."

"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."

"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."

"The product integrates with Remedy."

"This feature from Solarwinds SAM helped us to monitor and alert whenever the SSL cert is going to expire on the server to avoid any downtime of the services running on the server specially on ADFS platform where we have Video conference, Webex, Office 365 and single sign-on services."

"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."

"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."

"SolarWinds allows network administrators to easily monitor the network by customizing the pages to see what exactly is needed, in addition to the deep statistics shown for nodes and interfaces like response time, packet loss, interface CRC, interface errors, as well as the rich graphs for all network elements."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"Customer Service: Used rarely, was average. Technical Support: Used rarely, was average."

"Overall, New Relic is not as good as Dynatrace."

"They are a costly solution and the stability should be better for the price."

"It’s really powerful with a lot of features, but some training and documentation from New Relic would be useful."

"Currently, we don't have a way to send alerts which is a real pain."

"There is a picture which goes to your browser and it monitors requests from other users. However, it's impossible to use now because the price is very high."

"One issue – there is no option for live chat or phone support."

"New Relic APM is a good tool, and it has a database of failures, but it could use a list of customer-specific failures. New Relic APM should be able to give my company advanced analytics through AI."

More New Relic cons

"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."

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

"Scalability was an issue in the past."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

"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."

"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."

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

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was easy. The product is easy to deploy and manage, which is why our company purchased through the AWS Marketplace."

"There is a picture which goes to your browser and it monitors requests from other users. However, it's impossible to use now because the price is very high. The feature is very nice, but I tried it during the trial period, and the current price makes it impossible to use."

"The solution is quite expensive. It costs around $5,000 a month. There aren't any additional costs above that."

"I think the pricing is reasonable."

"It would be nice if we could buy it annually instead of monthly."

"Because of budget, we are not using the mobile app part of this tool."

"They gave us aggressive discounts when they were brought in for the first time, but they have also kept them for the year-on-year renewals, which has been absolutely fine."

"The pricing model is a little confusing for beginners. They find it a little expensive, and if you are using it already, then that is not good."

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

"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."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"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 would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

"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."

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

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

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Educational Organization

13%

University

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	52
Large Enterprise	79

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

See all answers

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

I find New Relic to be somewhat expensive. Our team shares logins, contrasting with other applications where individual team accounts are standard. Pricing is a primary concern since New Relic can ...

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What is your primary use case for New Relic Insights?

As an Application Monitoring Engineer, my primary responsibilities include ensuring the uptime of services, managing infrastructure, and monitoring transactions. I use New Relic to set up incidents...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

New Relic

August 2026

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Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

New Relic Browser, New Relic Applied Intelligence, New Relic Insights, New Relic Synthetics, New Relic Servers, New Relic APM

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

New Relic offers real-time application monitoring and insight into performance bottlenecks. Its customizable dashboards and APM integration provide efficient operational support, while server performance alerts ensure quick issue detection.

New Relic provides comprehensive monitoring of application performance, tracking bottlenecks across databases and front-end components. Users employ it for server and infrastructure monitoring, as well as analyzing key metrics such as CPU and memory usage. The solution's ability to integrate with tools like PagerDuty enhances incident management capabilities. However, users have expressed a need for improvements in query language simplicity, more detailed historical insights, and better mobile app monitoring support.

What are New Relic's most important features?

Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant visibility into application performance.
Detailed Transaction Tracing: Identifies specific transaction issues quickly.
Error Rate Tracking: Monitors and reports on error occurrences efficiently.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailors dashboard views for specific needs.
APM Integration: Seamlessly integrates with application performance management tools.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Operational Efficiency: Quick issue detection reduces downtime.
Improved Debugging: Enhanced error analysis supports rapid problem resolution.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Offers a holistic view of application performance and user behavior.
Incident Management: Integration with incident tools helps streamline responses.
Efficient Alerts: Rapid alert systems ensure timely notifications of issues.

In industries like e-commerce and financial services, New Relic supports application performance monitoring to enhance user experience and system reliability. Organizations leverage its insights for optimizing performance, particularly in server operations and infrastructure management. Its ability to monitor API failures through synthetic monitoring is crucial for maintaining high service levels.

New Relic

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

World Fuel Services, Verizon, FootLocker, McDonald's, Trainline, Mondia Media, Confused, Costa Coffee, Ryanair, Marks & Spencer, William Hill, Delivery Hero, Skyscanner, BASF, DAZN, Veygo, Virtuo, movingimage, talabat, Australia Post, Tokopedia, Seven Network, Virgin Australia, Zomato, BigBasket, Mercado Libre, Lending Club

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

August 2026

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