We performed a comparison between AppDynamics and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: With a wider range of features including alerting for issues, release management capabilities, and business insights, AppDynamics is scalable, stable, and easy to use. It offers the ability to monitor applications of different technologies and manage log files, whereas SolarWinds lacks code-level monitoring of applications and software-defined network monitoring capability. AppDynamics also has better customer support and an optimized dashboard, although it is more expensive.
"The solution helps us provide a better user experience to our customers."
"This solution is easy to use and very powerful, it is a complete tool for us."
"The most valuable feature in AppDynamics is the identifying of the slow responses. Additionally, it is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to take a report, and in particular, a visual, and link it to actual application performance and then the consequences. This means you can show how an incident or action has an effect on the business."
"I find troubleshooting is quicker because we can drill down into the end points and see which endpoints are getting critical. Visibility-wise, the micro details are easy to find."
"The best features of AppDynamics would be the code application monitoring capabilities."
"AppDynamics' most valuable features are the response time of the business transaction modules, the ability to monitor multiple services, and testing and developing environments."
"Being able to install it on-prem and monitor our on-prem infrastructure is important for us... Most of our infrastructure is on-prem. We have highly scalable systems and AppDynamics will help us monitor our load on-prem. Our systems range from simple to the most complex and it gives us the visibility across transactions, in one dashboard."
"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."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"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."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"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."
"They need to improve the consolidation of agents for the agent's installation process."
"The Log Analytics feature is a bit complicated."
"AppDynamics is dealing with a lot of products and technologies, so we need to have clear documentation."
"AppDynamics is agent-based, so some customers are reluctant to install the agents in all their production environments. It would be helpful if they had an agentless version. It covers applications on the server, but the solution is weak on the network side. The agent is not deployed on the network components, so it cannot provide complete information about issues on the network layer."
"The cost element is an issue. I can't expect the company to change its way of work. However, given the fact that we earn and do all our business in South African Rand, I would prefer to buy in Rand as opposed to the American dollar or British pound."
"The network diagnostics that they are adding will be really useful. They could add more detail into what is going on in the network."
"AppDynamics is a solution that requires extra learning and could be more user-friendly. Additionally, automated reports would helpful similar to have they have in Google Analytics."
"The solution could improve by covering more technologies. For example, it does support .NET Core applications. However, it could be a bit better."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"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."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →
AppDynamics is ranked 5th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 155 reviews while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is ranked 18th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 38 reviews. AppDynamics is rated 8.2, while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of AppDynamics writes "Very good real-time monitoring capabilities, deep problem diagnosis, and transaction mapping". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor writes "We use this product for base and application monitoring. ". AppDynamics is most compared with Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Datadog, Splunk Enterprise Security and Azure Monitor, whereas SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Nagios XI and ServiceNow Discovery. See our AppDynamics vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report.
See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.
We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
