Dynatrace vs. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Dynatrace
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Dynatrace is an APM scaled for enterprises with cloud, on-premise, and hybrid application and SaaS monitoring. Dynatrace uses AI-supported algorithms to provide continual APM self-learning and predictive alerts for proactive issue resolution.N/A
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Score 8.2 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
Pricing
DynatraceSolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DynatraceSolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details—SAM pricing starts at $2,995.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DynatraceSolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Considered Both Products
Dynatrace
Chose Dynatrace
Each of the tools has its own strength and weakness. A few tools like HP fully rely on integration with HP products that do other monitoring. SCOM [does] only their Microsoft products monitoring in depth (.net) not much capability around Java applications. NewRelic is a …
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Dynatrace dives deeper into the user experience whereas SolarWinds gives a single-pane of glass into the overall health of the environment.
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
It does a good job and cheaper then Dynatrace. Again it is different then Splunk.
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 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
Value for money is high in terms of SolarWinds.
It gives very good insights into Infra monitoring.
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 …
Chose SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
SolarWinds was the solution of choice due to having better overall ratings and being more compatible with other tools we currently have in the environment. The engineers were more familiarized with this solution and it made more sense to stick with what seemed to be a leader …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DynatraceSolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Application Performance Management
Comparison of Application Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
Dynatrace
-
Ratings
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
8.7
276 Ratings
13% above category average
Application monitoring00 Ratings9.0266 Ratings
Database monitoring00 Ratings8.5230 Ratings
Threshold alerts00 Ratings9.0271 Ratings
Predictive capabilities00 Ratings8.2215 Ratings
Application performance management console00 Ratings8.2239 Ratings
Collaboration tools00 Ratings7.8148 Ratings
Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications00 Ratings7.9256 Ratings
Application dependency mapping and thresholding00 Ratings8.6216 Ratings
Virtualization monitoring00 Ratings9.0234 Ratings
Server availability and performance monitoring00 Ratings9.8269 Ratings
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting00 Ratings9.1250 Ratings
IT Asset Discovery00 Ratings9.0199 Ratings
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User Ratings
DynatraceSolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(341 ratings)
8.9
(278 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(12 ratings)
8.9
(10 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(9 ratings)
8.6
(29 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
9.9
(3 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
6.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(201 ratings)
9.0
(21 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.9
(8 ratings)
4.5
(3 ratings)
Configurability
7.3
(1 ratings)
1.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(1 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(1 ratings)
9.9
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
DynatraceSolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Likelihood to Recommend
Dynatrace LLC
Dynatrace is well suited to a number of tasks. It is important to determine who the end users are and gather good information to tailor their experience accordingly. For instance, business/marketing should not have access to some of the more technical data, and business metrics can be a distraction for IT operations personnel.
Read full review
SolarWinds
For monitoring applications that run on Windows hosts on VMware or HyperV virtualization, SolarWindows offers a nice, vertical view of both the loads and the resources. In such an environment, this makes life really good! But if you have something else -- for example, Linux hosts -- you're on your own to some extent. That is, the things it does well, it does very well -- but everything else is much less polished.
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Pros
Dynatrace LLC
  • We loved Dynatrace's ability to show the data flow - from the front end points through the back end points straight to the database and various API's. It was advanced in its data visualization. This is useful for debugging - showing when/where the errors are. It can even enable non-technical individuals in the corporation to help debug
  • Dynatrace has some great highly customizable integration options as well as monitoring. You can configure your layout & integration options to create custom monitoring alerts for your applications performance. Further you can increase the extensibility of using a REST API on your architecture.
  • Some advanced dev-ops systems are utilizing Kubernetes/docker aswell as Node.JS - Dynatrace was able to log and help understand all of our dev-ops needs. It gave us native alerts based off of deviations from the baseline that we set during initial configuration. These metrics are priceless.
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • 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
Cons
Dynatrace LLC
  • Dynatrace does not monitor easily on AIX OS.
  • Dynatrace does not monitor easily on a C-based application.
  • The way DPGR is addressed by Dynatrace is not very complete, and not clear. One thing is to mask the IP and request attributes but is not enough, the replay session feature is great but raises serious questions about user tracking.
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SolarWinds
  • Provides basic monitoring/visibility. Visibility into detailed/fine-grained issues best suited for more specialized/expensive solutions.
  • Licensing per monitored application rapidly uses up purchased license count.
  • More out-of-the-box templates or easier setup of monitoring less-common applications would make the solution more appealing given the target audience of the product.
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Likelihood to Renew
Dynatrace LLC
We have already renewed our purchase with the company. They make it easy for us to get a temporary license for our contingency site that is only used for testing twice a year. We are expanding our license with for this tool. We find it very useful and will renew it again.
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SolarWinds
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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Usability
Dynatrace LLC
I really liked how easy it was to deploy the SaaS vesion of Dynatrace in our environment. We have a lot of tools that have plenty of capability but they don't get a whole lot of use because they would require someone who is an expert to use them. With the SaaS version of Dynatrace, all the admin functions are taken care of by the Dynatrace team (updates, patches, new features, bugs, etc.) and our small shop can focus on getting valuable metrics, alerts and issue resolution from the product.
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SolarWinds
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Dynatrace LLC
Our environment, it never goes down therefore is always available.
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SolarWinds
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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Performance
Dynatrace LLC
We have not seen where it does slow down an application.
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SolarWinds
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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Support Rating
Dynatrace LLC
Given that Dynatrace has become an informal industry standard, the plethora of information available on forums is massive. Most problems or roadblocks you come across are most likely (almost certainly, in fact) already solved and solutions available on these forums. The tech support at Dynatrace is also quite good, with prompt and knowledgeable people at their end.
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SolarWinds
I think there was only a couple times I had to open a support case for SAM and one time they got multiple engineers on the phone to get a better idea what I was trying to monitor and was able to point me in the best direction to monitor that system.
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In-Person Training
Dynatrace LLC
We did both online and in house training - they used our system so it made more sense.
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SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Dynatrace LLC
The training was done on our time and with our system.
Read full review
SolarWinds
It was sufficient to read their documentation and watch videos.
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Implementation Rating
Dynatrace LLC
Using Dynatrace support services to assist (and lead) the implementation was extremely important.
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SolarWinds
Make sure SNMP and WMI are configured ahead of time
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Alternatives Considered
Dynatrace LLC
Synthetic Monitoring automatically does what other products do only through the use of other tools or through the development of user applications that still have a high cost of maintenance. The other products are not immediately usable and require many customizations. Through the use of configuration automatisms, you can be immediately operational and, in our case, we detected several imperfections in the applications.
Read full review
SolarWinds
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 computers in our buildings that are not ours that type of network scanning was not what we needed. Other services have extra services that we had no need of and I liked the ability to add custom fields in SolarWinds so we can track the information on each computer that we need to know.
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Scalability
Dynatrace LLC
Dynatrace can be used to monitor may software tools
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SolarWinds
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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Return on Investment
Dynatrace LLC
  • Thanks to Dynatrace we have been able to effectively challenge and collaborate with service providers and outsourced IT teams.
  • Thanks to Dynatrace we have reduced MTTR on troubleshooting by a magnitude of four.
  • The performance analyses our team has done with Dynatrace earned us trust among management, business teams, and IT teams.
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • Less time spent investigating causes of issues. We are alerted straight away and can find the root cause of the issue in less time.
  • We have been able to ditch all our previous individual monitoring solutions, none of which integrated with each other for a single solution which fully integrates with each of the different modules to provide a single portal for monitoring and alerting.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Screenshots

Screenshot of Multi-vendor application performance monitoringScreenshot of Multi-vendor server monitoringScreenshot of Application dependency mapping with AppStackâ„¢ dashboardScreenshot of Microsoft Exchange performance monitoring with AppInsightâ„¢ templateScreenshot of Microsoft IIS performance monitoring with AppInsightâ„¢ templateScreenshot of Server hardware health monitoring