No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Sumo Logic Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 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 Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)
Sumo Logic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
36th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (32nd), AIOps (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sumo Logic Observability is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.3%
Sumo Logic Observability0.6%
Other98.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Shamshir Nangla - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the most valuable features are the reports, they're pretty good, and the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"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."
"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."
"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."
"It is scalable."
"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"The product is easy to learn."
"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."
"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."
"I have not seen any stability issues in the product."
"The solution allows multiple groups to converge on a unified platform, allowing for different utilization by various teams."
"We use queries in Sumo Logic to trigger alerts based on logging. That allows us to proactively identify issues as they're happening."
 

Cons

"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
"MS Azure Service and user experience monitoring is an area in which the SolarWinds tools are lacking; without a doubt, this is the Achilles heel of the Orion monitoring tools, and I am currently reviewing other vendors for Azure service monitoring tools."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"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."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"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 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 solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"The price is too high."
"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."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"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."
"I started on the free tier to try it out, but because of our usage, we're now paying for it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
885,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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.
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Sumo Logic Observability and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.