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Amazon CloudWatch vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
12th
Ranking in Log Management
12th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Cloud's operations s...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
27th
Ranking in Log Management
30th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or BigQuery can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily."
"The product can be integrated with AWS very easily."
"Scheduling is a valuable feature."
"It offers direct integrations with various storage providers, making it convenient to push logs from CloudWatch to these external platforms."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Monitoring time and ensuring ease in it is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."
"The solution offers very detailed metrics for their services."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"I like the monitoring feature."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"It's easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."
"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."
 

Cons

"I do not know whether or not CloudWatch can be integrated with on-prem services."
"For monitoring applications or for APM, CloudWatch has some limitations. You cannot monitor application performance from CloudWatch, and you have to go for a third-party tool."
"It's not an advanced way of monitoring."
"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."
"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."
"There could be further enhancements through CloudWatch's partnerships."
"When customers want to see the CPU or memory utilization there is a cost. This should be free to see the utilization."
"There's a learning curve with Amazon CloudWatch since we have to learn to write the queries to extract the keys and logs."
"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."
"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"The process of logging analytics can be improved"
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."
"It could be more stable."
"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."
"The product's cost is relatively inexpensive."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
"The tool is not expensive."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."
"The solution is expensive."
"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."
"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"The cost could be lower."
"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
 

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?
In general, Amazon CloudWatch is cheaper compared to Dynatrace. However, there are potential costs to be mindful of, like running a log query that returns trillions of bytes of data.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
CloudWatch itself is fine. That said, maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?
If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.
What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?
I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.