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Akamai mPulse vs AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai mPulse
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
62nd
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
156
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Akamai mPulse is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AppDynamics is 5.2%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Arivu Arumugam - PeerSpot reviewer
Lacking in regard to observation of the entire platform but does dynamic injections from within
There is little that's unique about mPulse but since the solution is part of Akamai, you can do dynamic injections from within the product which is a great feature. the UI is quite good. It offers a basic set of features but nothing unique other than that as part of Akamai, you can do dynamic injections.
Noorul Mustafa Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Widely used by most financial services sectors, such as banking and insurance sectors
Currently, the solution is on the cloud as well. You can have your cloud applications onboarded to AppDynamics without any issues. AppDynamics has its own SaaS environment and SaaS controller on which you can onboard your application. You will need to install some of the AppDynamics agents. I used to contact the tools team, and they used to answer our queries mostly. If not, they used to take it to the support and then come back with their solution. Users need to list all the servers related to their application on which they want the AppDynamics agents installed. Depending on whether your application is cloud-based or non-cloud, you need to list all your servers. Then, a further installation process would be recommended. To use AppDynamics, you need to understand the different flows. If an issue is currently ongoing, you need to check which GUI flow is being used. If you want previous data, it will be in the history, and that's a different flow. Working with the tool is tricky, but two to three weeks of continuous work on it should bring you up to date. Suppose you are working in a bank. For your application, you can configure everything regarding the business transaction. For balance transfers, you can have one business transaction that will monitor balance transfers. There can be another business transaction that can monitor credit cards. You can configure different flows and transactions within the flows in terms of business transactions. Wherever there is an issue, that exact business transaction will start developing. The integration of AppDynamics within our CI/CD pipeline has positively affected our deployment frequency and application quality. Whenever there is a deployment or release, we see some hiccups in AppDynamics. There will be some things going on on that server, which we can easily identify in AppDynamics. Only after we validate that do we give the next go. Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Enables dynamic injections from within the product which is great."
"The most valuable feature is the solutions overall performance. It is very efficient and accurate for our usage."
"I like that AppDynamics allows every organization to have what they want to see, like for my organization, we're able to customize the dashboard to show us details of what we want to see in our transactions."
"Applications: This provides us insight into how our applications are performing within our environments and affords us the ability to identify opportunities and make changes to code / environment to effect positive performance lift."
"AppDynamics has been stable."
"It is a good monitoring tool. Its stability is very good."
"Error analysis in the troubleshooting sections go straight to the point."
"After we implemented this solution, we can easily determine the root cause of issues."
"It is used to test customer behavior on a website."
"The business transaction that stands between multiple applications is proving to be most valuable."
 

Cons

"The end-to-end distributor tracing connectivity isn't there."
"In the next release, I would like to see the possibility of sharing the metric from this solution with other solutions."
"I’d like to see better out-of-the-box visual reporting so that we can roll this up to management."
"The worst part is that the AppDynamics SaaS Environment has a lot of downtimes, and AppDynamics, despite our efforts, does not give us any feedback on these downtimes/incidents."
"I think I would like to see a better way to deploy and upgrade the machine agents that we use. Currently, we have to use SCCM, and that might just be our environment with the customer."
"The overall performance of this solution could be improved. The hot-hot infrastructure features could also be improved."
"The dashboard can be better. Also, the automated reports could be improved."
"There are too many installers available for this solution."
"Needs more integration with applications suites, like Oracle Enterprise Server or BMC Remedy."
"The Log Analytics feature is a bit complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"AppDynamics is priced on the higher side."
"It is not a cheap tool, but you also save in manpower to setup because it is easy and fast. At the end of the day, I think the revenue is much better. BUT, they have an awful co-term mode of licensing."
"There is a license to use this solution. However, the clients pay for the licenses we are the service provider."
"As a technical person, and as an application development team, they all understand that this is the right tool for us. But when it comes to budget and financial matters, it takes days and weeks to convince upper management to buy this tool. So they should do something more on licensing costs."
"There is a license needed to use the solution and it is expensive. The licensing model needs to improve."
"AppDynamics is what I would consider an enterprise-level solution. This means that it's a solution that is intended for use by larger organizations, while small or medium-sized businesses may find it difficult to afford. The number of agents required will also impact the pricing, and smaller companies may only be able to afford a limited number of agents. Essentially, the cost of the solution is not within the reach of every organization, and only some may be able to afford it."
"Purchasing the product through the AWS Marketplace was good."
"It could be cheaper. It's a little cost prohibitive. There are so many features that also show a lot of value, but it’s not always easy to justify the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
8%
Educational Organization
50%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SOASTA mPulse
AppD, AppDynamics APM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nordstrom, Gatwick, DirecTV, MSN, SquareSpace, SAP, Lenovo, Hallmark, myspace, Intuit, Kentucky Derby, Toys "R" Us, Netflix, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Lowe's, Nike, REI, Apple, Sears, Verizon, Wendy's, Huawei
Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai mPulse vs. AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
829,634 professionals have used our research since 2012.