AppDynamics vs Dynatrace comparison

AppDynamics and Dynatrace are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. AppDynamics is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.2, while Dynatrace is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5. AppDynamics holds a 5.2% mindshare in APM, compared to Dynatrace’s 12.4% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of AppDynamics users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Dynatrace users who would recommend it.

AppDynamics

Read 156 AppDynamics reviews

14,012 Views
8,865 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Dynatrace

Read 344 Dynatrace reviews

34,694 Views
21,128 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

AppDynamics

Dynatrace

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Dynatrace and AppDynamics compete in the application performance management solutions category. Dynatrace generally scores higher due to its automation and AI capabilities, while AppDynamics is often praised for its deeper application insights and business transaction monitoring.

What features are offered by Dynatrace in comparison to AppDynamics?

Dynatrace is recognized for its automatic full-stack monitoring, AI-based problem detection, and robust automation features. AppDynamics offers detailed business transaction monitoring, end-to-end performance insights, and comprehensive application dashboards.

What areas of improvement can be found in Dynatrace in comparison to AppDynamics?

Dynatrace could improve its complex pricing structure, reduce heavy resource usage, and provide more flexible deployment options. AppDynamics users highlight the need for better Kubernetes support, simpler configuration processes, and enhanced reporting features.

How is the ease of deployment and customer service of Dynatrace in comparison to AppDynamics?

Dynatrace has straightforward deployment and responsive customer support. AppDynamics also provides good deployment options but can be complex initially. Both companies receive positive reviews for customer service, with a slight preference for Dynatrace.

What setup costs and ROI can be seen with Dynatrace in comparison to AppDynamics?

Dynatrace is criticized for its high setup costs but offers significant ROI due to its features and problem resolution capabilities. AppDynamics users report good ROI from detailed transaction monitoring despite high setup costs. Dynatrace offers more immediate cost justification, while AppDynamics is valued for long-term insights.

To learn more, read our detailed AppDynamics vs. Dynatrace Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AppDynamics vs. Dynatrace

January 2025

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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

AppDynamics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

5th

Ranking in Mobile APM

2nd

Ranking in Container Monitoring

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

156

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Dynatrace

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

2nd

Ranking in Mobile APM

1st

Ranking in Container Monitoring

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

344

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (4th), AIOps (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AppDynamics is 5.2%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dynatrace is 12.4%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Q&A Highlights

reviewer1555236

IT Operations Executive at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Jun 29, 2021

What are pros and cons of AppDynamics vs Dynatrace?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitoring. We maintain critical processing on our mainframe so there was a desire to include this in our transaction trace. Due to a highly mature ELK implementation, we are not trying to incorporate log analytics into solution buy may consider in the future. We had AppD, Dynatrace, New Relic, and CA Wily all in house at the time of our evaluation. We eliminated Datadog due to a lack of real user monitoring and AppD based on experience and licensing. Between Dynatrace and New Relic, Dynatrace won based on the automation, integrated AI, support for "old" techs, and confidence we could eliminate multiple APM and infra monitoring tools. I would not include products like BigPanda, MoogSoft, in this analysis. They are not monitoring solutions but event correlation solutions. You will need additional monitoring products to capture data and feed them. Having said that if you cannot consolidate tools you will likely need to purchase an event solution to make sense of all the alarms. We did evaluate these products but with Dynatrace AI did not feel the business value was there for the investment. Here's a quick pro/con list on Dynatrace & New Relic from our analysis. New Relic Pros: Insights is an awesome product and capability. Lots of capabilities and plugins to extend data collection. The APM dashboard is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. Good training and documentation are available to support the product. New Relic Cons: Requires lots of manual configurations to implement and support. Insights product requires an investment of time to achieve value. Licensing is a nightmare as there is virtually no transparency in what you are being charged for. Lack of solution to consolidate alerts across implementation other than significant investment in insights to manually achieve this. Dynatrace Pros: Very simple to implement and maintain with out of the box automation which supports modern (cloud/Kubernetes) and "old" (mainframe). In-app chat is helpful. High integration of infra and APM data for full-stack observability and engineering. Topology and trace discovery is more reliable than other products or our CMDB. Synthetics are easy to set up for any user. AI-assisted problem analysis on the trace discovery streamlines troubleshooting. AI includes "events" in an analysis like VMotion, deployment events. Have not done yet but looking to leverage monitoring as code for a fully integrated and automated delivery pipeline. See keptn.sh open source project. Dynatrace Cons: User SQL lacks some functions of NRQL for user analysis. Host, process, and service data is not available to query within the product. Alarm processing lacks some granular controls. The Plug-in library is less robust. Good luck with your decision!

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Featured Reviews

Mahesh Deshpande

Senior Technology Architect at Infosys

The transition tracing and user experience are good, but performance degrades past 3,000 or so agents

The Kubernetes cluster agent has not yet matured. That's one area that requires a lot of improvement. You have two options for implementing the Kubernetes agent. One is deployed in DocCloud, but you can't download those images from DocCloud for security reasons at most organizations, so this option isn't that useful. The installation for the second option isn't that user-friendly. Transition tracing for the Kubernetes application is challenging. You have to navigate to a new set of user interfaces in AppDynamics, so that's the pain point. There is an icon you need to click on to get a newer user interface.

Read full review

Manish Ved

Lead Infrastructure Domain Architect (Systems) at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Solution has a useful AI engine, but the reports could be a bit better

We are typically about a version or two behind. We are on the managed solution. Our model of deployment is on-premises. I would say there are a couple of thousand users of this solution in our company. We are also planning on increasing the usage as our apps migrate to the cloud. I would advise other people looking into solutions, to do their homework beforehand and not assume that by deploying all the tools everything will automatically work, so there's still a lot of configuration involved. I would rate this solution as a whole an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to correlate performance between tiers."

"This solution not only provides answers but also provides sensor data. This allows us to quickly resolve issues that developers may take a long time to solve."

"It is a stable solution."

"The most valuable feature is the live reporting on the current health\performance of our application"

"It is a good monitoring tool. Its stability is very good."

"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."

"This solution is easy to use and very powerful, it is a complete tool for us."

"The initial setup is simple."

More AppDynamics pros

"Before we had the tool we had no visibility into the user experience and capturing what was going on inside the browser. We utilized tags so we knew how many times people were doing certain things, but we did not know how the performance was, if users were satisfied with what they were doing, and if we were serving up errors."

"Dynatrace gives excellent insight into the performance of our applications."

"When collecting data with Dynatrace, we saw every single transaction that happened in real-time."

"Never seen anything so complex be so simple to install."

"Enables me to proactively understand the user experience on our site."

"Support from Dynatrace is excellent. They are always on hand for any queries, demos, and/or issues."

"Since things are getting more complicated, it is nice to have artificial intelligence to correlate issues and events to come up with root cause."

"We are using it on most of our platforms, which are on a big scale and across the globe."

More Dynatrace pros

Cons

"It needs strengthening in the database tiers."

"It could do with more than one data centre/multiple AWS accounts in a pane of glass. Also, improved scalability to large environments would be helpful."

"There could log management features included in the product."

"The infrastructure is not as good as other solutions."

"Their agents sometimes claim to be very lightweight, especially with databases, but they are very heavy. They can take up more compute than the actual work that we need to do."

"AppDynamics is agent-based, so some customers are reluctant to install the agents in all their production environments. It would be helpful if they had an agentless version. It covers applications on the server, but the solution is weak on the network side. The agent is not deployed on the network components, so it cannot provide complete information about issues on the network layer."

"I’d like to see better out-of-the-box visual reporting so that we can roll this up to management."

"Its resiliency can be improved. We're told that the best we can do with an on-prem solution is to have a hot standby that requires a manual switchover. So, it is a do-it-yourself Ikea model of maintaining data consistency between two servers, without having low balance or failover considerations for an on-prem solution."

More AppDynamics cons

"I would like to see the ability to pull more user-friendly reports."

"Scalability-wise, on the data side, I'm really worried because they are giving only seven days data retention. They should plan something on that, to increase the data."

"More visibility into Python processes."

"Right now, there is a log analysis feature. This is maybe a little more deeper than the log analytics in comparison to other tools, like Splunk or Sumo Logic. If Dynatrace can come up with this replay feature, that would be great."

"Improve Dynatrace for the following industries: telco, eCommerce, and banking."

"Its price, for sure, should be improved. Its price is quite high. Other than the price, there are always improvements to be made as technologies change. When we move into cloud-based technologies, Dynatrace will also have to adapt so that they can monitor those as well. It should have the adaptability to quickly transform to monitor those new technologies."

"One piece that we think that's missing is, there were thread names that were missing in analytical information in the Dynatrace solution, versus the AppMon solution. The AppMon solution gives you that information, and it is very helpful for connecting dots and bringing all the pieces together."

"It can be improved in narrowing the exact exception/ERROR in application monitoring."

More Dynatrace cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."

"AppDynamics is one of the most expensive solutions on the market."

"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."

"You are required to purchase licenses whether you use it or not. It is not pay-as-you-use."

"There is a license for the solution and we paid approximately $2,000. There is also an additional cost above the standard license which cost us approximately $3,000."

"There were no added costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"As compared to other applications, its price is moderate. Its price is neither very high nor very low."

"Purchasing the product through the AWS Marketplace was good."

More AppDynamics pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is very interesting, as you pay only for what is being monitored. A lot of things are given away for no additional cost. If you have a great IT consolidation, it will be pretty cheap. If you have a lot of servers, it will be heavier."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"There are additional Professional Services costs which ensure the solution is configured with meaningful names so you're getting the most money for your investment."

"Its license is a bit expensive. We renew it yearly."

"The price range is quite high."

"There is time savings. People's times have been cut in half using this solution because we were previously doing a lot of that manual work. Now, it's a lot more automated, and the data is just there."

"The product is definitely worth taking a look at. Be aware that it is probably more pricey than other options on the market, but there are a lot of capabilities. Dynatrace has an eye toward the future and the computing and monitoring needs that we are gonna need for the cloud. "

"The pricing is a little high, but still cheaper than competitors because Dynatrace at least has pay-as-you-go. Others do not. However, the pricing is confusing. I wish it was more simplified when trying to price out moving to a yearly contract."

More Dynatrace pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

ITspe9886

IT Specialist at a government with 10,001+ employees

Feb 24, 2019

Compared to AppDynamics where we are still trying to get it into production, we had the latest version of Dynatrace in production within three days

Our primary use case for both Dynatrace and AppDynamics is for application performance monitoring (APM). The main reason for having application performance monitoring is, when we see something is running slowly, we can immediately look to see where the issue is at before our systems crash on us…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

50%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

34%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?

See all answers

APM tools for a Managed Service Provider - Dynatrace vs. AppDynamics vs. Aternity vs. Ruxit

Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your focus on SMBs and enterprises in Israel, Dynatrace seems like a solid choice with...

See all answers

What do you like most about AppDynamics?

The solution saves time and cost.

See all answers

Any advice about APM solutions?

The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...

See all answers

What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?

While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs AppDynamics

Compared 10% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs AppDynamics

Compared 9% of the time

New Relic vs AppDynamics

Compared 7% of the time

Elastic Observability vs AppDynamics

Compared 6% of the time

Grafana vs AppDynamics

Compared 5% of the time

More AppDynamics Competitors

Datadog vs Dynatrace

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Dynatrace

Compared 7% of the time

New Relic vs Dynatrace

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Dynatrace

Compared 6% of the time

Elastic Observability vs Dynatrace

Compared 6% of the time

More Dynatrace Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AppDynamics

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Dynatrace

January 2025

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Also Known As

AppD, AppDynamics APM

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AppDynamics

Dynatrace

Overview

AppDynamics is a comprehensive tool used for monitoring application performance, identifying user issues, analyzing traffic, managing infrastructure, and performance testing. It supports environments like Kubernetes, WebLogic, and Azure, and is crucial for industries such as banking, telecommunications, and financial services.

AppDynamics offers a robust solution for application performance monitoring, enabling deep diagnostics, transaction tracing, and root cause analysis. Users benefit from its real-time monitoring and comprehensive analytics capabilities. It's designed for ease of implementation and scalability, featuring intuitive dashboards that streamline infrastructure optimization and enhance user experience. AppDynamics supports extensive third-party extensions and provides proactive monitoring and alerting to ensure optimal system health. It assists in troubleshooting, database monitoring, and setting custom alerts to address Java applications and performance challenges efficiently.

What are the most important features of AppDynamics?

Application Performance Monitoring: Real-time insights into application health and performance
Business Transaction Capturing: Detailed tracking of business transactions across the application
Memory Monitoring: Monitoring memory usage to optimize application performance
Analytics: Advanced analytics to understand application and user behavior
Customizable Dashboards: Intuitive dashboards for better visualization and decision-making
Proactive Monitoring and Alerting: Immediate alerts and monitoring to prevent issues before they affect users
Integration Capabilities: Integration with third-party tools to extend functionality
Root Cause Analysis: Deep diagnostics to pinpoint and fix issues promptly
Transaction Mapping: Mapping transactions to understand and improve user journeys
Error Detection: Identifying and diagnosing errors to maintain application stability

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Ease of Implementation: Simple deployment process
Scalability: Ability to grow with the organization's needs
Time Savings: Reducing time spent on troubleshooting and issue resolution
Enhanced User Experience: Improving application performance for better user satisfaction
Cost Efficiency: Balancing functionality with cost to deliver value

AppDynamics is widely adopted in banking, telecommunications, and financial services to ensure optimal user experience and system health. Its capabilities support these industries in maintaining robust, efficient, and reliable applications. The tool is instrumental in troubleshooting, performance optimization, and providing a seamless user experience.

Dynatrace is an AI-powered software intelligence monitoring platform that accelerates digital transformation and simplifies cloud complexities. Dynatrace is an entirely automated full-stack solution that provides data and answers about the performance of your applications and deep insight into every transaction throughout every application, including the end-user experience. By modernizing and automating enterprise cloud operations, users can deliver an optimal digital experience with higher quality software to customers faster.

Dynatrace offers an all-in-one automated artificial intelligence solution that brings together application performance, cloud and infrastructure, and digital experience monitoring. Dynatrace accelerates performance-driven results through operations, development, and business teams with a shared metrics platform. In addition, users are provided a full-stack monitoring experience with three patented technologies:

Smartscape - visualization mechanism that maps the totality of everything working in your environment and detects any casual dependencies between your applications, processes, websites, services, hosts, cloud infrastructure, and networks.
OneAgent - a technology that analyzes, gathers ,and unifies all business performance metrics throughout every layer of your technology stack.
PurePath Technology - code-level context and timings are captured from the mainframe to the cloud for all end-to-end transactions.

What does Dynatrace offer?

Dynatrace redefines how organizations monitor their digital ecosystems. The solution offers:

Cloud Automation: With AI engine Davis®, users can see the exact reason for problems and facilitate quick auto-remediation and intelligent cloud orchestration.
Application Security: With automated application vulnerability management, users can deliver applications faster and more securely.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Convenient broad visibility across your environments is provided with streamlined, automated infrastructure monitoring.
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM): Optimize your applications, provide better support, and improve user experience with a combination of Real User Monitoring (RUM), Session Replay, and synthetic monitoring throughout your environment.
Applications and Microservices: For complex cloud environments, Dynatrace can automatically provide visibility and root-cause answers. It can also monitor microservices.
Digital Business Analytics: Get AI-powered, real-time answers to analytical business queries with KPIs and metrics that are already flowing through applications.

Reviews from Real Users

Dynatrace is the only solution that provides answers to organizations based on deep insight into each user, transaction, and organization's environment.

Barry P., a managing performance engineer at Medica Health Plans, writes, "With Dynatrace, we have synthetic checks and real-user monitoring of all of our websites, places where members and providers can interact with us over the web. We monitor the response times of those with Dynatrace, and it's all integrated into one place."

A consultant at a tech service company notes, "A feature that's one of the highlights of Dynatrace is the AI. The second most valuable feature is OneAgent. Between infrastructures, applications, operating systems, you can deploy with just a single agent and can practically install and forget about it."

Sample Customers

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

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express

Buyer's Guide

AppDynamics vs. Dynatrace

January 2025

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