No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Quest Foglight for APM [EOL] vs SolarWinds AppOptics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Quest Foglight for APM [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds AppOptics
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (56th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (62nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (44th)
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Drill-down monitoring shows us the entire transaction chain, from the front end to back end. It needs HTML5 interface.
I want to see a new interface that contains HTML5 features. The current version of Foglight (on-premise edition) is so fusty in comparison with leaders of Gartner APM Quadrant - i.e. Appdynamics, NewRelic, Dynatrace. If you try to compare SaaS and on-premise Foglight versions you can see differences in UI-design. It's my subjective experiences, but SaaS version looks more modern. Hope this helps
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Over all in my organization, this product helped us to maintain health, risk and efficiency of the virtual infrastructure."
"Infrastructure Monitoring and End User Monitoring are the product’s most valuable features to me."
"Foglight Enterprise was the most scalable and easy to deploy tool."
"Foglight has been our go to monitoring tool for several years in the DB2 and Oracle space."
"Real time database monitoring and alerting are valuable."
"The extensive monitoring tools embedded in Foglight are a real asset."
"Capacity on database and file servers. I found the algorithms to forecast growth and concerns particularly intuitive."
"The stability we have as a result of using it made up for the cost of the product within a month."
"Customer service is exceptional, as they are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."
"SolarWinds AppOptics does far more than what an individual may realize; it is not just a SIEM tool."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"It's a solid application."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
 

Cons

"Complicated setup and maintenance."
"They need to improve the stability of FxM and FxV."
"The upgrade process could use some fine tuning. I have done an upgrade of the system as well as addedupdated agents, and sometimes that process is a bit cumbersome, and does not go as planned."
"We are running a Webmethods stack (Software AG) and Foglight is unable to instrument. We are in a POC with Dynatrace and it was able to instrument with little effort."
"I want to see a new interface that contains HTML5 features."
"My only complaint from Foglight for monitoring is that you only get a plot for five minute average for metrics like CPU and Memory, on the application side I can see metrics more quickly at 15 seconds for metrics like active sessions, heap. I would like to see the same for CPU and memory."
"SQL agents often failed but again this may have been addressed in future versions."
"There are some metrics I'd like to track that are difficult to find or implement into a tracking solution without a lot of manual work."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
"I'd like to see the ability to use other internal instrumented applications as filters in the overview/aggregation screen."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."
"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since the product split – the licensing is a bit more complex."
"The price is expensive for us."
"Foglight can be expensive I would go with the pricing at a three year deal."
"I recall it being a very expensive solution relative to function and stability."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
16%
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Also Known As

Foglight, Dell Foglight
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Anji Automotive Logistics, Unimat, Priceline.com
TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.