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Amazon CloudWatch vs Elastic Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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
Elastic Observability enhances cost-effectiveness, reduces incidents, and improves efficiency, yielding significant time savings and operational benefits.
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
7.7
Elastic Observability's support is praised for prompt, efficient service and effective community-driven insights, enhancing overall user experience.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
 

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
7.1
Elastic Observability is efficiently scalable, with performance stability across varying team sizes, influenced by subscription level and infrastructure.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
Elastic Observability seems to have a good scale-out capability.
What is not scalable for us is not on Elastic's side.
 

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
8.2
Elastic Observability is praised for its robust and stable performance, efficiently handling large data volumes across industries.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it.
Elastic Observability is really stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon CloudWatch users seek better integration, real-time monitoring, intuitive interfaces, and scalable solutions amid concerns over pricing and log issues.
Elastic Observability needs better licensing, visualization, automation, integration, pricing, AI features, customization, and support for observability and cost transparency.
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage.
It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side.
One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version.
Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch's pay-as-you-go pricing varies by usage, with costs from $25 to $350, plus storage fees.
Elastic Observability offers competitive pricing with variable costs, favoring enterprises over startups, requiring premiums for advanced features.
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing.
The license is reasonably priced, however, the VMs where we host the solution are extremely expensive, making the overall cost in the public cloud high.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time monitoring, detailed metrics, and seamless AWS integration, appreciated for its scalability and user-friendly interface.
Elastic Observability offers scalable logging, seamless integrations, real-time visualization, and enhances system performance with a user-friendly, open-source model.
Being an inbuilt solution from AWS, it saves time on installation, setup, and maintenance.
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
The most valuable feature is the integrated platform that allows customers to start from observability and expand into other areas like security, EDR solutions, etc.
the most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities.
All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Ranking in Log Management
14th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), Container Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.5%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.6%, down from 5.7% 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.
Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
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 disadvantage given the price.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage. Another aspect that needs improvement is the look and feel of custom dashboards, which currently do not matc...
What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Elastic Observability and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.