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 8.3. AppDynamics holds a 5.4% mindshare in APM, compared to Dynatrace’s 12.7% 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

15,054 Views
9,654 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Dynatrace

Read 344 Dynatrace reviews

36,984 Views
22,428 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

AppDynamics

Dynatrace

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

AppDynamics vs. Dynatrace

November 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 815,854 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

AppDynamics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

5th

Ranking in Mobile APM

3rd

Ranking in Container Monitoring

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

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

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

344

Ranking in other categories

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

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 Dynatrace is 12.7%, down from 14.7% 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!

See all answers

Featured Reviews

Venus Yaker Dalton

Information Technology Specialist at 3M

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.

Read full review

Sathis-Kumar

Senior Manager at Bank of America

Nov 29, 2022

The single-agent format is easy to use and accurately captures issues

Our company uses the solution to identify performance issues. Our database is in Oracle and our user interface is Maps. The solution helps us to gather required information and manage systems. For example, we just had a big data center issue with cluster settings, voting, and updating. The…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The transaction snapshots let you find out where the application broke; it pinpoints where in the call stack, and then how long it took to resolve."

"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."

"AppDynamics' most valuable features are the response time of the business transaction modules, the ability to monitor multiple services, and testing and developing environments."

"We are able to correlate performance between tiers."

"The most valuable feature in AppDynamics is the identifying of the slow responses. Additionally, it is easy to use."

"Has helped us to increase customer acquisitions and reduce revenue leakage."

"The transaction snapshots are the most valuable feature of AppDynamics"

"Transition tracing is the most valuable is pretty easy and useful, but the user experience piece is also good."

More AppDynamics pros

"We scaled from 300 agents to 800 agents in six months. There were no issues at the server level, which is pretty good."

"The monitoring is very good."

"The server monitoring is very accurate in this tool. We are able to prevent many critical Incidents."

"It can hook on at the code level, then tell me all the details that I need."

"The UEM feature, User Experience Management: Understanding how users are perceiving the application and then connecting that back into back-end systems to understand why things have gotten slow and then dealing with things."

"The observability provided by Dynatrace is extremely valuable."

"You can see every step a transaction goes through, which servers it hits, and what technology it uses."

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

More Dynatrace pros

Cons

"The cloud licensing needs to be improved. It's quite pricey."

"The integration ability of AppDynamics with other performance testing tools is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required."

"I would like to see more of a unified platform. They're very, very new on the server side, machine agents. I want them to be more mature in this area."

"I would like to see more artificial intelligence and machine learning brought in to monitor the statement and payment sum issues we have."

"Rolling out version upgrades is a difficult job at times."

"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."

"The solution could be more user-friendly for diagnostic purposes. Anyone who is using the solution should be able to infer what that error is about, they should be able to troubleshoot it better."

"The end-user experience is not really good because we can't catch all of the transactions. We only can catch the full stack of flow transactions, but I think that this is caused by the technology they use. If they will catch every transaction, it will cause a very big load on the performance of applications. The monitoring of all transactions needs improvement."

More AppDynamics cons

"Improvements in Synthetic monitoring would be great. Certain features of thick client, if available in the web interface, would also be a great improvement."

"We'd like it to be more user-friendly, which, in our case, might be a big ask as we have a fairly complex environment."

"We would like to see more third-party tools for training."

"They need better infrastructure monitoring. New Relic is beating them for infrastructure monitoring."

"The integration with PagerDuty is currently broken on mobile."

"For AppMon, there is always room for improvement: charting, dashboarding, and user management."

"Under heavyweight, Dynatrace becomes slower when listing PurePaths."

"The documentation of Dynatrace needs to be improved. There needs to be a more detailed description and additional examples for background understanding for beginners trying to use it."

More Dynatrace cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"I would say the solution is affordable because it is widely used across financial service sectors."

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

"Yearly payments have to be made toward the licensing costs of the solution. The solution has no additional costs apart from the licensing costs."

"There is an annual cost to use this solution. The licensing model could be improved by making it more cost-effective."

"For those who appreciate the value and had issues with the visibility of the performance of their applications, then the pricing is good. For somebody who does not need it, it can be pricey, but overall, it is worth the money which it costs."

"The pricing model for AppDynamics could be better. You have to subscribe to a yearly or a three-year licensing, which isn't very handy. The solution is one of the most expensive in the market today."

"The product is a bit expensive compared to other tools."

More AppDynamics pricing and cost advice

"The setup costs for Dynatrace are low, however licensing costs are high."

"Our annual costs were about the same for both AppDynamics and Dynatrace."

"Licensing is a bit complicated for Dynatrace, and pricing is dependent on how much your organization invests."

"Just go with Dynatrace. Just start with Dynatrace. Do not go into AppMon. Start with Dynatrace, because AppMon is going to give you so much extra stuff that 99% of your user base will not need it, including yourself."

"It's expensive."

"I think the pricing is at a fair value for what it is."

"We license it for two environments, typically all of production and all of one lower environment, usually our staging environment. If there is a downside to Dynatrace, the only thing I can think of would be the cost. If it were cheaper, I'd have it in all my environments. I don't think they're charging more than it's worth, by any means. It's just that good software costs money."

"We purchased a subscription for one year and it is an expensive solution for a large enterprise like ours."

More Dynatrace pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

48%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

33%

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 7% of the time

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs AppDynamics

Compared 6% of the time

More AppDynamics Competitors

Datadog vs Dynatrace

Compared 13% of the time

New Relic vs Dynatrace

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Dynatrace

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Dynatrace

Compared 7% of the time

Elastic Observability vs Dynatrace

Compared 6% of the time

More Dynatrace Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AppDynamics

November 2024

Download AppDynamics product report

Buyer's Guide

Dynatrace

November 2024

Download Dynatrace product report

Also Known As

AppD, AppDynamics APM

No data available

Learn More

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

November 2024

Free Report: AppDynamics vs. Dynatrace

Find out what your peers are saying about AppDynamics vs. Dynatrace and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our AppDynamics vs. Dynatrace report.

See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors, best Mobile APM vendors, and best Container Monitoring vendors.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.