SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Sumo Logic Observability comparison

SolarWinds and Sumo Logic are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.4, while Sumo Logic is ranked #21 with an average rating of 8.0. SolarWinds holds a 1.6% mindshare in APM, compared to Sumo Logic’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sumo Logic users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

3,263 Views
2,160 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Sumo Logic Observability

Read 6 Sumo Logic Observability reviews

441 Views
226 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Sumo Logic Observability

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Sumo Logic Observability compete in system monitoring and observability. Sumo Logic generally ranks higher for feature richness and data integrations, while SolarWinds is appreciated for cost-efficiency and customer support.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers detailed monitoring capabilities, custom alerts, and responsive customer support. Sumo Logic Observability excels in advanced analytics, real-time data management, and seamless cloud integration.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds users report complexity in the initial setup, high resource consumption, and deployment challenges. Sumo Logic users cite occasional UI lags, a steep learning curve, and performance issues.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds is commended for its straightforward installation but criticized for high resource usage during deployment. Sumo Logic offers flexible deployment but can be complex. SolarWinds provides responsive support, while Sumo Logic has mixed feedback.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor has competitive pricing and satisfactory ROI. Sumo Logic Observability has a higher initial cost but is considered worthwhile due to its comprehensive features and added value.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Sumo Logic Observability Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Sumo Logic Observability

June 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

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (12th), Active Directory Management (10th)

Sumo Logic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

21st

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (17th), AIOps (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sumo Logic Observability is 0.2%, 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

Carlos Camargo

Senior Operations Manager at Sencinet

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.

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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

"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."

"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

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

"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."

"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."

"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."

"The solution can be deployed quickly."

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

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."

"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."

"The product is easy to learn."

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

Cons

"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."

"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."

"For each poller, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor can only monitor up to ten thousand components, which restricts scalability."

"Mapping interactions between systems."

"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."

"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."

"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"

"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."

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."

"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."

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

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

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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 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."

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

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

26%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

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.

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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.

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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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Sumo Logic Observability?

The product is easy to learn.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Sumo Logic Observability?

We used it for log observability – log aggregation specifically.

See all answers

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Compared 30% of the time

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Compared 30% of the time

New Relic vs Sumo Logic Observability

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon CloudWatch vs Sumo Logic Observability

Compared 14% of the time

Cribl vs Sumo Logic Observability

Compared 12% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

May 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Sumo Logic Observability

May 2025

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

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Sumo Logic Observability

June 2025

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Sumo Logic Observability

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