Checkmk vs. SolarWinds Observability

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Checkmk
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Checkmk is a solution for IT Monitoring of servers, applications, networks, cloud infrastructures (public, private, hybrid), containers, storage, databases and environment sensors. It can be deployed under all major Linux distributions or users can run it as Docker container or virtual appliance on other operating systems including Windows. The tool is available as a Raw Edition, which is open-source, and as an Enterprise Edition with a many additional enterprise features. The…
$0
up to 10 systems
SolarWinds Observability
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds® Hybrid Cloud Observability aims to provide a comprehensive, integrated, and full-stack solution designed to optimize performance, improve availability, and reduce remediation time by correlating data from across the IT ecosystem, including networks, servers, applications, databases, and more.
$5
per month per node
Pricing
CheckmkSolarWinds Observability
Editions & Modules
Checkmk Free Edition
$0.00
up to 10 systems
Checkmk Raw Edition
$0.00
unlimited & always free
Checkmk Enterprise Edition
starting at $600.00
Essentials
$5
per month per node
Advanced
$9
per month per node
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CheckmkSolarWinds Observability
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup Fee$600 for up to 3,000 Services / around 100 hostsNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing is set per node, per month, and billing is annual. The prices listed are base prices that could increase depending on your environment. Please speak to a representative to get a quote.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CheckmkSolarWinds Observability
Considered Both Products
Checkmk
Chose Checkmk
As we needed a solution for Linux servers, the Microsoft solution did not fit. Although the agent provided basic information, it crashed frequently, used excessive system resources, and was not flexible enough.
Chose Checkmk
We moved over to Checkmk from Nagios which felt like a natural evolution at the time as the raw version is based on Nagios, I vaguely not having any major issues moving over at the time. We still use the Raw version but we are planning to move to the enterprise version in the …
Chose Checkmk
Checkmk free version is far superior to PRTG free version. For the paid versions PRTG was more efficient and easier to use. Checkmk provides unlimited services on their free version while PRTG is limited. We like to use the free version to avoid monthly or annual costs while …
SolarWinds Observability
Chose SolarWinds Observability
- SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is less expensive
- SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability does more right out of the box
- Splunk is more highly configurable
Chose SolarWinds Observability
The primary motivator to disqualify PRTG was the limit of nodes. Above 10,000 nodes are required, and an additional separate primary polling host. This would have meant managing two separate instances and was not an acceptable or viable approach. The sales support and …
Chose SolarWinds Observability
Solarwinds has the best overlap of the two others I've mentioned - the other two tools (datadog and dynatrace) are great in their own way but Solarwinds is just good at everything; if I had to pick one tool of the above, it would be Solarwinds for the compatibility and ease of …
Features
CheckmkSolarWinds Observability
Monitoring Tasks
Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Product A and Product B
Checkmk
10.0
Ratings
12% above category average
SolarWinds Observability
-
Ratings
Network device monitoring10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Server Monitoring10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-device monitoring10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated alerts and notifications10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Management Tasks
Comparison of Management Tasks features of Product A and Product B
Checkmk
7.0
Ratings
12% below category average
SolarWinds Observability
-
Ratings
Software and hardware inventory7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting
Comparison of Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Checkmk
10.0
Ratings
17% above category average
SolarWinds Observability
-
Ratings
Data visualization10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Checkmk
8.0
Ratings
4% above category average
SolarWinds Observability
-
Ratings
Data backup and recovery8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
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CheckmkSolarWinds Observability
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All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CheckmkSolarWinds Observability
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CheckmkSolarWinds Observability
Likelihood to Recommend
As we have many different applications running on different servers, we appreciate the possibility of writing our own scripts to monitor the different processes and elements. Using scripts of our choice helps us a lot, as we have many different administrators. Thus, we are able to be prepared for upcoming outages or events.
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For mid-market and larger, HCO provides a highly available single pane of glass. The user and group management provides a granular ability to deploy to the various areas of the support and engineering teams. Integration to ITSM platforms ensures that information from the platform flows in real time to the right people.
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Pros
  • Flexibility using own scripts.
  • Observability
  • Management
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  • unlimited APEs included
  • all modules under one platform
  • overall cost savings when compared to buying multiple APEs and modules, NetFlow NCM, Ipam, etc.
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Cons
  • Updates
  • mobile interface
  • Agent for android devices
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  • Please fix the time zones issue. Events are in UTC, Charts in the user's Local Time, Alerts come in through with Main Server timestamp - it's all over the place & it's been like that for so long. We are a large corp, the teams span time zones and trying to work with teams across the globe is made so difficult by this.
  • The inability to ingest the tags from AWS Cloud watch and the countless posts / feature requests on thwack complaining about this that just get ignored. It's such a basic feature of Cloud & I don't want to have to own a different product to use such an fundamental part of cloud.
  • Maintenance Windows - why can we not set a reoccurring window from the web ui in 2022?
  • SAM - Manage applications, why is there no search bar to filter through applications. When you scale out to enterprise size this is so annoying trying to guess which page to land on to find the application / device I'm looking for.
  • http://hostname/Orion/APM/Admin/Applications/Default.aspx
  • Half baked features being released - Log Analyzer shipped with no resources for the node details page. The Free version from 2016 had more available in it.
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Likelihood to Renew
Very helpful software and I highly recommend to have on hand as a tool for testing, troubleshooting, and monitoring.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
After knowing the architecture it is very easy to manage the system, rolling out agents and creating new monitoring tasks.
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- decent ease of use - good training materials - good documentation - acceptable level of expected knowledge
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Support Rating
never contaced support
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
We moved over to Checkmk from Nagios which felt like a natural evolution at the time as the raw version is based on Nagios, I vaguely not having any major issues moving over at the time. We still use the Raw version but we are planning to move to the enterprise version in the next 6 – 12 months as our needs expand.
Read full review
Solarwinds has the best overlap of the two others I've mentioned - the other two tools (Datadog and Dynatrace) are great in their own way but Solarwinds is just good at everything; if I had to pick one tool of the above, it would be Solarwinds for the compatibility and ease of use, the other tools are more focused on being great at certain things while Solarwinds is the jack of all trades.
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Return on Investment
  • avoid downtime
  • Plan updates based on usage of a VM or network switch to avoid impacting users
  • User satisfaction increased due to less visible downtime or issues with our IT infrastructure.
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  • Helps us maintain application availability
  • Helps us shorten unplanned downtime
  • Provides these benefits at a fair price
Read full review
ScreenShots

SolarWinds Observability Screenshots

Screenshot of ITOM Executive DashboardScreenshot of Observability MapsScreenshot of Performance Analysis DashboardScreenshot of Application Alerting DashboardScreenshot of Network Path Analysis