SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

Why PeerSpot?

SolarWinds and Progress Software are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.0, while Progress Software is ranked #37 with an average rating of 7.0. SolarWinds holds a 1.0% mindshare in APM, compared to Progress Software’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

8,214 Views
4,600 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

WhatsUp Gold

Read 25 WhatsUp Gold reviews

14,156 Views
3,822 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

WhatsUp Gold

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

WhatsUp Gold and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor are robust network monitoring tools. SolarWinds is superior in feature set, despite WhatsUp Gold having competitive pricing and better support.

Features: WhatsUp Gold is favored for intuitive device discovery, integration capabilities, and straightforward monitoring. SolarWinds has advanced application performance management, deeper network monitoring, and comprehensive analytics, making it the preferred choice for feature richness.

Room for Improvement: WhatsUp Gold could benefit from more advanced reporting, a scalable architecture, and enhanced alerting mechanisms. SolarWinds needs improvement in product stability, better error handling, and optimization of resource usage.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WhatsUp Gold is praised for straightforward and quick deployment with excellent customer service. SolarWinds requires a more complex setup but offers detailed documentation and a knowledgeable support team.

Pricing and ROI: WhatsUp Gold is noted for cost-effectiveness and quicker ROI, making it attractive for budget-conscious buyers. SolarWinds, though more expensive with a slower ROI, is valued for its comprehensive capabilities, justifying the higher cost.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. WhatsUp Gold

September 2026

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Helped 914,109 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in Server Monitoring

5th

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

37th

Ranking in Server Monitoring

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (25th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (20th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.0%
WhatsUp Gold	1.3%
Other	97.7%

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."

"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."

"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."

"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."

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

"This feature from Solarwinds SAM helped us to monitor and alert whenever the SSL cert is going to expire on the server to avoid any downtime of the services running on the server specially on ADFS platform where we have Video conference, Webex, Office 365 and single sign-on services."

"The most valuable features of the solution are its real-time node monitoring and Help Desk's feedback."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"In terms of pricing, I'd say that the pricing is nice and the product is good."

"The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless."

"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."

"The product is reasonably priced."

"We primarily use the solution to check the state of the network, monitoring thousands of devices and all of the internal network, and it is the first tool we use to see the state of the network for real-time monitoring."

"We've been using it for many years and we use it typically for early warning, as it notifies customers of problems prior to failure."

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

"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution, but after that, it's possible to do almost anything with it."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

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

"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."

"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."

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

"From an integration point of view, if you want to have a manager of manager kind of layer, that is currently lacking in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor."

"The technical support is nothing special."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"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."

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

"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."

"Regional product team support is not very good."

"The technical support does not bother to respond."

"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."

"Users want SMS available via Whatsapp Gold. They don't want to go through third party SMS servers. The solution should work to make this possible."

"My understanding is that there are better products out there that do a better job."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."

"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."

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

"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."

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

"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."

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"This is a well priced solution."

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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914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

13%

University

Financial Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

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 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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?

My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.

See all answers

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Compared 5% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 3% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

PRTG Network Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

LibreNMS vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

SCOM vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

NinjaOne vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

August 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

August 2026

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Overview

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

WhatsUp Gold stands out with its comprehensive network monitoring, dynamic mapping, and real-time alerts, offering essential tools for managing extensive IT infrastructures.

WhatsUp Gold provides robust capabilities in network visibility through dynamic mapping and NetFlow analysis. The platform's interactive topology aids in pinpointing issues effectively. Auto-discovery ensures complete network device tracking. While offering an intuitive interface and integration with Cisco ServiceNow, users find server performance monitoring useful for incident handling. However, improvements are anticipated in application monitoring and Active Directory integration. The pricing model and customization options leave room for enhancement. Despite these, users benefit from its integrated dashboards for immediate device health checks and network updates, making it beneficial for large-scale infrastructure management.

What features does WhatsUp Gold offer?

Network Monitoring: Provides continuous oversight of network components
Dynamic Mapping: Offers visual representation of network topology
NetFlow Analysis: Delivers insights into bandwidth utilization
Threshold Alerts: Notifies users upon reaching set performance thresholds
Auto-Discovery: Detects devices automatically for complete network coverage

What benefits should users expect from reviews?

Comprehensive Visibility: Enhanced understanding of network elements
Real-Time Monitoring: Immediate insights into network and device status
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive solution suitable for expansive networks
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies the management of complex networks

Organizations in sectors like telecommunications, education, and healthcare utilize WhatsUp Gold for their network monitoring needs. Telecom companies track switches and routers, educational institutions manage bandwidth usage, and healthcare facilities monitor device availability to ensure seamless operations.

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

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. WhatsUp Gold

September 2026

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. WhatsUp Gold

Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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