SolarWinds Alternatives: Top 7 Competitors in 2025

SolarWinds has long served enterprises with a suite of monitoring tools across infrastructure, networks, and IT operations. It is known for unified visibility across metrics, logs, and traces speeds up root‑cause analysis. However, growing dissatisfaction among users has begun to surface and this is prompting users to seek alternatives. Common complaints include a cluttered and outdated UI, fragmented modules that lack cohesion, sluggish and often ineffective support, , alert fatigue due to noisy out-of-the-box configurations, and opaque pricing structures that escalate quickly with scale. Security concerns also linger following the high-profile 2020 Orion breach, which raised red flags for many compliance-conscious organizations.

The urgency to switch is reinforced by broader industry trends. The global application performance monitoring market is projected to grow to it is projected to reach $20.6 billion by 2030, expanding at a CAGR of 11.2%. With this growth comes increased pressure to adopt tools that are, pricing-transparent, and built for the demands of modern cloud-native environments.

CubeAPM  is the top alternative to SolarWinds, offering 800+ integrations and zero egress costs. It’s OpenTelemetry-native with full MELT (Metrics, Events, Logs, Traces), smart sampling, and support for distributed systems, RUM, synthetics, and infra monitoring. CubeAPM supports self-hosting for compliance and data localization, with pricing 60–80% lower than traditional vendors, no per-user fees, and no surprise add-ons. Real-time support via Slack or WhatsApp ensures quick resolutions and direct access to core developers..

In this article, we’ll explore the top 8 SolarWinds alternatives—comparing features, pricing, support, and use cases. Whether you’re looking for better OpenTelemetry support, lower costs, or faster support, this guide will help you find the right fit.

Top 7 SolarWinds Alternatives

1. CubeAPM
2. Dynatrace
3. Datadog
4. Uptrace
5. Splunk Appdynamics
6. New Relic
7. Better Stack

Why Look for SolarWinds Alternatives?

Despite its legacy in IT monitoring, many teams are moving away from SolarWinds due to a growing list of usability, support, pricing, and compliance concerns. Here are the most commonly cited issues from platforms like Reddit, G2, and Capterra:

1. Fragmented Modules and Legacy UI

SolarWinds offers many tools—but many are stitched together from acquisitions rather than built natively. These tools often lack seamless integration, leading to siloed workflows, duplicated data, and disjointed user experiences. Engineers must jump between interfaces to get a full picture, which slows down triaging and debugging.

A Reddit user noted:

“Solarwinds leaves a lot to be desired. There is no cohesion amongst the modules, as a lot of them are products that were purchased from other companies and then poorly integrated.”
— Reddit, r/sysadmin

2. Outdated and Cluttered Interface

SolarWinds’ UI has seen limited modernization over the years. Many users report that it feels clunky, with long page loads and an overwhelming number of options that lack intuitive grouping. This makes onboarding difficult and day-to-day operations slow, especially for less experienced team members trying to navigate the platform quickly during incidents.

“There are maddeningly UI design flaws, for example, a list view that can’t expand. Like you have a page set to 100 items, and your browser is maximized, the list view box only displays about ten items and the bottom half of the web page is blank because the list view box doesn’t auto-size. ”
— Reddit, r/sysadmin

3. Poor Customer Support & Long TAT

Support is frequently cited as one of SolarWinds’ weakest points. Users describe long turnaround times, scripted responses, and a lack of technical depth in troubleshooting. Escalations can take days, and tickets often bounce between agents without meaningful progress. For teams dealing with production outages, this delay is unacceptable.

“It’s horrible you can’t get anything useful out of them. I had a ticket opened for a month and a half without any solution, at last I got tired of their replies upgraded to the latest version and issue solved.”
— Reddit, r/SolarWinds

“It’s been 9 days. Escalated it 2 days ago and still have yet to get a meaningful response or attempt to dig deeper than “looking into it””
— Reddit, r/sysadmin

5. Steep Learning Curve

The steep learning curve can challenge new users due to its extensive features and complex configuration options. Mastering tools like the Network Performance Monitor (NPM) or Server & Application Monitor (SAM) requires understanding network monitoring, device configuration, and advanced functionalities like alerting and reporting. This is a major challenge for onboarding new users. As this user notes:

“The user interface can feel a bit cluttered at times, especially for new users who are still learning their way around. Some of the more advanced features require a steeper learning curve or deeper customization. Integration with certain third-party tools isn’t as seamless as we’d like,”
— G2 Review

6. Expensive and Opaque Pricing Model

SolarWinds’ licensing structure is rarely transparent. Costs scale quickly with additional modules, ingestion volume, or retention needs. Many customers feel trapped in high-cost plans that don’t reflect their actual usage, and it’s difficult to forecast future spending without engaging sales.

As a user from G2 notes

“Also, pricing can escalate quickly as more nodes or features are added”
— G2 Review

How Solarwinds pricing grows with scale:

SolarWinds’ pricing grows rapidly with scale, especially due to its per-node, per-database, and per-user licensing model. A mid-sized enterprise with 150 monitored nodes (150 × $6 = $900), 25 databases (25 × $117 = $2,925), 20 support technicians (20 × $39 = $780), and 50 incident response users (50 × $9 = $450) ends up with a base cost of $5,055/month. Once you factor in telemetry ingestion, longer retention, alerting add-ons, and potential overage fees, real-world monthly spend often exceeds $8,000. Even a startup with 40 nodes (40 × $6 = $240), 5 databases (5 × $117 = $585), 5 support technicians (5 × $39 = $195), and 10 on-call users (10 × $9 = $90) has a base cost of $1,110/month, which typically grows to over $4,000/month after ingestion and feature add-ons.

In contrast, CubeAPM uses flat, usage-based pricing—$0.15/GB for ingestion with zero egress costs will cost a startup $1500/month for a midsized company, with no per-user, per-node, or feature-based licensing. For both startups and enterprises, this translates into 60–80% cost savings, with full MELT observability, smart sampling, RUM, synthetics, and Slack-based support included at no extra cost.

7. Security and Compliance Concerns

The 2020 Orion supply chain attack deeply affected SolarWinds’ reputation. Even years later, some enterprises avoid the vendor entirely to minimize audit risk. For regulated industries, using SolarWinds often introduces additional paperwork, risk reviews, and vendor management hurdles.

“The day of the incident we shut ours down and never turned it back on. Our Cyber Team won’t allow it back in the Datacenter.”
— Reddit, r/sysadmin

Criteria for Suggesting SolarWinds Alternatives

When evaluating modern alternatives to SolarWinds, we considered the following criteria to reflect real-world priorities of SREs, platform engineers, and DevOps teams:

1. Native OpenTelemetry Support

Platforms must natively ingest and visualize OTEL traces, logs, and metrics without losing semantic context or requiring manual mapping. CubeAPM, for example, supports OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and is fully vendor-agnostic out of the box.

2. Full MELT Stack Coverage (Metrics, Events, Logs, Traces)

An alternative should offer deep observability across the stack—not just infrastructure monitoring. This includes logs with search, traces with latency insights, infrastructure metrics, and event-driven alerting.

3. Smart Sampling & Cost Optimization

Tools like CubeAPM use intelligent tail-based sampling to retain rare and anomalous traces while reducing noise and cost. In contrast, legacy tools like SolarWinds and Datadog often rely on probabilistic sampling that either floods storage or misses critical data.

4. Transparent and Scalable Pricing

SaaS pricing should not punish growth. For instance, CubeAPM charges $0.01/GB for data transfer vs. Datadog’s $0.10/GB, and provides unlimited logs and APM for $16/host compared to Datadog’s $42/host.

5. Compliance-Ready & Self-Hosting and Hybrid Options

Enterprises with data residency concerns prefer tools that offer on-premise deployment. CubeAPM lets customers store data inside their cloud. We looked at tools that also offer Hybrid for flexibility.

6. Customer Support That Responds Fast

Alternatives must provide Slack-based, developer-level support with real SLAs. With CubeAPM, support turnaround is in minutes—not days via ticket queues.

SolarWinds Overview

Known for:

SolarWinds is best known for its legacy IT infrastructure monitoring, network performance analysis, SaaS and on-premise observability tooling. It’s a long-established vendor used by enterprises and public sector organizations to monitor servers, applications, databases, and IT operations. Key products include Network Performance Monitor (NPM), Server & Application Monitor (SAM), and the SolarWinds Observability suite.

Standout Features:

• Modular Product Suite: Offers a range of specialized tools across monitoring, database management, service desk, and incident response.
• Network-Centric Monitoring: Strong capabilities in SNMP-based network monitoring, bandwidth usage, and topology mapping.
• ITSM Integration: Includes service desk modules for asset management, ticketing, and technician workflows.
• Hybrid Environment Support: Can monitor both cloud and on-premise assets in distributed environments.
• Custom Alerts & Reports: Offers customizable dashboards, performance baselines, and alert rules based on thresholds.

Key Features:

1. Infrastructure & Network Monitoring

Tools like NPM and SAM allow visibility into server health, bandwidth usage, hardware faults, and uptime.

2. Database Performance Analyzer

Deep insights into SQL execution plans, query performance, and database load—especially for MSSQL and Oracle environments.

3. Service Management

Built-in ticketing, technician assignment, SLAs, and email-based support workflows.

4. Incident Response & Alerting

Centralized alerting engine with role-based notifications and integrations with collaboration tools like Slack and Teams.

5. On-Premise Deployment

Full self-hosting for organizations with data residency or compliance restrictions.

Pros:

• Strong in traditional IT infrastructure and network monitoring use cases.
• Offers a wide array of specialized tools—ITSM, DB monitoring, observability—in one ecosystem.
• On-premise deployment options appeal to government and regulated industries.
• SNMP monitoring and NetFlow analysis are mature and battle-tested.

Cons:

• Pricing is modular and opaque — costs escalate quickly as modules, nodes, and users are added.
• Limited OpenTelemetry-native support — OTEL ingestion is non-native, requiring manual mapping and lacking auto-dashboards.
• High operational overhead — managing different modules (e.g., SAM, NPM, DPA) means complex setup and siloed data.
• Dated UI — many users report that the interface is cluttered and unintuitive.
• Slow support response times — Reddit and G2 reviewers frequently cite multi-day resolution windows.
• No smart sampling — probabilistic sampling can lead to noisy data or missed anomalies.
• Security trust issues linger — the 2020 Orion breach still causes vendor avoidance during compliance audits.

Best For:

• Enterprises with large on-premise networks and traditional IT operations.
• Government agencies or regulated sectors with self-hosting mandates.
• Teams focused on asset discovery, server health, and infrastructure alerting rather than full-stack observability.

Pricing & Customer Reviews:

• Pricing (modular):
  • Monitoring & Observability: $6/node/month
  • Database Monitoring: $117/database/month
  • ITSM: $39/technician/month
  • Incident Response: $9/user/month
  • G2 Rating: 4.4/5
    Customers praise SolarWinds for its breadth of features, but often cite poor support, UI complexity, scaling issues, and lack of OpenTelemetry-native integration as key pain points.

Top 7 SolarWinds Alternatives

1. CubeAPM

Known for:

CubeAPM is a full-stack observability platform built from the ground up for OpenTelemetry-native ingestion, smart sampling, and compliance-ready deployment. It delivers end-to-end visibility across the entire MELT stack—Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces—while maintaining blazing-fast performance and drastically lower costs compared to legacy APM tools like SolarWinds.

Key Features:

1. Smart Sampling Engine

Dynamically prioritizes high-value telemetry like errors, latency spikes, and 5xx events—retaining only meaningful data, drastically reducing ingestion volume and cost.

2. Full MELT Stack Support

Includes distributed tracing, log analytics, infrastructure metrics, real user monitoring (RUM), synthetic checks, and error tracking—all in a unified UI.

3. OpenTelemetry & Prometheus Native

Supports ingest from OTEL and Prometheus without proprietary agents or vendor lock-in.

4. Compliance-Ready Hosting

Offers fully self-hosted and private cloud deployment options—ensuring full control over data residency and zero public cloud egress fees.

5. Flat, Usage-Based Pricing

Transparent billing based only on data volume, not per-host or per-user—eliminating surprise costs.

Standout Features:

• 60–80% lower TCO vs tools like Datadog, New Relic, and SolarWinds with zero cloud egress costs
• On-prem hosting for compliance-sensitive organizations.
• Unlimited user model—no per-seat billing.
• Slack-based support with sub-minute turnaround times.
• Fast, customizable dashboards with high-resolution views for metrics and traces.

Pros:

• OpenTelemetry-native with no lock-in.
• Tail-based smart sampling optimizes storage and cost.
• Real-time ingestion and correlation across MELT.
• Enterprise-grade performance at startup-friendly pricing.
• Compliance-friendly deployment and retention.
• 800+ integrations

Cons:

• Not suited for teams looking for off-prem solutions
• Strictly an observability platform and does not support cloud security management

Best For:

• Platform engineering, DevOps, and SRE teams scaling beyond legacy APM limits.
• Organizations looking for compliance-ready observability with low cost of ownership.
• Teams that want full-stack visibility with OTEL-native flexibility and no per-user fees.

Pricing & Customer Reviews:

• Pricing: $0.15/GB for ingestion. Zero cloud egress costs
• Rating: 4.7/5 (based on Slack feedback and pilot programs)
• Users highlight its blazing-fast dashboards, unbeatable pricing, and friendly support from core engineers.

CubeAPM vs SolarWinds

CubeAPM represents a new generation of observability tools—open, efficient, and built for modern teams. Where SolarWinds relies on fragmented modules, legacy agents, and per-user licensing, CubeAPM offers a unified, OpenTelemetry-native platform with transparent pricing and unlimited users. Its smart sampling engine drastically reduces data ingestion and cost, while support for full MELT observability—including RUM and synthetics—goes far beyond what SolarWinds delivers natively. For teams seeking real-time visibility, compliance, and cost control, CubeAPM is not just a better alternative—it’s a future-ready upgrade.

2. Dynatrace

Known for:

Dynatrace is an AI-powered observability platform built for large-scale, enterprise-grade environments. It’s best recognized for its Davis AI engine, auto-instrumentation, and deep code-level diagnostics across hybrid and multicloud systems. Dynatrace is often the tool of choice for organizations that want advanced automation and service intelligence without heavy manual tuning.

Key Features:

1. Davis AI Engine

Automatically detects anomalies and correlates data across logs, metrics, and traces using machine learning.

2. Full-Stack Monitoring

Unified observability from infrastructure and services to frontend performance (RUM and synthetics).

3. Code-Level Tracing

Offers deep method-level insights across Java, .NET, Node.js, and more.

4. Automatic Dependency Mapping

Dynamically discovers services, APIs, and databases with zero configuration.

5. Cloud-Native & Hybrid Support

Strong Kubernetes, serverless, and multi-cloud integrations with automation baked in.

Standout Features:

• No manual setup — full auto-instrumentation for most stacks.
• AI-driven root cause analysis for faster resolution.
• Business-centric observability via KPI tracking and SLO dashboards.
• Security module for application vulnerability detection.

Pros:

• Built for scale with minimal configuration required.
• Exceptionally strong diagnostics and intelligent anomaly detection.
• Seamless integration with hybrid infrastructure and multicloud environments.
• Automated service discovery and dependency mapping.

Cons:

• Very expensive — pricing includes compute time, log ingestion, cloud modules, and AI features.
• Limited OpenTelemetry-native support; prefers proprietary agents.
• UI can feel rigid and less flexible than tools like Grafana or CubeAPM.
• Self-hosting is possible but complex and rarely used.

Best For:

• Fortune 500 companies running complex environments with large DevOps teams.
• Teams looking for predictive diagnostics and business-centric observability.
• Enterprises that can afford premium pricing for maximum automation.

Pricing & Customer Reviews:

• Pricing: $0.08/hour per 8 GiB host (approx. $57.60/host/month)
• G2 Rating: 4.4/5
• Users consistently praise the Davis AI engine and automated setup but raise concerns over high costs, learning curve, and lack of OTEL-native tooling.

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds

Both Dynatrace and SolarWinds target large organizations, but Dynatrace leans heavily into AI automation, while SolarWinds still relies on manual setup and integration. Dynatrace excels at service discovery, root cause analysis, and auto-instrumentation, making it a powerful tool for enterprises managing complex microservices environments. However, it’s priced accordingly—costs can balloon rapidly with host hours, logs, and advanced modules. SolarWinds offers broader coverage across IT operations (like network and helpdesk modules), but lacks the intelligent automation and code-level depth that Dynatrace provides. For organizations needing OpenTelemetry-native flexibility and cost control, Dynatrace’s rigidity and pricing may be limiting.

3. Datadog

Known for:

Datadog is a cloud-native, SaaS-based observability platform offering a unified interface for infrastructure monitoring, APM, log analytics, security, and user experience monitoring. It’s widely adopted by DevOps teams for its +900 integrations, mature dashboards, and all-in-one visibility across distributed systems.

Key Features:

1. Infrastructure Monitoring

Collects host and container metrics with prebuilt dashboards for AWS, Kubernetes, Azure, and more.

2. Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

Distributed tracing with deep visibility into services, APIs, and database performance.

3. Log Management

Aggregates, indexes, and analyzes logs with live tail, full-text search, and retention rules.

4. Security Monitoring

Detects threats, vulnerabilities, and compliance issues with real-time rules and correlation.

5. Synthetics & RUM

Tests user journeys and browser behavior with active and passive frontend monitoring.

Standout Features:

• 900+ prebuilt integrations with CI/CD, cloud, and messaging tools.
• AI-based anomaly detection and Watchdog recommendations.
• Real-time metrics, logs, and traces in a single pane.
• Built-in SLO monitoring and service maps.

Pros:

• Rich observability features across the MELT stack.
• Out-of-the-box dashboards and integrations make it easy to get started.
• Scales well for multi-region cloud deployments.
• Active community and strong documentation.

Cons:

• Extremely expensive at scale due to per-GB, per-host, and per-feature billing.
• Relies on probabilistic sampling (e.g., 1% trace capture), missing critical events.
• Opaque pricing and frequent surprise overages frustrate many users.
• No support for on-premise or self-hosted deployment.
• Charges separately for users, hosts, logs, and features like synthetics.

Best For:

• Enterprises with high budgets needing centralized observability across teams.
• Cloud-native organizations that prefer managed services over self-hosting.
• Teams that prioritize integrations and fast onboarding.

Pricing & Customer Reviews:

• APM: Starts at $31/host/month
• Logs: $0.10/GB + $1.70/million log events (15-day retention)
• Infra: Starts at $15/host/month
• G2 Rating: 4.4/5
• Common praise includes its depth of integrations and AI-based alerting, while criticism centers on unpredictable billing and limited OTEL-native support.

Datadog vs SolarWinds

Both Datadog and SolarWinds offer full observability suites, but with different approaches. Datadog is cloud-only, highly integrated, and designed for modern DevOps pipelines. SolarWinds, in contrast, is more modular, often requires manual setup, and leans heavily on legacy IT infrastructure. While SolarWinds supports self-hosting, it lacks Datadog’s automation, AI-powered insights, and breadth of integrations. However, Datadog’s biggest drawback is cost—users often report multi-thousand-dollar surprise bills due to fragmented pricing. SolarWinds is also expensive, but the pricing structure is more predictable in traditional IT environments. Neither platform offers strong native OpenTelemetry support or smart sampling. For teams prioritizing cost efficiency, full OTEL compatibility, and deployment flexibility, modern platforms like CubeAPM offer a more balanced and future-ready alternative.

4. Uptrace

Known for:

Uptrace is a lightweight observability solution focused on OpenTelemetry-native distributed tracing and metrics. Built on top of ClickHouse, it’s favored by small teams and developers who need vendor-neutral tracing capabilities without the overhead of full-stack APM tools.

Key Features:

1. OTEL-Native Tracing

Collects OpenTelemetry spans directly—no vendor SDKs or translation layers required.

2. ClickHouse Backend

Uses ClickHouse for fast, SQL-powered querying of high-cardinality trace data.

3. Basic Metrics Support

Ingests Prometheus-compatible metrics for infrastructure and application monitoring.

4. Self-Hosted Deployment

Supports local hosting with Docker or binary setups, giving teams full control over data.

5. Simple Dashboards & Alerts

Provides basic dashboards and anomaly alerts for trace data via YAML configuration.

Standout Features:

• SQL-based trace queries with ClickHouse for power users.
• Prometheus integration for unified tracing and metrics visibility.
• OpenTelemetry-first architecture reduces lock-in and onboarding complexity.
• Lightweight UI optimized for performance over visual polish.

Pros:

• Fully OTEL-native and vendor-agnostic.
• Free community edition ideal for small teams and open-source users.
• Can be deployed entirely on-premise.
• Minimal resource consumption and fast local dashboards.

Cons:

• No support for Real User Monitoring (RUM), synthetics, or browser-based telemetry.
• Lacks smart sampling — all data is stored or dropped without prioritization.
• Limited dashboarding and customization features.
• Requires manual management of infrastructure (e.g., ClickHouse, OTEL collector).
• No official SLAs or enterprise support for production use.

Best For:

• Small teams with OTEL experience and tight infrastructure control.
• DevOps teams focused primarily on backend tracing rather than full-stack observability.
• Startups needing a free or low-cost alternative with full data ownership.

Pricing & Customer Reviews:

• Pricing: Traces and logs at $0.08/GB; metrics at $0.001 per time series
• Rating: 4.8/5 on Product Hunt
• Deployment Model: Self-hosted; limited managed offering in beta

Uptrace vs SolarWinds

While SolarWinds offers a broad portfolio of observability tools, its tracing and metrics support relies on older instrumentation models, expensive licensing, and fragmented UIs across products. Uptrace, on the other hand, is focused, OpenTelemetry-native, and designed for teams that want control over every aspect of observability—from data pipelines to backend storage. However, SolarWinds does offer broader coverage, including ITSM, network monitoring, and incident management out of the box. If you only need trace-level visibility and want to self-host on a tight budget, Uptrace is leaner and more transparent. But for full MELT observability, better sampling, and cloud-native support, other tools (like CubeAPM) offer a more complete and cost-efficient replacement.

5. Splunk AppDynamics

Known for:

Splunk AppDynamics—originally developed by Cisco and now integrated into Splunk’s observability suite—is focused on deep application diagnostics and business transaction monitoring. It’s widely used in enterprise environments where tying backend performance to business KPIs is critical.

Key Features:

1. Business Transaction Monitoring

Tracks end-to-end user transactions across microservices, APIs, and infrastructure components.

2. APM & Code-Level Insights

Offers detailed diagnostics at the method and class level for Java, .NET, PHP, and Node.js applications.

3. Infrastructure Correlation

Connects application behavior with underlying host and container health.

4. Synthetic Monitoring

Simulates user interactions and proactively detects frontend performance issues.

5. Custom Dashboards & Health Rules

Provides KPI-driven alerting, SLA tracking, and business-centric observability.

Standout Features:

• Visual flow maps for business transaction tracing.
• Code-level debugging with detailed traces and execution breakdowns.
• Health rules and performance baselining tied to user satisfaction.
• Integrated with Splunk’s broader log analytics and SIEM capabilities.

Pros:

• Strong application-to-business correlation capabilities.
• Highly granular APM and root-cause diagnostics.
• Effective for legacy monoliths and traditional enterprise apps.
• Extends Splunk’s log analytics into performance monitoring.

Cons:

• High total cost of ownership, especially when combining APM, logs, synthetics, and infra modules.
• UI can feel outdated and overly complex.
• Limited OpenTelemetry-native support — still agent-driven and proprietary.
• Self-hosted options exist but require significant configuration and operational overhead.

Best For:

• Enterprises with Java/.NET monoliths needing precise performance breakdowns.
• Teams that already use Splunk for logging or security analytics.
• IT departments managing business-critical SLAs and transaction-heavy workloads.

Pricing & Customer Reviews:

• Pricing: $75/host/month (billed annually)
• G2 Rating: 4.3/5
• Customers appreciate the detailed APM features but often cite cost, complexity, and the aging UI as drawbacks—especially for modern cloud-native teams.

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds

Splunk AppDynamics and SolarWinds both serve the enterprise APM market, but from different angles. AppDynamics excels in application-layer visibility, with detailed business transaction tracing and performance correlation that’s hard to match. SolarWinds, meanwhile, offers broader IT coverage—including network, infrastructure, and helpdesk modules—but lacks AppDynamics’ application intelligence and code-level diagnostics. However, both rely heavily on proprietary agents and have limited OpenTelemetry support. SolarWinds may be more cost-effective for traditional IT ops, but AppDynamics is stronger for application-centric teams that prioritize SLA adherence and business KPI mapping. For teams moving toward OpenTelemetry, both platforms fall short in flexibility, deployment control, and cost transparency.

6. New Relic

Known for:

New Relic is a full-stack observability platform that combines APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, RUM, synthetics, and mobile telemetry into a single UI. Its Telemetry Data Platform (TDP) and powerful NRQL query language allow teams to analyze large volumes of telemetry data in real-time. New Relic is popular among teams looking for a fast, out-of-the-box observability experience with flexible integrations.

Key Features:

1. Full MELT Observability

Collects metrics, events, logs, traces, RUM, synthetics, and errors—aggregated in one unified interface.

2. Telemetry Data Platform (TDP)

Ingests OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and native agent data for centralized query and analysis.

3. NRQL Dashboards

Allows real-time querying and custom visualizations using New Relic Query Language (NRQL).

4. Frontend & Mobile Monitoring

Includes session-level RUM, uptime checks, and mobile performance tracking.

5. Integrations & Auto-Instrumentation

Supports AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, and auto-instrumentation for several backend languages.

Standout Features:

• Powerful data lake for multi-source telemetry analysis.
• Customizable dashboards and anomaly detection using NRQL.
• Comprehensive visibility from infrastructure to frontend and mobile.
• Integrated alerting, SLO tracking, and anomaly detection.

Pros:

• Unified observability across all telemetry types in one UI.
• Supports OpenTelemetry and Prometheus data ingestion.
• Fast setup with agent-based auto-instrumentation.
• Mature SLOs and alerting capabilities for SRE teams.

Cons:

• Pricing complexity—charges for ingestion, retention, and per-user licensing.
• Full-access user licenses start at $400/user/month, which adds up fast.
• Data is stored in New Relic’s cloud (no data residency control).
• Limited smart sampling and OTEL-native dashboarding unless using their agents.
• No self-hosted or hybrid deployment option—SaaS only.

Best For:

• Mid-to-large DevOps and SRE teams that want fast time-to-value.
• Teams with mixed workloads (web, mobile, infra) looking for unified visibility.
• Organizations prioritizing dashboarding and ease of onboarding over deep custom control.

Pricing & Customer Reviews:

• Pricing: $0.35/GB for ingestion + $400/user/month for full access
• G2 Rating: 4.4/5
• Customers appreciate the unified UI and dashboarding but frequently express frustration with user license costs, surprise bills, and vendor lock-in.

New Relic vs SolarWinds

New Relic and SolarWinds both offer broad observability capabilities, but their delivery models differ sharply. New Relic is a SaaS-first platform that emphasizes rapid deployment and all-in-one UI, while SolarWinds caters more to IT departments with self-hosted, modular tools. New Relic delivers a modern frontend and strong APM coverage, but comes with high user-based fees and cloud-only deployment—making it challenging for teams with data residency or compliance constraints. SolarWinds, on the other hand, offers more control over deployment but lacks New Relic’s depth in frontend observability and real-time analytics. Neither offers true OpenTelemetry-native flexibility or smart sampling, which are increasingly essential for cost and performance optimization at scale.

7. Better Stack

Known for:

Better Stack (formerly Better Uptime) is a developer-friendly observability tool that focuses on uptime monitoring, incident management, and log aggregation. Its clean UI, fast onboarding, and collaboration-first features make it a favorite for startups, indie developers, and teams focused on external service reliability and lightweight observability.

Key Features:

1. Uptime Monitoring

Offers HTTP, SSL, port, and ping checks with on-call schedules and status pages.

2. Log Management

Includes a built-in logging system with SQL-style search, alerts, and basic retention controls.

3. Incident Management

Supports on-call scheduling, incident logging, and multi-channel alerting (Slack, Teams, email).

4. Team Collaboration

Features alert routing, escalation policies, and public-facing status dashboards.

5. Custom Dashboards

Minimalist UI supports markdown, status widgets, and project-specific views.

Standout Features:

• Unified UI for logs, uptime, and incident response.
• One of the most polished interfaces in the monitoring space.
• Git-based config and YAML workflows for DevOps automation.
• Generous free tier with built-in public status pages.

Pros:

• Extremely easy to use with near-zero onboarding time.
• Ideal for frontend, APIs, and external service monitoring.
• Real-time alerting and fast log search for small teams.
• Beautiful dashboards perfect for public status sharing.

Cons:

• No support for tracing, APM, or backend service correlation.
• Lacks MELT observability—no metrics, no distributed tracing, no RUM.
• Not suitable for complex microservices or infrastructure observability.
• No OpenTelemetry support or smart sampling.
• SaaS only—no self-hosted or hybrid deployment options.

Best For:

• Indie developers and small teams looking for simple uptime + log monitoring.
• Startups that need fast incident alerting with polished dashboards.
• Frontend-focused teams needing clean public status communication.

Pricing & Customer Reviews:

• Free Plan: 10 monitors, 500MB logs/day, basic alerting
• Paid: Starts at $25/month, scales up to $850+ depending on logs, traces, and team features
• G2 Rating: 4.6/5
• Users consistently love the UX and onboarding but caution that it’s not a full observability solution for growing backend systems.

Better Stack vs SolarWinds

Better Stack and SolarWinds are aimed at very different users. Better Stack is minimal, elegant, and focused on uptime and log visibility for modern web apps. SolarWinds offers deep infrastructure, network, and IT monitoring, but often feels outdated, hard to configure, and bloated for smaller teams.

While SolarWinds includes broader MELT support (albeit fragmented), Better Stack lacks distributed tracing, RUM, and metrics entirely. Additionally, SolarWinds allows self-hosting and deeper custom observability for hybrid environments, whereas Better Stack is SaaS-only. For teams focused on external reliability with a strong UI, Better Stack is easier. For full-stack visibility, SolarWinds—or a more modern alternative like CubeAPM—is required.

Conclusion: Choosing the Right SolarWinds Alternative

As engineering and SRE teams modernize their observability stacks, many are moving beyond legacy platforms like SolarWinds in favor of tools that are OpenTelemetry-native, cost-efficient, and built for real-time, full-stack visibility. From UI limitations and modular sprawl to pricing unpredictability and limited OTEL support, SolarWinds often struggles to meet the needs of fast-scaling, cloud-native environments.

Why CubeAPM Leads the Pack

Among all SolarWinds alternatives, CubeAPM stands out for its OpenTelemetry-first architecture, smart sampling, and complete MELT observability across metrics, logs, traces, synthetics, and RUM. It offers blazing-fast dashboards, compliance-ready self-hosting, and up to 80% lower cost compared to traditional tools—without user-based fees, vendor lock-in, or fragmented billing. Designed for modern platform teams, CubeAPM delivers the performance, visibility, and control needed to troubleshoot faster, scale smarter, and stay compliant—whether you’re migrating from legacy tooling or building greenfield systems.

If you’re looking to leave behind complexity and cost without sacrificing depth, CubeAPM offers a frictionless, future-ready alternative—purpose-built for today’s observability demands.