SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Zenoss Cloud comparison

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Zenoss Cloud

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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 Server Monitoring

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Zenoss Cloud

Ranking in Server Monitoring

26th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (28th), Event Monitoring (13th), Network Monitoring Software (76th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (52nd), Container Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (43rd), AIOps (24th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 3.1%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 1.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	3.1%
Zenoss Cloud	1.7%
Other	95.2%

Server Monitoring

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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ClaudiaChen

Cloud Architect - Senior Technology Architect at Telstra

Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features

As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

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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

"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."

"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."

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

"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."

"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 features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."

"The most valuable feature is the flexible discovery mechanism."

"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."

"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."

"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."

"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."

"It's easy to use."

Cons

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

"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."

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

"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."

"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."

"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."

"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."

"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."

"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"

"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."

"The AI aspect needs to improve."

"As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is too high."

"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."

"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."

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

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

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."

"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."

"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."

"It depends on the customer, what he wants."

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881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

No data available

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	4
Large Enterprise	5

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 is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a large-scale company is Zenoss, due to its ability to monitor completely hybrid and a...

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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

Zenoss Cloud

Download Zenoss Cloud product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics

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

Zenoss Cloud revolutionizes IT infrastructure monitoring with a service-centric approach, prioritizing the overall health of services and applications. Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIOps), Zenoss Cloud offers end-to-end visibility across servers, networks, storage, and applications. Real-time monitoring, event correlation, and automated remediation ensure immediate insights and efficient issue resolution. The customizable dashboards empower users to tailor visualizations to their needs, while scalability accommodates diverse infrastructures. Zenoss Cloud guarantees improved application performance, reduced downtime, and enhanced IT efficiency, making it an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes, from small enterprises seeking simplicity to large corporations requiring advanced scalability. Experience unified monitoring and proactive management with Zenoss Cloud, a comprehensive solution that transforms IT infrastructure optimization in today's complex environments.

Zenoss

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Zenoss Cloud