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AppDynamics vs Datadog comparison

AppDynamics and Datadog are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. AppDynamics is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.2, while Datadog is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. AppDynamics holds a 5.4% mindshare in APM, compared to Datadog’s 10.1% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of AppDynamics users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Datadog users who would recommend it.
AppDynamics
Read 156 AppDynamics reviews
  • 15,054 Views
  • 9,654 Comparison Views
89% willing to recommend
Datadog
Read 187 Datadog reviews
  • 31,345 Views
  • 18,943 Comparison Views
96% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

AppDynamics and Datadog are leading application performance management tools. User reviews indicate AppDynamics excels in customer support and pricing, while Datadog stands out in features and deployment, making it worth the investment.

Features: AppDynamics users value real-time monitoring, root cause analysis, and robust alerting capabilities. Datadog users appreciate its comprehensive metrics, dashboards, and advanced monitoring capabilities.

Room for Improvement: AppDynamics users mention the need for better integration with third-party services, improved alerting features, and enhanced user interface. Datadog users highlight the need for UI simplification, better cost management, and more intuitive user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AppDynamics is praised for its robust customer service and guided deployment options, making it easier for enterprises to get started. Datadog receives positive feedback for its quick setup but occasionally falls short on customer service.

Pricing and ROI: AppDynamics users find the pricing competitive and appreciate the high ROI from its detailed insights and support. Datadog users acknowledge higher costs but justify it with the tool's extensive capabilities and significant ROI.

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Buyer's Guide
AppDynamics vs. Datadog
November 2024
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Categories and Ranking

AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
156
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (3rd)
Datadog
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Ranking in Container Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (2nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AppDynamics is 5.4%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 10.1%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Q&A Highlights

BH
Dec 10, 2020
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 found one capable to give me solutions they all report you have a problem but you need to figure out what the problems is. So we have decided to develop our own AI and it is not only monitoring OSI layer 1 -3 but layer 1-8 as well it give you a solution what has been wrong based on delays in transactions combined with security. We have deployed this now across healthcare in the USA as well Airports but it is working on every industry and working in a SaaS solution. But if I have a chose between the tools you mentioned, Dynatrace is the best choose it is easy to install and has a great interface. Also it has almost no configuration.
See all answers
 

Featured Reviews

Venus Yaker Dalton - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 5, 2023
Very good real-time monitoring capabilities, deep problem diagnosis, and transaction mapping
As for areas of improvement, AppDynamics could benefit from greater integration with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. This would allow the tool to automatically analyze and correlate application performance and behavior data to detect patterns and anomalies not evident to users. Additionally, the ability to track performance in multi-cloud environments would be valuable as many organizations are adopting hybrid cloud or multi-cloud strategies. In terms of additional features, it would be beneficial to include a capacity management module that allows operations teams to proactively plan and adjust capacity, avoiding performance issues related to lack of resources.
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Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 19, 2024
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.
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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

"The most valuable feature is the ability to take a report, and in particular, a visual, and link it to actual application performance and then the consequences. This means you can show how an incident or action has an effect on the business."
"Applications: This provides us insight into how our applications are performing within our environments and affords us the ability to identify opportunities and make changes to code / environment to effect positive performance lift."
"We set up alerts recently so we can fix any issues more quickly in production."
"The best features of AppDynamics would be the code application monitoring capabilities."
"I think the performance and interface are the most important features."
"It allows us to configure health rules so that we can, based on our own experience, determine when an application is behaving incorrectly."
"It gives me the ability to trace logs between transactions, for example, a DB transaction or JVM transaction from one hub to the other. I can easily find out where the problem is or where the bottleneck of the issues lies."
"The most valuable feature is the live reporting on the current health\performance of our application"
More AppDynamics pros
"Overall, the Data UI and the usability of customer features continue to improve."
"Datadog's learning platform is second to none."
"It has enhanced the performance of my team."
"Customizable views as well as the ability to "dive in" when we see someting anomalous has improved the workflow for handling incidents."
"Datadog has helped us a ton by allowing us to set up a multitude of easily configurable alarms across our tech stack and infrastructure."
"Our primary alerts, based on metrics and synthetic transactions, are the most used and relied upon for decreased MTTA/MTTR across all of our platforms. This is followed by deep log analysis that enables us to quickly and easily get to a preliminary root cause that someone on the infrastructure, platform or development teams can take and focus their attention on the precise target that Datadog revealed as the issue to be remediated."
"The most valuable features are the dashboards and the reporting."
"We also use APM and metrics to view the status of our Pub/Sub topics and queues, especially when dealing with undelivered messages."
More Datadog pros
 

Cons

"When you have high stress of visits I do not know if you are more stress because of the amount of visits or because you have to wait eternal 60 seconds to find out it things are going well or you already have mess."
"AppDynamics lacks integration with cloud technology. It probably isn't a good fit for emerging enterprises because it's an on-premise solution, and many newer companies are moving to the cloud. AppDynamics' on-premise technology works reasonably well, but it doesn't have cloud features."
"The solution's user interface should be improved."
"The integration with cloud services is still pending with AppDynamics. We would like the product to be serverless."
"I would like to see something that lets me set real dollar figures, not just to outages, but to the solutions as well... when I'm looking at problems and have found a problem that I know I need to address. I could flag it off and have AppDynamics estimate how long a person would have taken to find that without it. That would give me a lot of leverage for justifying the existence of APM, which I really need."
"The infrastructure is not as good as other solutions."
"I think I would like to see a better way to deploy and upgrade the machine agents that we use. Currently, we have to use SCCM, and that might just be our environment with the customer."
"AppDynamics is dealing with a lot of products and technologies, so we need to have clear documentation."
More AppDynamics cons
"Datadog's roadmap can be a bit unpredictable at times."
"I often have issues with the UI in my browser."
"For three to four months, we have been experiencing real-time delays. For example, if we're monitoring incoming traffic, the real-time status should be displayed up to a certain point. However, due to delays or issues with Datadog, the real-time data might only be updated at an earlier time. We are experiencing consistent delays in data updates from Datadog, with the most recent data often being delayed by about an hour. This issue has been ongoing for the past four months."
"I found the solution to be stable, I did not experience any bugs or glitches. However, some of the managing team did."
"We want to reduce having to go to different screens to obtain all the information."
"Once agents are connected to the Datadog portal, we should be able to upgrade them quickly."
"The query performance could be improved, particularly when handling large datasets, as slower response times can hinder efficiency."
"We primarily use the log management functionality, and the only feedback I have there is better fuzzy text searching in logs (the kind that Kibana has)."
More Datadog cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an annual cost to use this solution. The licensing model could be improved by making it more cost-effective."
"We do not have any issues with the price."
"AppDynamics is one of the most expensive solutions on the market."
"AppDynamics is really pricey as it requires licenses for every feature."
"As compared to other applications, its price is moderate. Its price is neither very high nor very low."
"You are required to purchase licenses whether you use it or not. It is not pay-as-you-use."
"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."
"I would like more flexible pricing: A pay-per-use model, rather than just a fixed-price model."
More AppDynamics pricing and cost advice
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."
"Pricing and licensing are reasonable for what they give you. You get the first five hosts free, which is fun to play around with. Then it's about four dollars a month per host, which is very affordable for what you get out of it. We have a lot of hosts that we put a lot of custom metrics into, and every host gives you an allowance for the number of custom metrics."
"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."
"At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."
"The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"This solution is budget friendly."
More Datadog pricing and cost advice
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Answers from the Community

BH
Dec 8, 2020
Dec 8, 2020
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 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 ...
2 out of 5 answers
reviewer802371 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 20, 2020
Could you please share your requirements ? There are a lot tools can be added to the list. I spent almost 6 months to test and check many tools then I select eG enterprise.
Read full answer
reviewer1352679 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 20, 2020
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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See all 5 answers
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
48%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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
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 times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
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
What do you like most about Datadog?
Integrating Datadog with other platforms has made our monitoring processes a bit easier. It's not super simple, but it's manageable.
See all answers
 

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs AppDynamics Logo
Dynatrace vs AppDynamics
Compared 20% of the time
Splunk Enterprise Security vs AppDynamics Logo
Splunk Enterprise Security vs AppDynamics
Compared 9% of the time
New Relic vs AppDynamics Logo
New Relic vs AppDynamics
Compared 7% of the time
Elastic Observability vs AppDynamics Logo
Elastic Observability vs AppDynamics
Compared 7% of the time
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs AppDynamics Logo
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs AppDynamics
Compared 6% of the time
More AppDynamics Competitors
Dynatrace vs Datadog Logo
Dynatrace vs Datadog
Compared 15% of the time
Azure Monitor vs Datadog Logo
Azure Monitor vs Datadog
Compared 14% of the time
New Relic vs Datadog Logo
New Relic vs Datadog
Compared 6% of the time
AWS X-Ray vs Datadog Logo
AWS X-Ray vs Datadog
Compared 4% of the time
Elastic Observability vs Datadog Logo
Elastic Observability vs Datadog
Compared 3% of the time
More Datadog Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
AppDynamics
November 2024
AppDynamics reportDownload AppDynamics product report
Buyer's Guide
Datadog
November 2024
Datadog reportDownload Datadog product report
 

Also Known As

AppD, AppDynamics APM
No data available
 

Learn More

AppDynamics
Datadog
 

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.

Datadog is a comprehensive cloud monitoring platform designed to track performance, availability, and log aggregation for cloud resources like AWS, ECS, and Kubernetes. It offers robust tools for creating dashboards, observing user behavior, alerting, telemetry, security monitoring, and synthetic testing.

Datadog supports full observability across cloud providers and environments, enabling troubleshooting, error detection, and performance analysis to maintain system reliability. It offers detailed visualization of servers, integrates seamlessly with cloud providers like AWS, and provides powerful out-of-the-box dashboards and log analytics. Despite its strengths, users often note the need for better integration with other solutions and improved application-level insights. Common challenges include a complex pricing model, setup difficulties, and navigation issues. Users frequently mention the need for clearer documentation, faster loading times, enhanced error traceability, and better log management.

What are the key features of Datadog?

  • Graphs and Dashboards: Visualizes servers and infrastructure with customizable views.
  • Metrics: Offers deep insights into system performance and user behavior.
  • Log Management: Provides powerful analytics for logs and seamless log aggregation.
  • Unified Tagging: Facilitates organization and retrieval of metrics and logs.
  • APM and RUM: Enables application performance monitoring and real user monitoring for comprehensive insights.
  • Synthetic Testing: Allows the simulation of user interactions to test application performance.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

  • System Reliability: Helps ensure uptime and performance across cloud environments.
  • Proactive Issue Resolution: Assists in identifying and resolving issues before they impact users.
  • Operational Efficiency: Streamlines monitoring and log management tasks.
  • Flexible Integrations: Adapts to various cloud services and infrastructure setups.
  • Real-Time Alerts: Provides timely notifications to address problems swiftly.

Datadog is implemented across different industries, from tech companies monitoring cloud applications to finance sectors ensuring transactional systems' performance. E-commerce platforms use Datadog to track and visualize user behavior and system health, while healthcare organizations utilize it for maintaining secure, compliant environments. Every implementation assists teams in customizing monitoring solutions specific to their industry's requirements.

 

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
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
Buyer's Guide
AppDynamics vs. Datadog
November 2024
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