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Prometheus-AI Platform vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

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

Prometheus-AI Platform
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
Data Scrubbing Software (2nd), ERP (11th), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (3rd)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities
Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.
VIVEK PATHAK - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product’s scalability is valuable."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It is an efficient solution."
"The best thing about Prometheus is its integration."
"The solution is useful to collect huge metrics."
"I like its lightweight configuration functions."
"It is a stable solution...Based on the feedback I have received from my colleagues in our company's IT department, the setup phase of the solution is relatively easy."
"The dashboard is very valuable."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"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."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"The solution can be deployed quickly."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."
 

Cons

"Prometheus has a learning curve when setting it up. It definitely requires a little bit more hands-on than other solutions. It is an open source solution which means you do need to go through and read the literature that they have online for setting it up. The setup could be made easier."
"Improvements could be made to the user interface."
"The primary area where Prometheus could be improved is in terms of pricing, particularly when used with managed services."
"The DSL could be improved."
"The initial setup of Prometheus is complex and rated one out of five in ease of setup."
"If you want to collect details of metrics, you should be able to write a query for it directly. I want the product to offer better queries for the metrics."
"The simplicity of the query language could be improved. The current query language is not easy to work with."
"Prometheus requires improvement on the query side."
"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."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"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 current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"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 templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"The product is free."
"Prometheus is an open-source tool."
"It is an open-source tool."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"The solution is open source."
"The tool is open-sourced."
"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."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"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 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 solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Prometheus?
The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?
Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.
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

Utopia Data Quality
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Roche Diagnostics Corporation, Harman International Industries Inc., Hilmar Cheese Company, International Rectifier Corporation, Electrolux USA, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, Rio Tinto Limited, Pertamina Pusat, Petrofac International Ltd, Cintas Corporation, Diyar United Company, Nortel Networks, Verizon
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Prometheus-AI Platform vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,029 professionals have used our research since 2012.