AppDynamics vs Elastic Observability comparison

AppDynamics and Elastic are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. AppDynamics is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.2, while Elastic is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.9. AppDynamics holds a 5.4% mindshare in APM, compared to Elastic’s 6.5% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of AppDynamics users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Elastic users who would recommend it.

AppDynamics

Read 156 AppDynamics reviews

15,054 Views
9,654 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

Read 26 Elastic Observability reviews

11,476 Views
9,830 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

AppDynamics

Elastic Observability

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

AppDynamics and Elastic Observability are leading solutions in the observability space. AppDynamics seems to have the upper hand in ease of use and customer support, while Elastic Observability stands out in scalability and cost-effectiveness.

Features: AppDynamics users value its application performance monitoring, business transaction monitoring, and ease of integrations. Elastic Observability is praised for its scalability, powerful search capabilities, and unified logging and metrics.

Room for Improvement: AppDynamics users suggest enhanced AI capabilities, better integration support, and improved automation features. Elastic Observability users desire better alerting mechanisms, more user-friendly documentation, and easier-to-use interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AppDynamics users find deployment straightforward and value strong customer support. Elastic Observability offers flexible deployment options but has mixed reviews regarding support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: AppDynamics users feel their high costs are justified by performance and support but seek more transparent pricing. Elastic Observability is valued for its lower setup costs and open-source nature, providing good value but requiring more internal expertise.

To learn more, read our detailed AppDynamics vs. Elastic Observability Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

AppDynamics vs. Elastic Observability

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)

Elastic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

8th

Ranking in Container Monitoring

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Log Management (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)

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 Elastic Observability is 6.5%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

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.

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Adelina Craciun

Product Owner at Swisscom

Nov 7, 2024

Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments

We have our workload in the cloud, and we take the data from the workload, put it in a data lake, and then analyze it. We keep track, build down anomalies, and so on The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they…

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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 real user monitoring helps us evaluate our customers' real experiences, which is valuable as an eCommerce company."

"Autodiscovery of application topology, based on real user traffic."

"The most valuable feature is the detailed statistics, like the consumer count, for the ActiveMQ server."

"We're a large organization, so we appreciate AppDynamics' wide coverage. It may not work in all areas, but it has broad coverage. We can use the same dataset for different use case aspects. That is the beauty of AppDynamics. You can coordinate APM, EUM, and infrastructure through one dataset."

"Technical support is helpful."

"The flow map is very valuable to us. Before we installed APM, we had no idea how our application looked."

"AppDynamics' best feature is automation - for example, when I add a note, it can understand the data automatically."

"AppDynamics provides us with detailed information about the performance of the underlying infrastructure, including servers, databases, and external services."

More AppDynamics pros

"The architecture and system's stability are simple."

"The price is very less expensive compared to the other solutions."

"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."

"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."

"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."

"I recommend Elastic Observability for its completeness of vision and wide ecosystem."

"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."

"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."

More Elastic Observability pros

Cons

"It could be a little more flexible in configuration on the back end."

"This solution is expensive."

"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's agent management could be improved."

"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."

"At this time, we don't have much visibility on the virtual environment, monitoring, and all other things. We have visibility only for database monitoring, and we have noticed performance impact when deploying database agents on the database server. We got to know this from AppDynamics support also that we should not deploy database agents from the database server. When agents are deployed on the same server and the database is monitored from there, we are not getting database server metrics. Therefore, we don't have those insights, and sometimes, we struggle because of that. They can improve this functionality so that we do not have a performance impact, and we can deploy anywhere. This would help us a lot. In terms of end-user monitoring, currently, it is not working for us because there are some complexities. It is a little complicated, and it takes a little bit of time to understand where you need to make changes. It would be very helpful if they can provide some template designs for end-user monitoring. When our servers are running on VMs, we don't get many insights from the VM side. I don't know whether it is possible to have visibility beyond the database, server, and application and whether there are some features where we can deploy AppDynamics on VMs as well. Such functionality would give us more control over storage, VM, OS, and database. It will also provide complete visibility of our hardware and software."

"The QA and test environment need improvement."

"The integration part in AppDynamics with other systems is an area with a little difficulty, especially when it comes to the configuration area. The integration of AppDynamics with other products takes a lot of time."

More AppDynamics cons

"We did have some issues at the beginning."

"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."

"Improving code insight related to infrastructure and network, particularly focusing on aspects such as firewalls, switches, routers, and testing would be beneficial."

"Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low."

"Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal."

"Elastic Observability is reactive rather than proactive. It should act as an ITSM tool and be able to create tickets and alerts on Jira."

"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."

"I am familiar with Azure Monitor, which I find more user-friendly compared to Elastic, which is a very technical tool."

More Elastic Observability cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We do not have any issues with the price."

"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."

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

"The solution is highly expensive"

"The cost is prohibitive."

"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."

"The product’s licencing policy is competitive. However, properly identify and size your needs to get the best rate."

"Take into consideration what you get for specific pricing models and how much it costs to add on things you may need later."

More AppDynamics pricing and cost advice

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."

"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."

"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."

"It is expensive. It is not cheap."

"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."

"We have been using the open-source version."

More Elastic Observability 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.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

48%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability is cheaper in terms of pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

I don't know how Elastic can improve. The integration feature I am using is very easy to implement.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs AppDynamics

Compared 20% of the time

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Splunk Enterprise Security vs AppDynamics

Compared 9% of the time

New Relic vs AppDynamics

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs AppDynamics

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

Dynatrace vs Elastic Observability

Compared 15% of the time

Sentry vs Elastic Observability

Compared 11% of the time

Grafana vs Elastic Observability

Compared 10% of the time

AWS X-Ray vs Elastic Observability

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AppDynamics

November 2024

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Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

November 2024

Download Elastic Observability product report

Also Known As

AppD, AppDynamics APM

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AppDynamics

Elastic

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.

Elastic Observability is primarily used for monitoring login events, application performance, and infrastructure, supporting significant data volumes through features like log aggregation, centralized logging, and system metric analysis.

Elastic Observability employs Elastic APM for performance and latency analysis, significantly aiding business KPIs and technical stability. It is popular among users for system and server monitoring, capacity planning, cyber security, and managing data pipelines. With the integration of Kibana, it offers robust visualization, reporting, and incident response capabilities through rapid log searches while supporting machine learning and hybrid cloud environments.

What are Elastic Observability's key features?

Economic licensing: Offers cost-effective plans.
Extensive metrics tracking: Helps in comprehensive system monitoring.
Comprehensive logging: Centralizes log data efficiently.
Performance Monitoring: Provides robust APM capabilities.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other solutions.
Kibana visualization: Facilitates data visualization and reporting.
Machine learning support: Enables advanced data analysis.
Flexible deployment: Supports various deployment environments.
Rapid log searches: Enhances quick incident response.
Accessibility: Offers extensive online documentation and connector support.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in Elastic Observability reviews?

Stability: Look for consistent performance and reliability.
Compliance: Effective monitoring aids in regulation adherence.
System Security: Enhanced system monitoring and alert management.
Cost-Effectiveness: Evaluate the economic pricing models.
Scalability: Adequate scalability options for growing needs.

Companies in technology, finance, healthcare, and other industries implement Elastic Observability for tailored monitoring solutions. They find its integration with existing systems useful for maintaining operation efficiency and security, particularly valuing the visualization capabilities through Kibana to monitor KPIs and improve incident response times.

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

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

Buyer's Guide

AppDynamics vs. Elastic Observability

November 2024

Free Report: AppDynamics vs. Elastic Observability

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