--- title: "SolarWinds SQL Sentry Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of SolarWinds SQL Sentry. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if SolarWinds SQL Sentry is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/database-management-systems/sql-sentry-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Database Monitoring Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/database-monitoring/) / [SolarWinds SQL Sentry](https://www.softwareadvice.com/database-management-systems/sql-sentry-profile/) / SolarWinds SQL Sentry Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/database-management-systems/sql-sentry-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/database-management-systems/sql-sentry-profile/alternatives/) # SolarWinds SQL Sentry User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.7/5 - Total reviews: 16 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.1/5 - Customer support: 4.8/5 - Value for money: 4.5/5 - Functionality: 4.5/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 12 reviews (75%) - 4 stars: 3 reviews (19%) - 3 stars: 1 reviews (6%) - 2 stars: 0 reviews (0%) - 1 star: 0 reviews (0%) ## SolarWinds SQL Sentry customer reviews Showing reviews 1-16 of 16 (page 1). ### SQLSentry is the monitoring tool for SQL Server. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Derek K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Health, Wellness and Fitness - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Whenever we have had any performance problems, SQLSentry has allowed me to get ahead of the problem and assisted in solving it quickly. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The dashboard gives a good overall view of each instance. I have been able to identify problems before helpdesk notified us. The Top SQL allows me to quickly identify which query/application is having a problem. The event chain, while rudimentary, still makes maintenance easier. Overall, this is the best monitoring tool I have seen for a DBMS. #### Cons The advisory conditions are difficult to manage. There is a steep learning curve in how to set them up and manage them. The event chains need some enhancements. --- ### Great tool, limited active funtionality - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Eric R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Defense & Space - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I do like the product and have used it to find issues on many occasions. Originally it was my go-to to find all the issues. Now I tend to query the DB directly and turn to SS when I am not finding what I am looking for.... In some cases where I have an idea what the issue is I will confirm first with SS. I do wish it had more "active" functionality. Active doesnt have to run anything, but providing a script to run to dig deeper would be more helpful. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros It helps find issues on your databases (across all databases you are licenced for). It can be helpful with new code to see how it will impact the database performance. #### Cons There are errors or warnings that are posted that are transient. The overall score can be impacted negatively by transient states.... not that I know how to get arround that. There are errors reported and when you try to get more information the details are a little cryptic. In some cases the issue being reported is inconsequential. There are some errors that are reported, but the source of the error is not easily found... it requires additional queries in SSMS to find the underlying issue. In some cases, it would be helpfull to have a drop down menu or a debug box to look into some of the more common issues. --- ### SQL sentry for Database Server Management and Database Management - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Ranula G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: March 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I can recommend this tool as a productive tool and also as a effective investment for a company for server management and database management #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros As a PHP Laravel developer I am using SQL server management tools daily, fortunately I found this interesting software tool SQL sentry. As a tool this provide details of queries and also it would make easy to join tables and other db operations with increasing efficiency. When it comes to querying I highly recommend this tool to software developers, It would helpful for junior developers and also for seniors. For Server management this will provide a feature to monitor the performances with graphs. #### Cons This tool will spend a much CPU memory, Most of the personal laptops will getting slow when using, some times that may cause to decrease productivity. --- ### What a change - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Financial Services - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: November 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 3 years aliens involved in an evaluation of SQL Sentry. We found the product to be quite lacking. Fast forward to 12 months ago, I decided to give Sentryone another chance. I was SUPER pleased with the turnaround. Along with the performance of the product, SenteyOne customer service moved us to purchase this product! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The customization and ease of mining the data. The senteyone team is willing to share all that they can to make this product your own. The ability to add custom alerts removed the need for my team to start rolling their own solutions for data gathering. I also,like the way that I can give access to my development teams to see history of jobs and queries allowing my team to focus on other pressing matters. #### Cons The software could seam daunting to get started. The fact that it is so customizable could give some user trepidation in using the software. Maybe different editions of the software could ease smaller shops into using the product. --- ### Rest API alone was worth it - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: November 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall it has been good working with them. CSR at the company is hands down a great resource and extremely helpful when I had an issue or just needed help getting something to work #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros We decided to go with SentryOne mainly for the RestSource API connector. This allowed us to automate pulling down Google Adwords and Transaction data across our clients for Analytics purposes. In the past we would have a bunch of reports emailed to us where we would need to drop them manually to a folder and then run a package to import and create our final tables. #### Cons This con is not really about the software itself but more of the documentation on how best to use all of the components. It's hard to find good documentation so that you can go forward and ,work on all the components on your own. --- ### SQL Sentry for when you need it - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Peter P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Construction - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall we're a satisfied customer of Sentry one. It features a great toolset for troubleshooting issues. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The amount of detail it logs in the features it provides to do a deep dive analysis of performance issues in a SQL Database #### Cons It can be a bit overwhelming. The user interface could benefit from an update so that users can navigate their way more easily around the application. #### Reasons for choosing SolarWinds SQL Sentry Amount of features --- ### Great tool with great support. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Blake M. - Industry: Chemicals - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: October 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I am extremely happy with my experience using SentryOne even with some of our holdups. This tool has proven useful time and time again. It has helped us troubleshoot active issues and find resolutions quickly. The value it has provided greatly outweighs its pitfalls. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros SentryOne provides both useful information about our environment as well as accurate alerting for critical issues. The tool collects a lot of information from the servers that we use daily to troubleshoot issues and correct problem areas. The Conditions and Alerts allows us to respond to critical issues quickly by allowing multiple response options to a number of conditions. #### Cons Our group has had some issues with implementing SentryOne. The environment we support is very large and spread throughout the globe. Sometimes in very remote regions. This has caused us some issues with having all of our sites being monitored efficiently. However, SentryOne's support team worked with us to get these sites monitored and continue to work with us to improve the tools performance. --- ### SQL Sentry - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Kris S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Construction - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. SQL Sentry saves alot of time, and nicely organises pertinant information for SQL Server performance. I can find poor performing queries faster than using my own sql scripts. It helps me with monitoring the general health of the SQL server, trends of performance and finding which procedures need work. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros A quick way to find performance problems, and the software provides lots of information to solve them too. #### Cons This is a difficult question, i had to dig deep. The mouse scroll button does not always work within some forms. --- ### SQL Server monitoring leader - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Chemicals - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. SQL Sentry is now our go-to platform for monitoring SQL Server and troubleshooting SQL Server performance. Our developers use the SQL Sentry client as well and are able to investigate issues on their own without always having to rely on our Database Administrators. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros SQL Sentry provides the most comprehensive view of SQL Server performance available. It allows us to very quickly identify performance issues and identify a root cause. #### Cons SQL Sentry can be challenging to set up for very large enterprises. --- ### Specifically, Plan Explorer - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Rob G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Construction - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It's free, it provides a ton of extra information (in a much easier to read format), and it integrates super cleanly with SSMS. It doesn't require Management Studio, but it's seamless to open a plan in SSMS and then view the details in Plan Explorer #### Cons It would be nice if it more closely integrated with the metadata in SQL. If I open a SSMS query plan in Plan Explorer, it won't give me index information unless I create the estimated plan in Explorer also. It makes you copy the query text over. Minor complaint, especially because it's an incredible value for the money. No reason NOT to use it. --- ### Great product, better people - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Eric S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The software provides everything needed to manage and monitor servers, but the people and support staff that operate the company are their best asset. #### Cons More features out of the box and less customization per environment. --- ### DBA - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: jingheng L. - Industry: Mechanical or Industrial Engineering - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. very useful tools for MSSQL DB monitoring #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros very good tools, able to check history, and generate report #### Cons didn't see yet.installation needs some pre-requisite --- ### SQL Sentry is a great tools for DBAs - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Luis E. - Industry: Outsourcing/ Offshoring - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Currently we are using SQL Sentry to monitor critical business databases. It has helped show us what is actually happening on the SQL Server. Has helped us identified bottlenecks, what are our highest peaks times during the day. In overall it has greatly helped our DBA department do more efficiently their job. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Ease of use The dashboard presentation Reports #### Cons The way blocking is presented sometimes is a little confusing --- ### SQL DBA III - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: raveesh v. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Health, Wellness and Fitness - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Best support flexibility and customization on alerts #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros lot of customization on alerts. Free plan explore. #### Cons sometime Agent went offline without alert and have rebuilt counters on the server. --- ### Comprehensive - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Stephen M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Just started using it hoping to resolve tuning issues. Currently focused on alerting. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It has everything you could possibly think of. #### Cons It is somewhat overwhelming at first. Initial alerting out of the box settings you can easily be swamped with emails. --- ### Great SQL Monitoring tool for IT - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Rick Z. - Industry: Wholesale - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Very helpful tool. Helps us learn dates/times when SQL performance is impacted otherwise unknowingly. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Alerts and Dashboards and the number of days it can display. #### Cons There is just so much to review it's hard sometimes to tell what should be the main focus when looking for problems. Its a lack of training on our part not SentryOne --- SolarWinds SQL Sentry Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice