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SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 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

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)
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Container Management (7th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Camargo - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

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 application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"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."
"Overall, I would recommend Splunk to anyone seeking a monitoring solution, thanks to its extensive capabilities and features."
"The product retains a lot of log data for subsequent analysis."
"The solution's basic visibility is one of its most valuable features. So, it is a solution that is easy to use...The solution's initial setup process was straightforward."
"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."
"The vibrant dashboards are valuable."
"I have primarily used it to go back into the past and understand why something happened. It provides enough information to do research and figure things out."
"Splunk's GUI and dashboard capacity are the most valuable features of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring."
"The data collection from our VMs, containers, databases, and backend components is valuable."
 

Cons

"Mapping interactions between systems."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
"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 product needs to reduce its price."
"The implementation can be more user-friendly."
"They need more EDR functionalities."
"There is not a lot of support for the tool's on-premises version, especially since everything is on the cloud."
"The dashboards are used mainly to visualize information about the infrastructure, but it isn't easy to construct or use the dashboards. While we tried to resolve the issue by calling support, it would be easier if they had an AI co-pilot to identify the problem and help you solve it."
"The cost needs to be re-examined. It's extremely expensive to run. It's also expensive to expand. That's the number one complaint all of my customers have when it comes to Splunk. It's way too expensive compared to other solutions."
"The monitoring of workloads when using SignalFx could be improved."
"Splunk isn't an ideal tool for application performance management due to the extensive setup required."
"We still use Splunk Enterprise licensing. A lot of the newer features go into Splunk Cloud before Enterprise. We're not looking to switch our licensing over, so we're falling behind on the newer features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"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."
"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 tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is competitive. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten. The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
"It is expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
862,624 professionals have used our research since 2012.