SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

SolarWinds and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.4, while Splunk is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.4. SolarWinds holds a 1.2% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,599 Views
2,339 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 71 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

5,846 Views
3,391 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Splunk Observability Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

In the field of comprehensive monitoring and performance improvement, both Splunk Observability Cloud and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offer competitive solutions. Feature-wise, SolarWinds may have the upper hand with its focus on SQL and Exchange environments.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud integrates robustly with various data sources, offers fast search indexing, and provides highly customizable dashboards that enhance monitoring processes. Meanwhile, SolarWinds excels in end-to-end monitoring, application insights, and automating infrastructure management, making it particularly appealing for SQL and Exchange environments.

Room for Improvement: Splunk Observability Cloud users see room for enhancements in log navigation, platform integration such as with Azure, and AI functionality improvements. On the other hand, SolarWinds could improve in reporting features, scalability, depth of application insights, and network speed, especially for large-scale deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Observability Cloud provides a flexible deployment across public, private, hybrid, and on-premises environments, albeit with noted support inefficiencies. SolarWinds focuses on primarily on-premises deployment but receives praise for its effective customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud is seen as costly, tied to data ingestion volumes, but offers notable ROI through operational efficiencies and swift issue resolution. SolarWinds presents competitive pricing with extensive features recognized as cost-effective, though the initial costs can be significant. Both products provide substantial returns on investment, though the value perception can vary significantly based on specific use cases and organizational scale.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

September 2025

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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

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.2%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.0%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud	2.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.2%
Other	96.8%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint

Technical Specialist at ServiceIO

Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility

From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

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Taiwo Ige

IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.

Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact

Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."

"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."

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

"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."

"It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization."

"The solution can be deployed quickly."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The product's deployment phase is good and very easy because it is done with OpenTelemetry for most of the parts."

"The features are pretty much ready out of the box."

"The data collection from our VMs, containers, databases, and backend components is valuable."

"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."

"The dashboards are the features of Splunk Observability Cloud that I appreciate the most, providing visual representation of all data and text, which has benefited my organization by speeding up people's jobs and allowing a place to monitor all logs, as there are usually thousands of entries coming in which can become very disorderly."

"Splunk's dashboards are great."

"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."

"The most valuable feature in this solution is the log searching."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."

"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."

"The technical support team's response time could be improved."

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

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

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"We never had any issues when it comes to the type of use cases we are using it for. We did not need more advancement on it, but I know that, in general, everything can be updated. There are tiny little tweaks that can be made regardless of whether it looks better or has a different flow to it than it does right now, but it works pretty well for what we use it for."

"The initial setup of Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) was easy. The solution is deployed on-premises."

"The security could be better."

"In Splunk Observability Cloud, I notice room for improvement in synthetic monitoring. It does not provide output based on server names."

"Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom."

"The main improvement I would suggest for Splunk Observability Cloud would be offering the ability to implement custom apps, specifically allowing Python scripts that Splunk Cloud could host."

"This solution is difficult to configure and the instructions are complex."

"A lot of customers had a hard time effectively searching within the data in Splunk. There is a learning curve from searches to indexes and using all the macros that we have created. It is a little difficult for somebody who has not used it quite a bit and does not have a lot of practice with it, but the AI features that we have been hearing about through Splunk will make it a lot easier for us to use human language to search this data. That is big. That is pretty powerful, and that will help a lot with our customers."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

"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."

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

"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."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."

"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."

"I am not in that circle, but we are currently licensing based on our queries. That is working out for us. Previously, it was by volume of data, and now, we can store as much data as we want."

"The solution's pricing is costly."

"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."

"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."

"It is expensive."

"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	43

Questions from the Community

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

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...

See all answers

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Prometheus-AI Platform vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Zabbix vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Sentry vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

SigNoz vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Honeycomb Enterprise vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

October 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

October 2025

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

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

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 Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

September 2025

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

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