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 8.1, while SolarWinds is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.6. New Relic holds a 4.0% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.3% 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 173 New Relic reviews

14,037 Views
10,387 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

4,708 Views
2,919 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

New Relic

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and New Relic are popular monitoring tools with distinct benefits. SolarWinds is often highlighted for its easier setup and better value for initial setup costs, while New Relic is noted for its advanced features but with a higher learning curve.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers robust infrastructure monitoring, comprehensive alerting capabilities, and user-friendly dashboards. New Relic provides advanced application performance monitoring, detailed transaction analysis, and extensive integrations. Users find New Relic's feature set more innovative.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds users indicate a need for a more intuitive configuration process, better documentation, and enhanced scalability. New Relic users desire more flexible customization options, improved data accuracy, and a simpler user interface. SolarWinds is seen as easier to set up, while New Relic offers greater customization once mastered.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is frequently noted for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. New Relic, although more complex to deploy, provides comprehensive support that users find valuable once they navigate the initial setup. SolarWinds's ease of deployment is an advantage, but New Relic’s robust support balances the comparison.

Pricing and ROI: Users generally find SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to offer better value for initial setup costs and a quicker ROI. New Relic’s pricing is seen as premium, justified by its advanced features and depth of monitoring capabilities. Despite higher costs, New Relic’s extensive features are considered worth the investment.

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

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 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

173

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th), AIOps (4th)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 4.0%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% 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	4.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.3%
Other	94.7%

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the error monitoring of IIS web applications to be extremely useful."

"The UI interface and navigation make it easy for a novice user to quickly use the provided relevant performance application data to determine how well their application is performing and to see other areas which may require some further tuning."

"As a QA manager, it helps me to know exactly where to focus our attentions because we can pinpoint specifically where there may be issues -- where geographically, which browsers, which browser versions, and other very granular details."

"Overall, it improves the experience of the customers and site users."

"It is easy to set up from scratch, as you don’t need resources."

"New Relic has proven itself as a very reliable and convenient way to monitor your servers and applications."

"It’s been helpful to get a unified understanding of how our application is being used, usage patterns, etc. We get a shared organizational understanding."

"It gives us insight into several areas-- Where slowdowns are, Which of our customers is hitting us most, and If there’s an application issue on the database side, how long a query takes."

More New Relic pros

"The ROI for SolarWinds products is unmatched in the industry."

"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"The solution needs to have staging."

"It is complicated, especially in how you interpret the data that it provides. If it had a bit more canned, out-of-the-box features, especially some of the reporting features, that would be more useful."

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

"If they added the monitoring to the ops-server side, it would be better."

"It is a SaaS service and this creates internal friction that needs innovative solutions (but you have to own that)."

"It would have been great had it provided thread-dump analysis and a few additional JVM-related stats."

"The APIs could be better. I would also like more APIs and features to integrate with streaming solutions, like Kinesis or Kafka."

"Integration with Azure websites as well as Azure cloud services."

More New Relic cons

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"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."

"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."

"As per my view, Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."

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

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

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"This solution required a license and it is better than some other competitors."

"I think it's overpriced for the technical support that we get. We spent over 1,00,000 USD a year."

"The detection piece of it brings us a big return on investment."

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

"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 price of New Relic could improve. It is expensive."

"The price depends on how many agents you want."

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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 product is expensive."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	77

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 do you like most about New Relic Insights?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

I have noticed discrepancies between New Relic's documentation and Terraform resources. For example, there have been instances where new features launched in the New Relic UI have not been updated ...

See all answers

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

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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

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Compared 7% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Opsview vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

New Relic

March 2026

Download New Relic product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 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 & 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

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

March 2026

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