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HeadSpin vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 17, 2025

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

HeadSpin
Ranking in Mobile APM
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (33rd), Mobile App Testing Tools (8th)
Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in Mobile APM
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
253
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Container Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Mobile APM category, the mindshare of HeadSpin is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 27.2%, up from 25.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile APM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk AppDynamics27.2%
HeadSpin0.8%
Other72.0%
Mobile APM
 

Featured Reviews

Saorabh Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
It fulfills everything from automation to manual performance
The most valuable features of the product are the performance parameters it gives us, as well as the seamless connectivity with our automation suites. I am also pleased with the continuous enhancements made to HeadSpin. There have been many features added since we started using the product, and all of them are useful.
Gyanesh Rahatekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Application performance management and error resolution improved with data-driven insights
Dynatrace has multiple functions compared to Splunk AppDynamics, so Splunk AppDynamics should add those functions, which are not available as of now. Dynatrace has a universal agent that collects all information related to their CI, and if one CI has multiple languages, then there is no need to instrument multiple agents. However, Splunk AppDynamics requires multiple agents; if I have one server with multiple applications in different languages, then I need to instrument different agents for each application. Splunk AppDynamics should work with Dynatrace with one single universal agent that works with all application languages, eliminating the need for multiple implementations.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup of HeadSpin was very easy and user-friendly. It was easy to configure and write a script."
"It has an interesting feature called AV box testing. A lot of companies that are in the OTT segment don't really understand what their streaming is like. They can't test for streaming quality. There are restrictions where you cannot simulate live streaming. For example, on Netflix, you can't simulate how a movie is being streamed on a remote device. That's why HeadSpin has got this AV box testing feature. It is a patented feature. They send an AV box to your location, and you can test live streaming, which is something that no other company does."
"The most valuable features of the product are the performance parameters it gives us."
"The technical support is really helpful because we can set up direct calls with them if we want to. We can use Zoom or Google Meet to interact with them directly, and if there is an issue in our system, they will help us by reproducing the issue in their machines and trying to figure out a solution. The support is really smooth, and we like that they're very supportive."
"The most valuable feature is that this is the first connected intelligence all-in-one platform."
"The most valuable feature of HeadSpin it's the integration with other solutions. It is great. I can search for an element or do a quick debugging on the application right on HeadSpin. It's very useful."
"The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is that we can see all query times. If a particular query is taking too much time, we can alert it."
"From the performance management side, I like everything from business transaction work to tracking. On the database side, we can get a lot of insights from the database. On the server monitoring side, it helped us a lot to find out some of the issues on the VM side because VMs were creating a little trouble for us."
"The auto-discovery of the logs is the most valuable feature. It requires minimal configuration, we just need to set up on once and it automatically detects through the code."
"It allows us to configure health rules so that we can, based on our own experience, determine when an application is behaving incorrectly."
"One noteworthy feature is user journey analysis, which enables tracking user interactions and conversion paths on a website."
"The transaction snapshots are the most valuable feature of AppDynamics"
"We have found the scalability to be quite good."
"I like how the AppDynamics dashboard portrays the information flows. When a task is executed, various flows between different applications and databases happen in the background. The dashboard is intuitive and helps visualize the connections, the directions of the flow, and the information related to these specific sessions."
 

Cons

"They should automate their onboarding. A lot of things are still manual. They can create a video assistant or something like that to completely automate the entire process."
"If you want to do some testing or check the devices manually or check the application in a particular device manually, it is really laggy. That's a disappointment because sometimes we would like to do manual testing when our local devices are not available."
"HeadSpin could improve on the user interface because it is very poor. The checks that are done on the iOS devices are very difficult, but for Android, it runs great. For all iOS devices, the user interface and how it interacts with the device are very poor."
"Sometimes, devices go offline and some features are not functioning on some devices, specifically on iOS."
"Support and pricing could be improved."
"HeadSpin needs to improve the hardware. With the mobile, the battery life reduces and must be continuously charged."
"One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging. Additionally, the agent sometimes creates performance issues in production environments."
"AppDynamics' modules and hardware resources are very high."
"In the current version of AppDynamics, there is a correlated section, where we can see all servers’ performance along with application performance, but network performance is missing."
"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."
"The UI could use a little help."
"The solution must improve security and setup."
"I am not very impressed with support. The service could be better."
"It could be more user-friendly for beginners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a yearly license for 16 devices."
"It's not cheap, but there are a few different packages and different prices for enterprises with different product versions."
"It has a yearly license. There is no other option. It is expensive. There are a lot of other cheaper players in the market, but it is like a Mercedes. You pay an extra premium for it, but you get the benefits. I would love to see them come up with project-based costing. Companies that are low on funds or new-age can do with pricing that is easily digestible. They can give them a pricing model for three months. They can provide a startup package."
"I believe the licensing cost is cheap because it's a total solution, hardware, license and software."
"We buy the platform's yearly subscription."
"It's a very expensive product. Each of the licenses after this month for one server is around $9,000 or $10,000."
"The licensing scheme is very complex. They need to make it easier."
"There is an annual cost for the use of this solution."
"This solution is not the cheapest but it works well. You will end up doing more work with a cheaper solution than if you just spent the extra money on a better solution like this one."
"It is a more expensive APM among the competitors, which is fine because it also does a lot more on the auto-detection and the AI side... It is not a cheap product. None of them are. The price is fair, but I could use it on more projects if they had a lower price."
"We find its pricing reasonable and competitive. After it was acquired by Cisco, we found it acceptable."
"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
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise188
 

Questions from the Community

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Any advice about APM solutions?
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 monitor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?
I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Zynga, Tinder, Pinterest, Akamai, Microsoft, Airbnb, Jam City, TMobile, Mozilla, CNN, Cognizant, Yahoo!, ebay, Quora, Walmart, Kohls, Telstra
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 HeadSpin vs. Splunk AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,883 professionals have used our research since 2012.