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

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs VictoriaMetrics comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 16, 2026

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
Ranking in Server Monitoring
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Active Directory Management (8th)
VictoriaMetrics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
16th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (10th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (12th), Log Management (12th), Container Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (14th), AIOps (13th), AI Observability Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VictoriaMetrics is 0.3%, 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 (%)
VictoriaMetrics0.3%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.0%
Other98.7%
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.
reviewer2911872 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer
Long term metrics monitoring has improved AI workflows and now powers faster incident analysis
The best features VictoriaMetrics offers in my experience include fast query performance and efficient resource usage, seamless compatibility with the Prometheus ecosystem, a simple cluster architecture with minimal components, MetricsQL with useful functions beyond PromQL, and comprehensive tooling like VMAgent and VMAlert. VictoriaMetrics stands out to me because it is highly efficient, stable, and easy to run in air-gapped environments. It integrates well with Prometheus ecosystem tools like Kube-Prometheus-Stack and Grafana. Its compact storage and fast query performance make it ideal for long-term metric storage. The cluster setup is simple and scalable, which is a big advantage for production use.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"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 graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"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."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
"VictoriaMetrics has positively impacted our organization because we chose it for efficiency, simplicity, one binary and cost, and it's straightforward embedded in our Helm chart, so it works out of the box."
"VictoriaMetrics has positively impacted my organization as it is a stable, performant, safe, and well-engineered piece of software which works exactly as expected and delivers stable results."
"VictoriaMetrics customer support is exceptional, responses are very quick, and the solutions are usually worked through."
"Prometheus compatibility is the biggest plus for me, and it allows me to use familiar PromQL queries across Grafana dashboards, alert rules, and the anomaly detection workflow, which saves integration effort and makes it easier to investigate an incident using the same metrics across those tools."
"The best features offered by VictoriaMetrics are that it is a very fast database and a time series database that is very capable of handling an enormous amount of data."
"VictoriaMetrics works very fast and efficiently, and it is easy to set up and run."
"VictoriaMetrics stands out to me because it is highly efficient, stable, and easy to run in air-gapped environments, integrates well with Prometheus ecosystem tools like Kube-Prometheus-Stack and Grafana, and its compact storage and fast query performance make it ideal for long-term metric storage."
"VictoriaMetrics has positively impacted my organization because we were able to save on metric storage by not using expensive solutions from other vendors."
 

Cons

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."
"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."
"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"
"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."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"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."
"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."
"I am sad that VictoriaMetrics moves towards enterprise only for features that it is really good at, such as downsampling."
"However, for people who want to go into the enterprise version, I think VictoriaMetrics needs to work on the pricing because it is quite high even if someone uses a single cluster."
"Regarding performance gains or cost savings, I can add that native multitenancy is only in the cluster version, and on single-node, we had to build tenant isolation ourselves with labels and query filters, so this could be improved."
"The main areas of improvement for VictoriaMetrics include automatic rebalancing, a large ecosystem, and Enterprise features."
"From my project experience, I would appreciate more practical guidance on tuning queries and diagnosing missing or delayed metrics across the ingestion pipeline."
"I chose exactly 8 out of 10 because I do not have full knowledge of the product in production, and my experience stopped at the testing phase pending the company's evaluation."
"I chose an eight out of ten because for a perfect score of ten, VictoriaMetrics would need to be effortless to install, set up, run, and use—essentially, it should just work without me having to do anything."
"The reason I rate it eight is that the solution lacks aggregation and I have to either use a custom solution or solutions from other vendors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"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 solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"The product is expensive."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"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."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
13%
University
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

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 is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VictoriaMetrics?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, we are using open source today.
What needs improvement with VictoriaMetrics?
Regarding performance gains or cost savings, I can add that native multitenancy is only in the cluster version, and on single-node, we had to build tenant isolation ourselves with labels and query ...
What is your primary use case for VictoriaMetrics?
VictoriaMetrics is our time-series store, and we have Helm charts that ship an embedded single-node VictoriaMetrics with 30-day rotation by default. Teams that already run VictoriaMetrics can point...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
VictoriaMetrics Observability Enterprise Support
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
CERN, Grammarly, Adidas, Spotify R&D, DreamHost, Traefik Labs, DSV, MHI Vestas
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VictoriaMetrics and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.