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AppNeta by Broadcom vs Elastic Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 15, 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

AppNeta by Broadcom
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (34th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (7th), DX NetOps (3rd)
Elastic Observability
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Log Management (15th), Container Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of AppNeta by Broadcom is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.9%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Cliff Chapman - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent support, easy configuration, and a reliable tool to know what the problem is and where the problem is
They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes. Currently, when we have short-duration problems, we use a different tool, but we only use that different tool for short-duration problems. With AppNeta, as long as the problem exists for more than a few minutes, such as within 10 to 15 minutes, we can normally tell where the problem is. However, most of the problems that we deal with are intermittent. They're very rarely a permanent condition that needs to be addressed. That makes it more difficult to troubleshoot. We would look to see at least two or three events and hope they show the same results to raise our confidence that we've actually found the problem, rather than just a problem.
Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues."
"We get complete, hop-by-hop visibility into the internet and we can know how much latency is taking place from one hop to another. That way, we know whether a particular hop belongs to the ISP, or that it is something owned by our own client's office, or is something to do with the SaaS network."
"The main feature that we use is what they call Delivery, which is the testing of network paths end-to-end."
"A lot of times one of the AppNeta transactions showed that there is an issue, whereas everything seemed to be working properly. Once we dug into it, we realized that it really was highlighting a problem that otherwise we would not have seen."
"Delivery and experience are valuable. The usage in terms of the traffic application captures and other similar things is also valuable."
"This solution helps prove that, if we move to cloud, we'll still be as effective as we are on-premises."
"The solution's technical support is very good."
"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."
"The product has connectors to many services."
"I found Elk to be excellent for log analytics, security analytics, application code-level analytics, collaboration with DevOps teams, CI/CD, microservices, and Kubernetes, specifically cloud-native or cloud-specific tasks."
"It has always been a stable solution."
"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests."
 

Cons

"Having to deal with configuring the end devices using a USB stick is a bit cumbersome. It would be nice if there was a better way of handling that."
"They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes."
"Cloud monitoring could be better. That's one of the biggest pain points for me. I have shared this feedback with them multiple times, but they're limited to some extent. That's one area where I've seen a problem."
"I would like to see some advanced dashboard features. It could also be integrated with third-party tools. For example, an integration with a reporting solution would be helpful. Out-of-the-box, there are few dashboards or reports. What it does have is useful, but there should be additional dashboards."
"I think some of the product's documentation has shortcomings and needs improvement."
"Instead of integrating with other people, they should expand their interior capabilities."
"AppNeta by Broadcom needs to add more features to its dashboards. It also needs to work on providing out-of-the-box reports."
"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."
"There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities."
"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
"Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low."
"There could be more low-code features included in the product."
"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."
"Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The small probe is probably around $3,000 and the very large probe that they make for massive data centers might be $50,000 or $60,000. It's a subscription model, so the payment is per year."
"AppNeta by Broadcom is not expensive."
"I inherited this from a different version, and I haven't yet gone through a renewal because we had purchased three years upfront. So, to me, that still remains to be seen. Once it comes up for renewal, we'll see what happens. Especially because now it is Broadcom, it is going to change anyway."
"It's worth the money."
"Broadcom software is always a little expensive because they provide quality."
"I find the solution's price to be fairly good."
"We typically don't get involved in the commercial side, but the list price is probably something like $3,000 for a small probe. However, that gives all of the features that the probe can do, whether or not you use them. In the old days, up until two or three years ago, each of the separate features was a separately licensable module so that you could add things that you wanted, and you didn't have to add things that you didn't want. They've changed all that now, and everything the probe can do is a part of the base license."
"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."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
42%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
4%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What open source tool can one use to measure bandwidth from one's upstream service provider?
One I am looking closely at is AppNeta. They have an appliance that can digest the flow and do a better job than Netflow. The other one we are using is ExtraHop. This has both a Datacenter Hig...
What do you like most about AppNeta?
The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues.
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ebay, Citrix, National Instruments, Marriott, AT&T, Bon-Ton, McDonald's, Netflix, PayPal, Uber, QAD
PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about AppNeta by Broadcom vs. Elastic Observability and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.