Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Microsoft and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.8, while SolarWinds is ranked #19 with an average rating of 7.4. Microsoft holds a 6.3% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 55 Azure Monitor reviews

12,584 Views
8,015 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

2,994 Views
2,085 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Azure Monitor compete in the server and application monitoring category. SolarWinds has an upper hand in pricing and customer support, while Azure Monitor is preferred for its integration and advanced features.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers comprehensive monitoring, robust alerting capabilities, and easy configuration. Azure Monitor provides advanced analytics, scalability, and seamless integration with other Azure services.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could enhance scalability and simplify reporting. Azure Monitor could improve its intuitive setup processes and integration documentation. SolarWinds needs better support for large-scale deployments, and Azure Monitor could benefit from improved initial setup support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor has a straightforward on-premises deployment model and responsive customer service. Azure Monitor offers cloud-based deployment, but its customer service is sometimes perceived as less proactive.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is considered cost-effective with a positive ROI due to robust features at a reasonable price. Azure Monitor's pricing is higher but offers substantial ROI through its advanced functionalities and integration with Azure services.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2025

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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

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 6.3%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Usman Khawar

Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC

Native integration simplifies monitoring but documentation and cost improvements are needed

The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate. It has no maintenance overhead, and users don't have to navigate to another portal to get their desired result. It's the handiness that it has, rather than the features. The interpretation from the logs and injection requires custom runbooks. While it's complex, many services provide native insights and workbooks. It does the basic job quite efficiently. They added new kinds of metrics with more integrations to send out metrics. They have even added support for third-party tools that can be integrated. Azure Monitor is working on improvements and becoming more mature. Azure Monitor is stable and scalable. Azure Monitor is evolving with new workbooks and dashboards.

Read full review

Carlos Camargo

Senior Operations Manager at Sencinet

Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process

One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

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

"Log analytics and log queries are the most valuable features of Azure Monitor."

"Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud."

"In the last company where I worked about a year ago, it looked very simple."

"The most valuable features of Azure Monitor are the login analytics workspace and we can write any kind of custom queries in order to receive the data that is inserted into the login analytics workspace, diagnostic settings, et cetera."

"The features that are most valuable are the alerting function and also the logging functionality to analyze certain issues using log analytics"

"I am monitoring all of my Azure Monitor and getting good reports. I can customize the reports to get the information I need. I am also getting emails about which AAS instances are down and everything in the system related to my services. It is easy to use, scalable, and user-friendly. Microsoft has Many guides and videos to help you understand how to create and use Azure Monitor."

"The solution works well overall. It's easy to implement and simple to use."

"The feature that I found most valuable in Azure Monitor is its monitoring abilities. With Azure Monitor, you are able to monitor all of your cloud resources across multiple subscriptions in one dashboard and create solution-specific alerts that can trigger an email to the team responsible for that specific solution."

More Azure Monitor pros

"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."

"The product integrates with Remedy."

"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."

"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"

"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"Enhancing and reaching a level of detail that facilitates pinpointing and addressing issues at such a refined level within the application and database components would be helpful."

"It's really complex to retrieve or query the logs in Azure Monitor."

"There is room for improvement in stability."

"The biggest one is probably just the user interface. There could be more advanced logging at the database level. They can also improve their query builder to allow you to search for things better, but I last used it about a year ago. They might have already changed a ton of things in the newer versions."

"Although it's not always the case, the price can sometimes get expensive. This depends on a number of factors, such as how many services you are trying to integrate with Azure Monitor and how much storage they're consuming each month (for example, how large are the log files?)."

"Azure Monitor is not user-friendly, and the interface is not exciting. Switching between the dashboards is not easy."

"Azure Monitor could improve the visualization aspect and integrate better with other third-party services."

"Azure Monitor could improve by adding capabilities for data observability and integrating more tightly with their data platform components."

More Azure Monitor cons

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

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

"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."

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

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."

"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."

"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."

"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."

"The solution’s pricing depends on how much logs it collects."

"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."

"The tool's pricing is very good. I could say that Microsoft offers different cost models, which are listed on the product's website."

"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."

"Besides standard licensing fees the customer needs to additionally pay based on the ingested data size"

"The Azure Insight is a little bit expensive."

"Since we are using the basic set, it is more cost-effective compared to other third-party APM solutions."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

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

"The price is too high."

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

"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."

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?

Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...

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What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

The primary challenge is the documentation. The major challenge that remains is the costing factor for the logs ingestion. The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that...

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What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

See all answers

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 are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...

See all answers

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

July 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

June 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

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

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2025

Free Report: Azure Monitor vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

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