SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities. SAM allows for self-service for easy setup, 1200+ monitoring templates, and customization options, as well as integrate with other SolarWinds products.N/A
Splunk Observability Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Splunk Observability Cloud aims to enable operational agility and better customer experience through real-time AI-driven streaming analytics allowing accurate alerts in seconds. It is designed to shorten MTTD and MTTR by providing real-time visibility into cloud infrastructure and services.
$15
per month (billed annually) per host
Pricing
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSplunk Observability Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Infrastructure
$15
per month (billed annually) per host
App & Infra
$60
per month (billed annually) per host
End-to-End
$75
per month (billed annually) per host
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSplunk Observability Cloud
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsSAM pricing starts at $2,995.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSplunk Observability Cloud
Considered Both Products
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Nagios requires far more manual work to configure than SolarWinds does, though that also encourages customization and perfect-fit solutions. Nagios also requires far, far fewer resources to run than SolarWinds: SolarWinds wants great gobs of memory and disk, while Nagios is …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
It has been a while since we first purchased SolarWinds, but I looked over several other products that I can't remember now. Many other products tried to scan the network to find computers but given that our computers are located in various places across campus with other …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is able to provide 90% of the functionality my business requires. SolarWinds is able to scale out functionality by purchasing additional modules to meet the individual needs of its customers. While this functionality provides …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
We choose SAM instead of Site 24x7 because of the facility to handle API calls. Site 24x7 doesn't have a friendly dashboard as SAM has.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
SolarWinds is cost-effective, we have a great solution provider that helps us with tool integrations and maintenance, the integration capability and extensive documentation also help a lot in the ability to use it in various monitoring models and scripts.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
We also evaluated Nagios Core as a free alternative but being free it could not be trusted to be secure, and it was very difficult to add and manage devices.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Solarwinds Server & Application Monitor is a great comprehensive monitoring solution. It covers all aspects of monitoring your infrastructure via a modular approach. While other applications can be slightly better at asset management or monitoring one specific application or …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
PRGT Network Monitor seems to be very good, initially, but, in our experience, when we reached close to 100 devices, the system kept crashing and behaving erratic. Prometheus was missing many features and required some CLI scripting and the GUI was years behind SolarWinds. The …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
SolarWinds Pingdom and AppOptics [are] full-fledged Application Performance Management Tools. [SolarWinds] SAM provides Server and Application Monitoring using [SolarWinds] SAM templates, [but] it does miss out on APM capabilities which other APM solutions offer.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
In comparison to Spiceworks [Connectivity Dashboard,] SolarWinds [has] way [more] features and [an] easy-to-use system. ManageEngine [Application Control Plus] also provides a good look [at the] dashboard but needs a lot more enhancements when it comes to real-time monitoring. …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
This is the best look into our system as compared to others. It also allows much more in-depth looks into our system.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Very user friendly console, very powerful products, ease configuration
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Went straight to SAM as already NPM users
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
In the past, we had tested other monitoring products yet none compared to the features that one fines in Server & Application Monitor (SAM).
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
I have used WhatsUp, Nagios, and Zabbix. Very similar in ease of use to WhatsUp, but missing some features of the Zabbix and Nagios XI on the nix side of the house.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
We haven't really looked at any competitors. We've been happy Solarwinds customers for 5+ years and continue to leverage this tool today.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
because of the easy and fast implementation, and easy administration
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
I have only used SolarWinds
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
N/A
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
I can safely say SolarWinds comes up on top versus the individual products we used in the past. SolarWinds was selected because of its ease of use, its visual layout which allows you to easily and quickly browse through the information its currently providing for a monitored …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Event Sentry was the previous product we relied on for monitoring and alerts. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor simply has more features, is more comprehensive, has a better use interface, [and] has better support and knowledge base behind it while not being cost …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Being from the same company it is possible all these modules are compatible with each other
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
I have tried and researched many products including Cacti, Zabbix, Dynatrace, as far as I have read the best crafted product among them is SolarWinds. [Already], SolarWinds company is the most successful company that has proven itself in issues such as monitoring and logging.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Solarwinds Server and Application monitor is my first choice of tools preferred for server and application infrastructure monitoring because of the following reasons -
1. Single product to offer on-prem, hosted, cloud monitoring
2. Single Product to offer Server, Database and …
Splunk Observability Cloud
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
To be honest, Datadog is very similar to Splunk and LogScale to a lesser degree, but it is just as good if you don't need too complex observability. Grafana is still growing and might reach the same level soon.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Tenable Cloud Security and SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
It's able to quickly detect and resolve issues across the entire spectrum of deployments including on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and multicloud
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
The above applications have their own use cases. Thousand Eyes or Sitescope is used for URL monitoring and Splunk is used for application monitoring. Appdynamics is also used for application monitoring and can monitor the server very well but it lacks when searching in logs …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
It has edge because of our existing logging solutions is Splunk
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk is superior in many ways to these solutions when I'm comes to ingesting, storing, manipulating, and using data, but dynatraces automatic agents do make it much easier to use out of the box. Nagios seems much cheaper but does not provide as much functionality as Splunk. …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Because it's very easy to use & detailed and I love the graphics you feel everything under control any issue you can track it immediately
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
New Relic has more deep into the application using agents.
We try to use them in parallel to find errors in the infrastructure.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
I had not considered other products because Splunk Log Observer was in use in my company before I started working there.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
We believe that it's less vulnerable to security aspects as compared to others.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk requires less work for data in gestion and parsing. Splunk has more efficient data display features.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk Log Observer provides easy setup and ease of admin features and direction of product was better compared to Lightstep
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk is easy to customize and ingest our data. It is far more understandable and secure than other applications.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
SQL is a great tool for smaller quick checks. When trying to monitor several different environments, applications, APIs, several thousand devices, connections, and technology, it just doesn't stand up to what you need. Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring has really stood out …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
We are having other monitoring tools like AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Datadog and already using their end-user monitoring capability. Most of our customers are looking for agent-free monitoring where they don't want to instrument any agent on their client-side (as it might …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring provides far superior options for anybody using a complex hybrid multi-cloud environment and allows both your SOC and NOC to work together on the same data while driving their own insights.

We found other products are still in the old world view …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
The tool was deployed over most of the major applications on the client-side.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
The use of a single integration and definition of custom metrics, and tags is a great advantage. The ability to use SignalFlow to observe metrics in addition to the vast number of out-of-the-box dashboards is also excellent.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is the only product of its kind that I've used and I've been very happy with it.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
government is hesitant of choosing a solarwinds product for security purposes
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Much more powerful
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) has a much better artificial intelligence engine. It also has a much better and more intuitive user interface. Splunk RUM also allows end-to-end visibility into the front and the backend. Technical support and customer service are also much …
Features
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSplunk Observability Cloud
Application Performance Management
Comparison of Application Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
8.6
Ratings
12% above category average
Splunk Observability Cloud
-
Ratings
Application monitoring8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Database monitoring8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Threshold alerts8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive capabilities8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Application performance management console8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration tools7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Application dependency mapping and thresholding8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Virtualization monitoring8.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Server availability and performance monitoring9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
IT Asset Discovery9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
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SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSplunk Observability Cloud
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User Ratings
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSplunk Observability Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
4.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
4.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
1.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
4.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
4.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorSplunk Observability Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have a large number of users and computers and need a reliable database that will aggregate all of the computers and users into a single database. This allows us to keep track of who has logged into a computer, and log where that computer is located. SolarWinds is a fantastic resource that lets us keep better track of all the devices we have. Even after the device is disposed of we still have a record that this device was once ours so if there is an inventory question we can confirm that the device was ours but it has been disposed of.
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The query language is relatively easy and flexible when looking into an application's problems. These queries can then be used for alerts, reports, and dashboards. I believe Splunk is a platform that can help a system grow into its proactive application management, using incidents to add insights as needed without trying to work out every scenario in advance.
Read full review
Pros
  • Monitor Azure Cloud Severs- We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor Active Directory and DNS on Several DCs published on Azure Cloud.
  • Monitor Hyper V and VMware - SolarWinds SAM monitors applications on both Hyper V and VMware, while also monitoring the physical host machines.
  • It also helps us monitor Warranty expiration for physical servers.
Read full review
  • The first one is its Kubernetes container monitoring.
  • I really like this features because as we know how much K8s is vast and to manually monitor each part of the Kubernetes it takes so much time but Splunk Observability Cloud makes it easier. And even once we integrate K8s with Splunk Observability Cloud it gives us some prebuilt dashboards which gives holistic view of our Cluster and its nodes, pods, etc.
  • The dashbaord feature of Splunk Observability Cloud, it gives us full flexibility to customize our dashboard with a wide range of predefined chart types.
  • Now it also supports OTEL, which is a plus point for observability. As now everyone is moving towards Otel and in current market there are only few tools who supports OTEL based integrations, Splunk Observability Cloud is one out of them.
Read full review
Cons
  • The get the best out of it requires a decent amount of knowledge of the product. In saying that, you could absolutely get the basics up and running using their how-to's and built in wizards, and with continual use find your way around and customise it further to your environment to best serve your organisation/objectives.
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  • An indicator for errors on the navigations pane so that we don't have to go through each tab.
  • As we go more and more cloud maybe you guys can implement a pay-as-you-use strategy so that small companies using it not frequently can also afford it.
  • That's it can't think of any and it wont let me skip to next question. Thanks
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Likelihood to Renew
We are heavily invested in Solarwinds products for a reason. They are generally easy to setup and run with, requiring only some interfacing with support or help articles on rare occasions. They do what we bought them to do and we can't ask for more.
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Good: Stable system with low error rate Easy to use for simple use cases Bad: UI is not very clear for complex usage Mobile view (when logged in from phone) is bad No library for .net
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Usability
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is quite easy to use and super versatile. It allows you to do just about anything you can through premade templates or through scripting. You can use an agent on the servers if you want to, or you can monitor through WMI or SNMP credentials. You can customize thresholds for alerting quickly, and you can configure alerts to be as complex or as simple as you want.
Read full review
When there is an issue, it’s a win if one can easily identify the root cause. To do the same, it should allow the user to dig deep with multiple data points and compare the data and identify the anomaly. In this use case, it’s good to drive from Splunk 011y.
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Reliability and Availability
The tool works and monitors items 24x7, it only requires maintenance a little more frequently due to security fixes in the Windows operating system.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
The graphical interface and the performance of the database leave a little to be desired, they could be better explored.Some functionality and screens do not work well depending on the browser used. The integrations never had any problems or caused crashes in other systems.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
The SolarWinds support team is very well educated [on] their product and is very helpful and [patient]. We used the product, SolarWinds [Server and Application Monitor], and twice we encountered serious problems where the support team was very cooperative to help and resolve our issue in [a] timely fashion. Also, the extended support after hours [are] amazing.
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Splunk support is very quick and efficient. Pre-sale specialists are very skilled and available.
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Online Training
It was sufficient to read their documentation and watch videos.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
I am unfamiliar with other ways to configure it
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Follow a training before starting.
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Alternatives Considered
Nagios requires far more manual work to configure than SolarWinds does, though that also encourages customization and perfect-fit solutions. Nagios also requires far, far fewer resources to run than SolarWinds: SolarWinds wants great gobs of memory and disk, while Nagios is refreshingly humble. Nagios starts working from the first minute, too, whereas SolarWinds needs lots of set-up time.
Read full review
We initially chose Splunk Observability Cloud because it promised full-stack visibility and tighter integration. The other tools didn't offer this as part of the core package. Their analytics and real-time dashboards looked strong during the demo but it turned out to a lot heavier and more complex than expected. If I had to decide again, I’d probably go with something more streamlined and easier to manage.
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Scalability
It is hard to find the recommended SQL setup and convince others that is the way you should configure the server when you set it up
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Ability to sunset multiple legacy monitoring platforms.
  • A single pane of glass across global locations (Enterprise Operations Console) simplifies monitoring for junior staff.
  • A single toolset allows staff from across the global environment to share knowledge and quickly set up/modify monitoring.
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  • Significantly reduced the MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), which in turn has improved the end-user experience tremendously.
  • Meets compliance requirements of security policies, audit, regulation, and forensics.
  • Helps us to track/manage the resource usage on our cloud instances which has a direct implication on the recurring cost.
Read full review
ScreenShots

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Screenshots

Screenshot of Multi-vendor application performance monitoringScreenshot of Multi-vendor server monitoringScreenshot of Application dependency mapping with AppStack™ dashboardScreenshot of Microsoft Exchange performance monitoring with AppInsight™ templateScreenshot of Microsoft IIS performance monitoring with AppInsight™ templateScreenshot of Server hardware health monitoring

Splunk Observability Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Real-time monitoring for public, private and hybrid cloud