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Amazon CloudWatch vs Datadog vs Zabbix comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon CloudWatch aids in monitoring, reducing manual work, and offers economic benefits with growing adoption during cloud migrations.
Sentiment score
7.1
Datadog enhances efficiency, reduces downtime, and improves ROI by tracking instances, visualizing trends, and resolving performance issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
Zabbix's open-source approach offers high ROI by eliminating costs, enhancing system visibility, and reducing operational expenses.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon CloudWatch support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though experiences vary; users find documentation useful for self-resolving issues.
Sentiment score
7.3
Datadog's customer service is proactive and knowledgeable, but technical support quality varies with occasional delays and inconsistencies.
Sentiment score
7.0
Zabbix's support is praised for community assistance, responsiveness, expertise, and effective forums, with room for improvement noted.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
It is so straightforward that I have never had to use the support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon CloudWatch is highly rated for its seamless scalability and efficient performance handling diverse logs and systems.
Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog efficiently scales with infrastructure demands, offering seamless integration and reliability, though cost management is essential.
Sentiment score
6.9
Zabbix offers efficient scalability and performance for large enterprises, overcoming database and hardware challenges without costly licenses.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
Zabbix is very scalable and lightweight.
I would rate its scalability ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon CloudWatch is reliable and stable, with minor delays in data display noted by some users, rating it highly.
Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog is praised for its reliable stability, minimal disruptions, quick issue resolution, and efficient large-scale data handling.
Sentiment score
7.6
Zabbix is highly stable, reliable, and resource-efficient, though occasional configuration and tuning are needed, especially for databases.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
Zabbix is very scalable and lightweight.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon CloudWatch users seek better integration, real-time monitoring, intuitive interfaces, and scalable solutions amid concerns over pricing and log issues.
Datadog users desire performance improvements, consistent APIs, clearer pricing, better support, enhanced features, and more user-friendly documentation and interface.
Zabbix's user interface and features need improvement, with insufficient scalability, modern workload monitoring, and inadequate documentation.
Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage.
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
There should be a clearer view of the expenses.
The only issue I can note is that it's Linux-based, and Linux documentation is not the best.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch's pay-as-you-go pricing varies by usage, with costs from $25 to $350, plus storage fees.
Datadog offers flexible, usage-based enterprise pricing, focusing on host count and log ingestion, requiring careful management to control costs.
Zabbix is a cost-effective, open-source enterprise solution with no licensing fees, appealing for its affordability compared to competitors.
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time monitoring, detailed metrics, and seamless AWS integration, appreciated for its scalability and user-friendly interface.
Datadog excels with integration, customizable dashboards, and monitoring, offering streamlined setup, centralized data, and enhanced user insights.
Zabbix offers flexible, scalable open-source monitoring with strong customization, seamless API integration, and user-friendly features supported by robust documentation.
Amazon CloudWatch allows me to set up and view even historical logs, which is one of the features I find valuable.
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
Our architecture is written in several languages, and one area where Datadog particularly shines is in providing first-class support for a multitude of programming languages.
The technology itself is generally very useful.
If disk usage surpasses a threshold, say 70%, I receive alerts and can take proactive action.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 8.8%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 3.5%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Rasanpreet Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable AWS monitoring and logging
The choice of logging solution should always be determined by the specific business requirements. It is crucial to align the logging strategy with what type of logs are needed and how they should be used. There are instances where we require custom solutions to retrieve logs, especially application logs that may not be easily accessible through CloudWatch or similar services. When we heavily rely on AWS native services, CloudWatch is indeed a robust choice. However, in certain scenarios, we might need integration capabilities with other tools, and if they can incorporate such features, it would enhance overall logging capabilities. I would rate it eight out of ten.
Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
ASM Naushad Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes
We have not yet purchased the commercial version so have a lack of technical ability. We do not yet fully know the key points or key features of the solution. We just use what we use along with WhatsUp Gold. Based on our use only, stability is rated a seven out of ten.
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
34%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline, which I see as a disadvanta...
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage. Another aspect that needs im...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems,...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several time...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was t...
What do you like most about Zabbix?
The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
For me, Zabbix is very straightforward. I cannot think of any improvements needed. It's a very mature product. The on...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.