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Prometheus Group vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 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 Group
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Prometheus Group is 3.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

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.
KhalidOmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a good interface used for monitoring devices
I rate the solution's alerting mechanism and its impact on our operations ten out of ten. We have around 600 retail offices, and the solution helps us save costs by preventing shutdowns. I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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 initial setup phase is very easy."
"The solution offers an easy way to install and scratch values."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The scalability of Prometheus is very good."
"Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."
"It is highly valuable as it serves as the foundation for our infrastructure monitoring tools."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."
"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"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."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"The product integrates with Remedy."
 

Cons

"Its stability could be even better."
"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."
"The initial setup of Prometheus is complex and rated one out of five in ease of setup."
"Setting up the rules in Prometheus can be confusing, making it an area where improvements are required."
"If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."
"The interface is not particularly user-friendly and that could be improved."
"Improvements could be made to the user interface."
"The scalability must be improved."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"This product has no real downside unless they fail to continue development of its capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is free."
"We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."
"It is an open-source tool."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"Prometheus is an open-source tool."
"The solution is not expensive."
"Prometheus is an open-source solution."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"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."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Prometheus Group vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.