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SolarWinds Access Rights Manager vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 9, 2024

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

SolarWinds Access Rights Ma...
Ranking in Active Directory Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Active Directory Management
10th
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 (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Access Rights Manager is 5.8%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Access Rights Manager5.8%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.2%
Other93.0%
Active Directory Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rafal-Stas - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good pricing options and is easy to manage and deploy
It's pretty easy to manage, and quite easy to deploy. It's easy to understand to work, and customers also tell us that there are a lot of options even too many sometimes for them. Sometimes the product is even too big for them at the beginning. The product also has a good payload with pricing. That's why the customers choose this solution. The price and the quality and options have a good ratio.
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

"It's pretty easy to manage, and quite easy to deploy."
"The solution can be used to audit the whole on-premises environment, including Active Directory, file servers, and other Microsoft services."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
 

Cons

"Configuring the solution with online services, like Microsoft Exchange Online, is difficult."
"The GUI could be improved because this GUI was invented ten years ago, and now we have a modern user interface. This GUI is a bit older than expected in this market."
"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of the solution is fine. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing of the solution is fine. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"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."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"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."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"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 price is too high."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds Access Rights Manager?
It's pretty easy to manage, and quite easy to deploy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Access Rights Manager?
The pricing of the solution is fine. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Access Rights Manager?
First configuration may be difficult if you didn't deep dive into documentation. I recommend contacting some partners to help you deploy it in your environment.
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

SolarWinds ARM
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Emerson, Lockheed Martin, Nielsen, NTT
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Access Rights Manager vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.