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AppDynamics vs Prometheus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
156
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (3rd), Container Monitoring (3rd)
Prometheus
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, 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 Prometheus is 3.3%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Noorul Mustafa Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Widely used by most financial services sectors, such as banking and insurance sectors
Currently, the solution is on the cloud as well. You can have your cloud applications onboarded to AppDynamics without any issues. AppDynamics has its own SaaS environment and SaaS controller on which you can onboard your application. You will need to install some of the AppDynamics agents. I used to contact the tools team, and they used to answer our queries mostly. If not, they used to take it to the support and then come back with their solution. Users need to list all the servers related to their application on which they want the AppDynamics agents installed. Depending on whether your application is cloud-based or non-cloud, you need to list all your servers. Then, a further installation process would be recommended. To use AppDynamics, you need to understand the different flows. If an issue is currently ongoing, you need to check which GUI flow is being used. If you want previous data, it will be in the history, and that's a different flow. Working with the tool is tricky, but two to three weeks of continuous work on it should bring you up to date. Suppose you are working in a bank. For your application, you can configure everything regarding the business transaction. For balance transfers, you can have one business transaction that will monitor balance transfers. There can be another business transaction that can monitor credit cards. You can configure different flows and transactions within the flows in terms of business transactions. Wherever there is an issue, that exact business transaction will start developing. The integration of AppDynamics within our CI/CD pipeline has positively affected our deployment frequency and application quality. Whenever there is a deployment or release, we see some hiccups in AppDynamics. There will be some things going on on that server, which we can easily identify in AppDynamics. Only after we validate that do we give the next go. Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.
Noam Blidstein - PeerSpot reviewer
A very flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need
Make sure that you have dedicated manpower to configure and manage the solution. It requires handling, not necessarily on a daily basis, but it definitely requires someone who is focused and has expertise with the solution. Know in advance what you want to gain from the solution. Don't jump in to configuring or deploying before knowing what you expect from it. I like the solution very much. I think it is a major tool, especially in advanced environments. The open box provides a lot of flexibility and gives a very holistic view of the entire Kubernetes environment. Integrating with the Rancher management tool gives the solution even more abilities. There are several tools that we use behind the scenes to ease the process but the solution on its own is a very good tool. I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The SAP monitoring element is very helpful."
"I think the performance and interface are the most important features."
"Error analysis in the troubleshooting sections go straight to the point."
"AppDynamics is easy to implement if you follow the documentation, and the documentation that they provide is good."
"We can make custom alerts in our system for specific issues like high CPU utilization or application downtime."
"After a major incident, root cause analysis is conducted and, most of the time, we understand what caused the incident and how it can be prevented from happening again."
"It is used to test customer behavior on a website."
"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."
"The product is easy to maintain."
"The most valuable feature is that we can receive information in different formats."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is the ease of pulling the metrics."
"It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"It is an efficient solution."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."
 

Cons

"The UI could use a little help."
"The QA and test environment need improvement."
"The integration with cloud services is still pending with AppDynamics. We would like the product to be serverless."
"An area that has room for improvement on the CR and ERP would be the addition of monitoring of the internal solution. For example, you can monitor the day-to-day and everything in the transactions with AppDynamics, but there's also a lot going on in the kernel itself that you cannot monitor. The automation needs to improve as well. As it stands, a lot of customization needs to happen before you can use AppDynamics."
"If AppDynamics could do a one-agent function with their actual monitoring effectiveness, it will be the greatest tool."
"It needs strengthening in the database tiers."
"There could be some improvement in the constructions of the diagrams, it is too difficult currently."
"The cloud licensing needs to be improved. It's quite pricey."
"The scalability must be improved."
"Its stability could be even better."
"There is a tool called Prometheus Exporter that doesn't work well."
"They could provide efficient logs in terms of clarity and ease of access similar to Datadog’s paid version."
"If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."
"Prometheus' UI color can improve. Using the Prometheus UI for configuration or analyzing queries is a horrible experience."
"The UI and GUI are areas of concern in the product."
"The DSL could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Purchasing the product through the AWS Marketplace was good."
"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."
"Yearly payments have to be made toward the licensing costs of the solution. The solution has no additional costs apart from the licensing costs."
"We do not have any issues with the price."
"As compared to other applications, its price is moderate. Its price is neither very high nor very low."
"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."
"It is not a cheap tool, but you also save in manpower to setup because it is easy and fast. At the end of the day, I think the revenue is much better. BUT, they have an awful co-term mode of licensing."
"You are required to purchase licenses whether you use it or not. It is not pay-as-you-use."
"Prometheus is available as an open-source product."
"The tool is open-sourced."
"We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."
"The product is free."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"This is an open-source solution."
"It is an open-source tool."
"The solution is free of cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
49%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

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...
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...
What do you like most about Prometheus?
The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
We use Prometheus for observability and analyzing data for business metrics and system metrics. It helps us with messaging services observability. It also helps a lot with the architecture and scal...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AppD, AppDynamics APM
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AppDynamics vs. Prometheus and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.