SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. WhatsUp Gold

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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

19th

Ranking in Server Monitoring

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Active Directory Management (8th)

WhatsUp Gold

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

29th

Ranking in Server Monitoring

16th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (31st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Configuration Management (19th), Log Management (32nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 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 WhatsUp Gold is 0.7%, up from 0.5% 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 (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.2%
WhatsUp Gold	0.7%
Other	98.1%

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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Erik Cheng

Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet

Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains

The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

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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

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

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

"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 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."

"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."

"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."

"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."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The installation and configuration process are easy."

"The documentation is very good."

"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides. Additionally, WhatsUp Gold is a Windows-based solution which is a benefit."

"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the visibility it offers of everything in the network and infrastructure."

"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."

"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."

"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."

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

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

"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."

"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."

"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."

"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."

"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."

"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user. All the monitoring is from inside out, we need something that also can give us from outside in."

"The initial setup of WhatsUp Gold is a medium range of difficulty levels. However, if it is your first time it could be difficult."

"The tool should focus on increasing its market share, as it is the only area of concern where improvements are needed."

"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."

"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."

"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."

"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"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 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 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."

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

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"This is a well priced solution."

"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."

"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."

"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Educational Organization

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

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	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

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 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 do you like most about WhatsUp Gold?

The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?

Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...

What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?

It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.

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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

WhatsUp Gold

Download WhatsUp Gold 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

Explore and manage your entire network infrastructure effortlessly with WhatsUp Gold's robust layer 2/3 discovery, creating a detailed interactive map from the edge to the cloud. Monitor devices, wireless controllers, servers, virtual machines, applications, and traffic flows across various environments. Real-time alerts ensure optimal performance, allowing you to meet or exceed SLAs. The platform offers customizable maps, dashboards, and alerts for easy network management. Quickly resolve issues with intuitive workflows, reducing Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). WhatsUp Gold's integrated log management provides easy visibility and control of device log data, allowing monitoring, filtering, searching, and alerting on syslogs or Windows logs. Archive logs to comply with regulatory requirements and preserve historical data, all through a user-friendly interface. Streamline network monitoring and issue resolution with WhatsUp Gold, making network management efficient and hassle-free.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. WhatsUp Gold