SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk AppDynamics

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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

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)

Splunk AppDynamics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

250

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 4.6%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

VIVEK PATHAK

Solutions Architect at Airtel

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.

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Gyanesh Rahatekar

Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd

Application performance management and error resolution improved with data-driven insights

Dynatrace has multiple functions compared to Splunk AppDynamics, so Splunk AppDynamics should add those functions, which are not available as of now. Dynatrace has a universal agent that collects all information related to their CI, and if one CI has multiple languages, then there is no need to instrument multiple agents. However, Splunk AppDynamics requires multiple agents; if I have one server with multiple applications in different languages, then I need to instrument different agents for each application. Splunk AppDynamics should work with Dynatrace with one single universal agent that works with all application languages, eliminating the need for multiple implementations.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."

"The product integrates with Remedy."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."

"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."

"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"AppDynamics is scalable."

"It has been stable, scalable and manageable."

"The most valuable feature is that we can see how our end-users are interacting with our application across regions."

"AppDynamics is scalable. They can monitor billions of transactions because they're not monitoring all transactions. They're monitoring samples. So, they can offer good monitoring for the huge sites."

"The best feature of about Splunk AppDynamics is its interface, which allows me to see the full transaction, exactly what is happening, from where it starts to where the call is going, all the services involved in a call, and exactly the time it took from each node to each node along with the network delays."

"It has improved our organization with its ability to catch issues quickly and fix them."

"AppDynamics provides us with detailed information about the performance of the underlying infrastructure, including servers, databases, and external services."

"It allows us to configure health rules so that we can, based on our own experience, determine when an application is behaving incorrectly."

More Splunk AppDynamics pros

Cons

"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."

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

"Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement."

"Mapping interactions between systems."

"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."

"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"The infrastructure is not as good as other solutions."

"Based on the user experience feedback that we have had, I think that the most important thing to improve is the availability of the SaaS, the cloud environment."

"The user experience is quite confusing. There are too many different development stages. The UI is not very intuitive."

"I could not find a user-friendly interface for querying, and analytics sometimes gives the wrong results...I feel that analytics could have been better in searching and running the analytical queries."

"They are using Flash for their website, which is very slow. We had hoped the website would be much faster to use, and that is definitely what we want to see."

"If you have a single URL and all the operations are coming in as part of the header, you will not be able to segregate them for different actions."

"They need to improve the consolidation of agents for the agent's installation process."

"If it could have a sub-tool for monitoring Apache Kafka logs, it would save me even more time. There are ways to do it now, but a direct way would be faster and better."

More Splunk AppDynamics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"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."

"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."

"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

"The price is too high."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"AppDynamics Database Monitoring is expensive. I rate it a seven to eight out of ten."

"It's a very expensive product. Each of the licenses after this month for one server is around $9,000 or $10,000."

"The tool is expensive."

"The pricing needs to come down."

"We do not have any issues with the price."

"The pricing is quite comparable to similar solutions in the market. All these solutions at the moment are cheap, but it is like paying for insurance; you pay insurance to avoid major damage."

"I would say the solution is affordable because it is widely used across financial service sectors."

"The licensing scheme is very complex. They need to make it easier."

More Splunk AppDynamics pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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.

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...

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...

APM tools for a Managed Service Provider - Dynatrace vs. AppDynamics vs. Aternity vs. Ruxit

Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your focus on SMBs and enterprises in Israel, Dynatrace seems like a solid choice with...

What do you like most about AppDynamics?

The solution saves time and cost.

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Comparisons

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Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

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Dynatrace vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 8% of the time

New Relic vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 7% of the time

OpenTelemetry vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Splunk AppDynamics

Download Splunk AppDynamics product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Overview

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

Splunk AppDynamics enhances application performance monitoring with advanced diagnostics and real-time insights, offering seamless end-to-end transaction tracking and infrastructure visibility.

AppDynamics provides critical tools for businesses to analyze application behavior and performance. Through innovative features like transaction snapshot analysis and adaptable dashboards, users can quickly identify and address issues, ensuring high levels of system uptime and efficiency. It is designed to support complex environments including Kubernetes and AWS, enhancing user experience by detecting performance issues early. Despite needing improvements in network monitoring and integration, it remains a robust option for tracking application health.

What are the key features of AppDynamics?

Real-time Performance Monitoring: Offers immediate insights into application behavior.
Business Transaction Tracking: Tracks transactions from start to finish for bottleneck identification.
JVM Memory Monitoring: Provides detailed JVM metrics and memory use information.
Deep-dive Diagnostics: Enables in-depth analysis of code and stack traces.
Adaptable Dashboards: Customizable views for better data interpretation.

How does AppDynamics benefit users?

Improved Incident Resolution: Faster problem detection and solution implementation.
Enhanced Application Performance: Real-time monitoring optimizes system operations.
Comprehensive Visibility: Provides a full view of application infrastructure.
Informed Decision Making: Detailed analytics guide performance improvements.
Customer Satisfaction: Enhances user experience through faster issue resolutions.

In industries like financial services and e-commerce, AppDynamics facilitates performance tracking across distributed systems, optimizing infrastructure to meet consumer demands. It excels in environments needing precise transaction monitoring and is pivotal in delivering high value and satisfaction.

Splunk

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk AppDynamics