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Prasanth MG - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Readyly
Real User
Jul 9, 2023
Though at times there are issues due to missing logs, it provides a good UI
Pros and Cons
  • "The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily."
  • "Amazon CloudWatch needs improvement. The main thing is we have noticed missing logs."

What is our primary use case?

We use Amazon CloudWatch in our company to mainly troubleshoot Lambda functions. Then, we use CloudWatch to set up CloudWatch Alarms.

What is most valuable?

It maintains all the streams and all the logs in an orderly manner, and it maintains it indefinitely unless otherwise configured with a retention period. CloudWatch Alarms is another useful service. It will send us a notification if our usage exceeds the limit we've set. Also, we have to use CloudWatch Alarms to comply with some security standards. Watching the logs and troubleshooting Lambda is the main use of Amazon CloudWatch for us. The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily.

What needs improvement?

Amazon CloudWatch needs improvement. The main thing is we have noticed missing logs. Like, we know that the Lambda function was executed because we have been able to see the output in another downstream system, but we do not see the logs of that execution on CloudWatch. Sometimes we face problems like our program didn't produce the correct output, and the customer reports it. However, we don't see any logs when we go to CloudWatch.

CloudWatch can also improve the logs search functionality. Searching with keywords over the log streams can produce very unreliable results.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for a year. I am a customer of the solution.

Buyer's Guide
Amazon CloudWatch
July 2026
Learn what your peers think about Amazon CloudWatch. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2026.
906,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I won't say it is a stable tool since there is the problem of missing logs.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a very scalable solution. Maybe at a time, ten people use it in our company.

How was the initial setup?

One doesn't have to do any setup for CloudWatch logs. Only CloudWatch Alarms need setting up. Whenever you create a Lambda function, it automatically logs to CloudWatch.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Actually, we had chosen Amazon Lambda for our serverless programming, and Lambda logs to CloudWatch by default. We can log in to other services, which can be a storage like S3 and all, but it will require more work from us. CloudWatch is the default standard for Lambda logging. Another reason for choosing Amazon CloudWatch is because we use CloudWatch Alarms. If we don't set up CloudWatch Alarms, we will fail certain security compliance standards.

What other advice do I have?

You should be careful about using Amazon CloudWatch if your Lambda is running continuously since that is when you suffer log missing problems. If you are running a Lambda function only intermittently, then it is okay. I would suggest that if you intend it to run your Lambda function continuously, like, every single second, then maybe use another service for logs. It is better to write your own logs to S3 or something.

I rate the overall solution a five out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
ChanchalSingh - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Engineering - Data and Machine Learning at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Apr 18, 2023
Responsive support, highly stable, and useful server viability
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is its ease of use and logs. You do not have to go to each separate system to see the logs, such as Syslog and they are located in one dashboard GUI."
  • "The dashboard and the UI could improve in Amazon CloudWatch. Additionally, they should focus on visibility inside the servers with AI and machine learning integrations. This would allow users who are using the solution to see what is happening within the system better."

What is our primary use case?

Whenever we launch any instances or use any service we receive default metrics from Amazon CloudWatch. It is easy to track what is happening in the services that we are using. Additionally, it provides metrics logs from servers and what is happening from the infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is its ease of use and logs. You do not have to go to each separate system to see the logs, such as Syslog and they are located in one dashboard GUI.

If someone changes some configurations in other tools, such as Grafana, someone has to deep dive to see what has happened. These issues do not happen in Amazon CloudWatch because it is easy to use. It is managed by Amazon AWS.

What needs improvement?

The dashboard and the UI could improve in Amazon CloudWatch. Additionally, they should focus on visibility inside the servers with AI and machine learning integrations. This would allow users who are using the solution to see what is happening within the system better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Amazon CloudWatch within the last 12 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is good.

I rate the stability of Amazon CloudWatch a ten out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Amazon CloudWatch is good. We do not have to do anything to scale the solution it is done by the vendor.

We have more than 10,000 people using the solution.

I rate the scalability of Amazon CloudWatch a nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

I rate the support of Amazon CloudWatch a ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Amazon CloudWatch is simple. The deployment of the solution only took minutes.

I rate the initial setup of Amazon CloudWatch a nine out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

If someone is utilizing a limited set of services on Amazon AWS and their application is hosted on Docker or Kubernetes products, they may choose to use an alternative monitoring tool instead of relying on Amazon CloudWatch. However, the developers of Amazon CloudWatch are continually improving the tool, and adding features to address any issues that are not currently available on the cloud version will eventually be incorporated into Amazon CloudWatch. If the infrastructure and the software services are relatively simple I would recommend this solution. The Amazon CloudWatch agent can provide additional metrics, but for those seeking a more visually appealing and understandable approach, different tools may be more suitable.

I rate Amazon CloudWatch an eight out of ten.

I rated the solution an eight out of ten because of its user-friendly interface and the presence of a helpful single dashboard. This solution also offers unique tools, like application insights, which rely on artificial intelligence. This means that regardless of the traffic or type of users accessing our server, the insights provided are based on AI technology. The role of application insights is expected to grow significantly in the coming years as the solution continues to incorporate AI into its functionality. For example, it can provide information on how much memory was occupied by your machine at a particular time.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Amazon CloudWatch
July 2026
Learn what your peers think about Amazon CloudWatch. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2026.
906,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Lead Technical Product Owner - AI & ML at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 5, 2023
A very simple logging system that is easy to set up and deploy
Pros and Cons
  • "It's a very simple logging system."
  • "It's not an advanced way of monitoring."

What is our primary use case?

While we have used CloudWatch, we have not used it extensively. We should start monitoring our applications once it starts performing in production. We are not at that stage yet. However, we have implemented it. In the end, we will use it mainly to monitor our applications.

What is most valuable?

It's a very simple logging system. It's a very simple monitoring system, however, you have other advanced services as well if you choose to go more advanced. This is a simpler product that we can use right away.

The implementation process is very simple.

What needs improvement?

It's not an advanced way of monitoring.

For how long have I used the solution?

I haven’t used the solution for that long.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Until now, we haven't seen any stability issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze. It is reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I’m not aware of the level of scalability on offer.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Right now, for monitoring, what we do is, we have a login into an SQL server.

How was the initial setup?

It's very easy to implement. It's simple. These are solutions that are very simple to use, and therefore, there isn’t really any complexity involved.

You may not need so much technical knowledge or information to use this product. That said, there are some policies where you would need to know how to write the script. Still, it would be simple for anyone to use quickly.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm not aware of the pricing.

What other advice do I have?

Since it is a cloud solution, we are likely on the latest version, although I don’t know the exact version number.

This is a basic version that you can start using right away, and there's nothing too technical to think about or to know. You can implement it right away and then try to scale up or advance on the monitoring.

I would rate the product eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner
PeerSpot user
Pradeep Murugesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Product Architect at Majorel
Real User
Dec 25, 2022
Experienced user, with excellent customer analysis, and quick and easy installation
Pros and Cons
  • "I can put it in a simple term, its simplicity is always there."
  • "I think something that can be improved are the alerts and alerting mechanism based on no rejects. We want to have it more flexible and that is one of the key things that is required."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use cases are creating a platform for customer experience and customer engagement. This is more about profiling a customer and it is more about using or basically understanding the customer's needs and wants and profiling the data and showing it to a business analyst.

How has it helped my organization?

That is pretty straightforward and it is not really meant for a technical user specifically, even a non-technical person can use it. I can put it in a simple term, its simplicity is always there. And it is also in real-time and it has a log analysis feature wherein you can do some insights into the log that is generated. Yeah, but again, this is not a full-fledged monitoring tool. Just like Dynatrace, it comes with various other things like log security and many other features, but the log analysis for the team.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the insights are good.

What needs improvement?

I think something that can be improved are the alerts and alerting mechanism based on no rejects. We want to have it more flexible and that is one of the key things that is required.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for the past four to five years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The performance is very good and there are no problems accessing it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are already on the cloud platform, and we have never experienced any hurdles in terms of performance or scalability. It is always the same as it was at the beginning and we do not feel many differences as we have been growing because that is something that is already scaling at the back end and I think the team is doing it. We are not aware of how they do it, but as end users, we do not feel such difficulties in accessing it.

How are customer service and support?

There are three packages currently we are opting for package one, which basically means that you can only do offline chats or, we have to send any queries offline. But there are three packages in which we can do real-time calls and chats with them to rectify the issues if there are any. So, I can say that from the support perspective with whatever package that we have taken, they are meeting expectations.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is very straightforward and took less than thirty minutes to install.

What about the implementation team?

All of our implementations took place in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is based on a storage cost plus there is a minimal cost for the usage, but I am not sure about the actual figures, but it is built upon the usage.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend they have an understanding of the basics of AWS before you start configuring. I would rate Amazon CloudWatch a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
RomilShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Oct 30, 2022
Has good alerting and task automation features, and gives detailed information that helps with finding root causes
Pros and Cons
  • "What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes. Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch."
  • "Task automation through Amazon CloudWatch has improved the company's overall efficiency in terms of the time to resolve issues, so the tool has been beneficial."
  • "What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."

What is our primary use case?

We use Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring infrastructure for EC2 instances. We created CPU, memory, system, status, and disk utilization checks. Based on those checks, we created actions such as disk cleaning by running a command, integrating with Lambda, and sending email notifications. We use the basic functionalities of Amazon CloudWatch.

How has it helped my organization?

Amazon CloudWatch helped improve my company through notification and automation. The tool is integrated with actions, so if an alarm gets triggered, you can execute an action through Amazon CloudWatch. Task automation through Amazon CloudWatch has improved the company's overall efficiency in terms of the time to resolve issues, so the tool has been beneficial.

What is most valuable?

What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes.

Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch.

What needs improvement?

What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script.

Amazon CloudWatch is a pretty complete tool with many features, so apart from the improvements I mentioned, there isn't anything else I want to change in Amazon CloudWatch.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Amazon CloudWatch for almost two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Amazon CloudWatch is a very stable tool.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon CloudWatch is a scalable tool because it has no limitations in the number of systems and alarms you can create.

How are customer service and support?

I'd rate support for Amazon CloudWatch four out of five, but this is because my company has AWS premium support, so I'm unsure how it is with others with a different level of support with AWS.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't use a different solution before using Amazon CloudWatch.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for Amazon CloudWatch was quite okay, particularly for the standard alarms provided by Amazon. Still, for the custom alarms, such as memory and disk alarms, you have to put in some effort because if you make changes to the system, you'd also have to make changes in the scripts as well, so if that could be automated, it would be beneficial.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented Amazon CloudWatch in-house. We're in consulting, so in a way, we're the third party who can implement the tool.

What was our ROI?

As my company only had to put in a small investment for Amazon CloudWatch, and the tool helped in terms of monitoring, alerting, etc., and is quite a good tool, in my opinion, it gave my company good ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Amazon CloudWatch has very cheap pricing, and it hardly costs my company $25-$30 a month for fifty systems, so it's pretty affordable.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My company didn't evaluate other options because Amazon CloudWatch was pretty native. It was the only tool that was there, so Amazon CloudWatch was the only tool my company used and nothing else.

What other advice do I have?

Amazon CloudWatch is a web-based tool, so there's no version control for it, so you could say it's always the latest version provided by Amazon. It's deployed on the cloud.

Almost everyone from the technical team within my company uses Amazon CloudWatch, so that's five to six people in total.

One to two people is enough to handle the deployment and maintenance of Amazon CloudWatch because it's a one-time process. Once it's done, you don't need to change it in a way, so one to two people would be fine.

As Amazon CloudWatch is an essential tool for my company, usage of it will gradually increase with new projects or instances because of the basic infrastructure monitoring and similar features it provides; however, there's no plan to expand in terms of doing more with Amazon CloudWatch.

My advice to others looking into implementing Amazon CloudWatch is that Amazon has pretty sufficient documentation on installing the tool and configuring the alerts. Still, it would be better to have a script deployed through Lambda to create alarms or use the Amazon SSM Agent to create the alarms instead of manually doing it.

I'd rate Amazon CloudWatch as eight out of ten because it does whatever it promises, and it's a good tool for monitoring and alerting.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1973016 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical project lead at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Oct 10, 2022
Impressive stability but the storage-based pricing model can be expensive
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution effectively monitors golden signals like CPU, page requests, and queues."
  • "Our project involved processing billions of records and performance expectancy was 99% which is pretty impressive."
  • "The solution's integration could be easier for laypersons."
  • "The pricing model can get very expensive as the project's scope grows."

What is our primary use case?

Our company used the solution for a project that included data message and data lake architecture, performance testing, and an engineering solution to monitor virtual machines or the S3 bucket. 

The solution monitored key performance indicators for almost all services including Aurora, Fargate, Lambda, Snowflake NoSQL databases, and Sumo Logic.  

What is most valuable?

The solution effectively monitors golden signals like CPU, page requests, and queues. 

What needs improvement?

The solution's integration could be easier for laypersons. 

The solution should move from being a performance monitoring tool to a full stack content management system with a hybrid DPM tool that integrates front-end, browser-specific, and footprint-specific monitoring metrics and synthetics. 

The solution's interface could be improved to enhance user experience by including Kendo UI or React.js frameworks. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for four years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is quite impressive with a 99% availability rate. 

The solution uses metrics and measurements to scale data which then gets routed to a NQ at an Amazon data center. 

Data on the front end takes time to appear because of how the solution is designed. The UI interface takes some time to refresh large volumes of data so on occasion there is a lag. 

I rate stability an eight out of ten. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is based purely on your stack and requirements. 

Our project involved processing billions of records and performance expectancy was 99% which is pretty impressive. 

I rate scalability an eight out of ten. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was a bit complex because we were new to AWS. 

It took us time to integrate EHNs because we had difficulty discovering traffic and TCP connections. 

The KPIs that needed to be monitored were books of medium to high complexity. 

As we became more proficient, we progressed quickly but that always depends on the complexity of the stack. 

For example, Java is easy but .Net is complex because many services are not API exposed so they have their own DLS running on machines. 

What about the implementation team?

Our company worked with the client's IT operations team to implement the solution. 

More than ten architects worked both onsite and offshore to conduct engineering, performance testing, integrations, and monitoring. 

A big management team consisting of 30 onsite and offshore developers, QA technicians, and performance managers monitor the enterprise because it processes billions of records. These user groups have restricted access based on their roles. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs. 

Scalability is not limited because you can add components and integrations at any time.

Data gets stored on your EBS in RSN S3 buckets. Some free space is provided based on your configuration, but additional space is paid. Storage fees can be per unit or by the minute. 

The pricing model can get very expensive as the project's scope grows. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The solution is expensive so a better option might be to use New Relic, Dynatrace, or Zabbix for open source monitoring. 

A central repository lock trail and analytics dashboard could be created in Tableau that stores metrics in one particular location and analyzes data using one particular dashboard. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Principal Cloud Security Consultant at Pegasystems
Real User
Oct 20, 2023
The product is very stable and enables users to set alerts, but the technical support must be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "We can set CPU thresholds using the solution."
  • "The technical support must be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution to set alerts. We can set up thresholds to trigger alerts if an instance in AWS reaches the threshold value. Based on the alerts, we check the issue in the instance.

What is most valuable?

We can set CPU thresholds using the solution.

What needs improvement?

The technical support must be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for more than two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The tool is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have more than 600 customers hosted in the AWS environment.

How are customer service and support?

Recently, we faced a payment issue in AWS. Our payments were not happening through the default account. My organization contacted the support team. Sometimes, we get good support. Sometimes, we do not get good support.

How was the initial setup?

We have the complete documentation to set up AWS. We use Confluence for our documents. The steps to set up AWS are clearly mentioned in the documentation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution charges $0.09 for 1GB of data we store in AWS.

What other advice do I have?

We use AWS for our infrastructure. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Selva Thurai - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps-TechSpecialist at Brillio
Real User
Apr 14, 2023
Useful basic monitoring and UI, but lacking automation
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and UI."
  • "Some of our customers want to use Kubernetes to monitor their CICD flow but Amazon CloudWatch does not support it. We need to use another solution, such as Datadog or Dynatrace has the needed capability."

What is our primary use case?

Amazon CloudWatch for infrastructure and serverless monitoring.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and UI.

What needs improvement?

Some of our customers want to use Kubernetes to monitor their CICD flow but Amazon CloudWatch does not support it. We need to use another solution, such as Datadog or Dynatrace has the needed capability.

In a future release, the vendor could add automation for quicker integration and improve the visualization similar to other solutions.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for approximately five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There has been some leg in the use of the solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have five or six customers using the solution.

I rate the scalability of Amazon CloudWatch a seven out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Datadog. If we want to do any basic infrastructure monitoring, such as CPU. If our customers want to do automation, Kubernetes, and application monitoring, we use Datadog because Amazon CloudWatch does not have these features.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Amazon CloudWatch is simple. Everyone can do it if they learn how to do it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have evaluated many tools, such as SolarWinds New Relic.

What other advice do I have?

Most of my customers are using Datadog.

I rate Amazon CloudWatch a six out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Leonard Onojedje - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Oxdit Technologies
Real User
Jan 19, 2023
It has alerts that notify us when resource use is approaching the limit
Pros and Cons
  • "The alarms are one thing I love about AWS CloudWatch. It has alerts that notify us when resource use is approaching the limit."
  • "The graphical interface has room for improvement. CloudWatch only gives you a breakdown of what's wrong. However, it would be nice if it could automatically remedy the problems it identifies. You should be able to configure it so that when a specific condition arises, it will take a predefined action."

What is our primary use case?

We use CloudWatch to monitor our infrastructure and resources, such as bandwidth, etc. It comes with the AWS package we use, and it's easier when all your services come from one vendor. 

What is most valuable?

The alarms are one thing I love about AWS CloudWatch. It has alerts that notify us when resource use is approaching the limit. 

What needs improvement?

The graphical interface has room for improvement. CloudWatch only gives you a breakdown of what's wrong. However, it would be nice if it could automatically remedy the problems it identifies. You should be able to configure it so that when a specific condition arises, it will take a predefined action.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using CloudWatch for two years.

How was the initial setup?

I rate AWS CloudWatch nine out of 10 for ease of setup. Deployment is practically instant. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is worth it because it saves you money in the long run. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate AWS CloudWatch nine out of 10. It gives me an idea about my resources through logs, metrics, etc. I recommend it. It's easy to understand, with graphs showing the services running on your applications and the resources they're consuming. You can also track your billings, and identify the services consuming too many resources and terminate instances if necessary. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Prathap G - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at ValueMomentum
Real User
Sep 29, 2022
User-friendly, easy to set up, and has a good log feature and resource availability, but tracking issues takes a little longer and streaming logs on it is slow
Pros and Cons
  • "What my company likes best about Amazon CloudWatch is that it's on AWS. My team also likes it for its log feature. As the solution is on AWS, it also has good pricing and resource availability, plus it's what clients choose. My company also chose AWS for Forge ECS, and at the time, there was a need for the log features provided by Amazon CloudWatch, so it's the solution my team went with."
  • "What I would advise anyone looking into using Amazon CloudWatch is to go for it especially when you're on the AWS environment."
  • "I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."
  • "Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming; it requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour."

What is our primary use case?

We're using Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the entire application instances, client application, and backend communication. We're also using the solution to monitor service availability and application development.

What is most valuable?

What my company likes best about Amazon CloudWatch is that it's on AWS. My team also likes it for its log feature. As the solution is on AWS, it also has good pricing and resource availability, plus it's what clients choose. My company also chose AWS for Forge ECS, and at the time, there was a need for the log features provided by Amazon CloudWatch, so it's the solution my team went with.

What needs improvement?

I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong.

Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch.

The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch.

What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Amazon CloudWatch for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Amazon CloudWatch is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon CloudWatch is a scalable solution, and what I mean by this is that it will hold the logs until the next deployment. If you do the deployment, then all the logs will go, but right now, my company doesn't have any requirement that says the logs should be stored for one year. Amazon CloudWatch may be scalable in the future, but my company has never tried scaling it, and there was never any instance when the solution ran out of memory.

How are customer service and support?

We've never contacted the technical support team for Amazon CloudWatch because we found all the information we need in the AWS documentation.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for Amazon CloudWatch was easy. It wasn't difficult. It was easy for my team to develop a microservices web application, but it would still depend on your experience and the way you use the solution. Whatever my team did was completed within one day.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We never looked at other options because we decided to go with AWS, which meant going with Amazon CloudWatch as well.

What other advice do I have?

I'm a solution architect who works for a service-based company, so I have different clients. I provide software development services for architecture support for multiple global insurance companies and the bank financial sector. Some companies use Amazon CloudWatch, and I've worked on that solution. I've also provided Azure Managed Grafana services for one of the clients.

There's no particular version for Amazon CloudWatch, but whatever the latest version is, that's what I'd be configuring. I don't focus too much on the version of the solution. It's on AWS Cloud.

My company runs almost forty to fifty projects, mostly using AWS and Amazon CloudWatch, so at least thirty to forty people use the solution.

What I would advise anyone looking into using Amazon CloudWatch is to go for it especially when you're on the AWS environment. To be frank, I've only used Amazon CloudWatch, so I'm recommending it because I've never faced any major challenge with it. I haven't found any new software that's as user-friendly as Amazon CloudWatch. I did have a few problems with it such as log storing, log back up, and log searching, and if I see any other tool that's better than Amazon CloudWatch, then I'll put that up for discussion, but right now, other people also recommend the solution and I know it, so I'm going ahead with Amazon CloudWatch. I'm looking at other solutions in the market, but I'm not comfortable, and I haven't even done a POC with other solutions yet.

I'd compare Amazon CloudWatch with my old style of reading the logs as a developer, and I would rate the solution as seven out of ten. Amazon CloudWatch benefits me by streaming all the logs together, and this means that across all the services, I can search for specific transactions. The solution also has a single dashboard that shows me all services via log steaming.

My company is a service provider, partner, and manager of AWS.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon CloudWatch Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: July 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon CloudWatch Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.