SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Sumo Logic Observability comparison

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Sumo Logic Observability

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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)

Sumo Logic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

23rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (17th), AIOps (11th)

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 Sumo Logic Observability is 0.3%, up from 0.1% 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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Shamshir Nangla

Site Reliability Engineer at LHV Bank

Getting up and running is easy, even for a newbie but management of searches definitely needs improvement

Operational effectiveness with regards to when there's an issue, when there's a reactive issue, people are able to, or as well as proactively, actually, because we use their PagerDuty integrations. We use queries in Sumo Logic to trigger alerts based on logging. That allows us to proactively identify issues as they're happening. With those same alerts, obviously, with that platform, you can use it to reactively start looking at troubleshooting issues as they're happening right then and there or incidents. So it's been very, very good for alerting and for troubleshooting issues. For predicting issues before they happen, it is not very good. They have a feature called anomaly detection, but I think it's quite premature compared to other stuff out there. So it's good for alerts and for troubleshooting operational effectiveness. When your operations are down or segregated, it's perfect because it will help you diagnose the issues.

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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

"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."

"The product integrates with Remedy."

"Management Console - Managing service to each server enrolled in the Solarwinds is much easier. Using a web base console, you can control your service much convenient way. There is no need to login remotely. It save a lot of time and effort."

"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."

"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."

"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."

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"Sumo Logic Observability presents a range of valuable features, including well-crafted dashboards and a diverse selection of helpful apps. However, personally, I don't hold a favorable opinion of the solution. While I don't struggle with writing queries, my main difficulty lies in recruiting competent individuals and ensuring their proficiency in utilizing the solution. This often leads to additional challenges and complexities. From my perspective, when compared to Microsoft Sentinel or even Splunk, Sumo Logic Observability has a steeper learning curve. One contributing factor to this disparity is the solution's long existence in the market compared to Synlogic. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that there are capable and knowledgeable professionals employed at Sumo Logic Observability. The effectiveness of the solution largely depends on how it is integrated into your internal operations and environment. Its utility and benefits can vary significantly. It is worth noting that organizations like the NSA and, I believe, the CIA used it in the past, primarily for rapidly searching and analyzing large volumes of data. To leverage its capabilities effectively, you must determine how to tailor it to your specific needs."

"Alerting and consistency are key. We have different tiers with log collectors, and continuous querying provides near-real-time updates. It's almost like instantly when something happens, like pending transactions or error fees. This helps reduce incident resolution time compared to waiting for thresholds on other platforms. We can continue logging in with them seamlessly and quickly get into action."

"The product is easy to learn."

"I have not seen any stability issues in the product."

"We use queries in Sumo Logic to trigger alerts based on logging. That allows us to proactively identify issues as they're happening."

"The solution allows multiple groups to converge on a unified platform, allowing for different utilization by various teams."

Cons

"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."

"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."

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

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

"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"The speed of queries could be improved. When using more advanced functions, especially with large datasets like the 90-day log retention we had, queries could be slow, sometimes taking up to five minutes."

"Fine-grained data can be quite frustrating to work with and should be made easier."

"Documentation could be better. While it's generally good, sometimes finding what you need requires extensive searching. It's not always clear where to look for specific things."

"Implementing a more streamlined enrichment process, and conceptualizing the observability data collection as an ETL pipeline would be helpful."

"SearchUI.exe is a bit clunky in the product, making it an area where the product needs improvements."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"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 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."

"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 tool is available for my company at a good price point."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"I started on the free tier to try it out, but because of our usage, we're now paying for it."

"Now, they’re not charging by ingests anymore. You should expect the price to be a bit of an unknown and to basically increase as the business increases."

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865,384 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

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Transportation Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

What do you like most about Sumo Logic Observability?

The product is easy to learn.

What needs improvement with Sumo Logic Observability?

The speed of queries could be improved. When using more advanced functions, especially with large datasets like the 90-day log retention we had, queries could be slow, sometimes taking up to five m...

What is your primary use case for Sumo Logic Observability?

We used it for log observability – log aggregation specifically.

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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

Sumo Logic Observability

Download Sumo Logic Observability 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

Sumo Logic Observability is widely used for log aggregation, analysis, and SIEM capabilities. It assists in monitoring data, creating dashboards, and managing log storage.

Sumo Logic Observability helps teams with logging in production, debugging with trace IDs, and performing queries across large datasets. Developers leverage centralized logs for error detection and tracking metrics like successful transactions and data volume. Security teams integrate it with SOAR systems for automation and enhanced security investigations.

What are the key features?

Well-crafted dashboards: Provides visually appealing and easy-to-use dashboards.
Diverse apps: Supports multiple applications for various use cases.
Centralized management: Enables streamlined log management from a unified platform.
Near-real-time alerting: Facilitates quick incident resolution with timely notifications.
Continuous querying: Allows for constant data analysis without interruptions.
Proprietary query language: Offers a robust and flexible language for complex queries.
Custom field creation: Simplifies addition of custom fields for better data categorization.
Robust data tracing: Ensures effective log tracing for efficient debugging and analysis.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Improved error detection: Helps quickly identify and address errors in production.
Enhanced security: Integrates with SOAR for better security automation and investigation.
Efficient log management: Centralizes log storage and management, simplifying processes.
Timely incident resolution: Near-real-time alerts and continuous queries lead to faster issue resolution.
Customizable to user needs: Offers flexibility with custom fields and a proprietary query language.

Industries like finance, healthcare, and technology implement Sumo Logic Observability to monitor sensitive data, manage high transaction volumes, and ensure compliance with regulatory standards. Security and development teams benefit from its robust capabilities, enabling effective collaboration and streamlined operations.

Sumo Logic

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Information Not Available

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Sumo Logic Observability