Prometheus vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

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Prometheus Logo
6,474 views|5,765 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
SolarWinds Logo
5,107 views|3,370 comparisons
87% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jun 29, 2023

We performed a comparison between SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Prometheus based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: SolarWinds and Prometheus have varying initial setup times with SolarWinds taking from a few hours to two months and Prometheus ranging from one hour to several weeks. While SolarWinds' deployment process is generally easy, upgrades can pose difficulty. On the other hand, Prometheus' setup process can be made easier with experience. 
  • Features: SolarWinds offers detailed monitoring of processes, services, and network devices, with infrastructure mapping. Prometheus is known for its flexibility, fast storage, and integration capabilities. It also has a scraping mechanism for high availability. Additionally, the ability to extract data from multiple sources using exporters is a valuable feature.
  • Pricing: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a paid tool that charges based on the number of devices and modules included in the plan, while Prometheus is an open source solution that is available for free. SolarWinds' pricing is based on a yearly license, while Prometheus pricing depends on the setup on the user's server. Some users feel that SolarWinds can be expensive, while Prometheus is an affordable option compared to other solutions.
  • Service and Support: SolarWinds has received mixed feedback, with both positive experiences and negative feedback on wait times and expertise. On the other hand, Prometheus relies solely on documentation and community support, lacking technical support but providing good forum support.
  • ROI: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Prometheus are both effective solutions for monitoring, with SolarWinds being reported to improve performance, reduce downtime, and increase productivity resulting in positive ROI. Meanwhile, Prometheus, a free tool, has also proven to be a valuable option for monitoring.

Comparison Results: Prometheus is the preferred choice over SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor due to its flexibility, integration capabilities, and affordability as an open-source solution. While SolarWinds has valuable monitoring capabilities, there is room for improvement in stability, ease of use, and pricing. Prometheus is highly valued for its fast data storage system, scraping mechanism, and ability to collect and compare logs from different resources. 

To learn more, read our detailed Prometheus vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: May 2024).
771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The product’s scalability is valuable.""The product's initial setup phase is very easy.""I like its lightweight configuration functions.""The product has an easy-to-understand interface.""It is highly valuable as it serves as the foundation for our infrastructure monitoring tools.""It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language.""The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features.""The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics."

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"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting""This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure.""I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues.""I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool.""There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager.""Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time.""The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities.""Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pros →

Cons
"The solution's error handling part could be improved.""I would like to see improvement in the analysis tools and customization features.""A slight alteration to the user interface should be made to increase efficiency and streamline the process. Currently, we are utilizing Prometheus to gather and compile metrics and then utilizing Grafana to display them in the form of a graph. However, I believe that Prometheus has the capability to handle both of these tasks on its own, with perhaps the addition of a supplementary plugin. By doing so, the need for utilizing two separate applications will be eliminated.""The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users.""The product must improve its documentation.""If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus.""Prometheus can definitely improve its visualization. For example, the matrices represented in Prometheus do not have a very good visualization on their dashboard.""Setting up the rules in Prometheus can be confusing, making it an area where improvements are required."

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"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it.""Mapping interactions between systems.""When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed.""In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now.""I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial.""An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis.""I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic.""The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up."
  • "This is an open-source solution."
  • "The solution is not expensive."
  • "The solution is open source."
  • "The solution is free of cost."
  • "We use the solution's open-source version."
  • "The tool is open-sourced."
  • "We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."
  • More Prometheus Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
  • "Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
  • "I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
  • "Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
  • "SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
  • "Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
  • "The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
  • More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
    Top Answer:For a project I am currently working on in my company, I use Grafana, but for the data source part, I use Prometheus. I use Prometheus in a Kubernetes cluster. I use Prometheus for the processes… more »
    Top Answer:The price is too high. The tool is overpriced. We don't need all the features. The product must minimize the features and reduce the price. It all comes down to pricing. The customers find it pretty… more »
    Top Answer:The biggest pain point is root cause analysis. It is difficult to analyze, assess, and warn my IT department about what will happen in the next five hours. It is also difficult to use AIOps to reduce… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    6,474
    Comparisons
    5,765
    Reviews
    32
    Average Words per Review
    387
    Rating
    8.3
    Views
    5,107
    Comparisons
    3,370
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    443
    Rating
    7.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SolarWinds SAM
    Learn More
    Overview

    Prometheus is a powerful open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for cloud-native environments. 

    It collects metrics from various sources, including applications, services, and infrastructure components, providing real-time insights into system performance. 

    With its flexible data model and query language, Prometheus enables users to analyze and visualize metrics, facilitating troubleshooting and capacity planning. Its robust alerting system allows for proactive monitoring, notifying users of any anomalies or issues. 

    Prometheus also offers seamless integration with popular tools and frameworks, making it a versatile solution for monitoring and observability.

    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.

    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Retailer13%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Security Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm27%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Construction Company13%
    Recruiting/Hr Firm7%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization41%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise31%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise68%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise48%
    Large Enterprise41%
    Buyer's Guide
    Prometheus vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Prometheus vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Prometheus is ranked 9th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 32 reviews while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is ranked 18th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 38 reviews. Prometheus is rated 8.4, while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Prometheus writes "A very flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor writes "We use this product for base and application monitoring. ". Prometheus is most compared with Azure Monitor, New Relic, Dynatrace, Sentry and Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver), whereas SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Nagios XI and ServiceNow Discovery. See our Prometheus 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.