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Checkmk vs Datadog comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 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

Checkmk
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
12th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
12th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (6th)
Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Checkmk is 4.5%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 13.1%, down from 15.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Paolo Sala - PeerSpot reviewer
A reasonably priced tool for system and application monitoring
The main room for improvement is in the solution's presentation and the integration area. In our company, we use the integration capabilities from ServiceNow. We also have another big monitoring solution in place in our company, which is Dynatrace. At the moment, there doesn't exist an out-of-the-box integration for Dynatrace. I think that the integration and the exporting of the data collected are areas where Checkmk lacks but should try to improve the most. The only implementation of Checkmk that allows high availability is the virtual appliance that has the option for the availability of a different box. Otherwise, you have to find a way to implement it manually with some custom solution, which could be an improvement.
Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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 of the solution is that it has a lot of different pieces, and they all work together...It is a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features of Checkmk are its resource monitoring, infra monitoring, and log factor configuration."
"I really like the auto-discovery feature."
"We can monitor multiple sites using the product."
"Checkmk helps me compare data and foresee issues."
"The initial setup of Checkmk was easy...It is a very stable solution."
"The alerting system in Checkmk really works properly."
"Overall, from one to ten, I rate Checkmk a nine."
"It has scaled great. I haven't run into any problems anywhere that I've used it. They have handled everything that we have needed them to."
"Datadog has made it much easier to have a central place for people to look for logs and made it much easier to notify them of any elevated error rates or failures."
"Having a wealth of information has helped us investigate outages, and having historical data helps us tune our system."
"Synthetic testing is by far the most valuable feature in our organization."
"The biggest thing I liked was the combination of all the things - monitoring, log aggregation, and profiling."
"The seamless integration between Datadog and hundreds of apps makes onboarding new products and teams a breeze."
"The most valuable aspect is the APM which can monitor the metrics and latencies."
"We have a better grasp of what is occurring during the deployment cycle. If something fails, we have an idea what has failed, where it has failed, and how it failed to better mitigate the situation."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"It is easy for tech-savvy people, but newcomers might find it intimidating."
"Checkmk does not work too easily with the PowerStore. I use a PowerShell script as Checkmk runs on Linux and a Windows system, connecting with the Checkmk agent."
"In Checkmk, the documentation can probably be improved a bit more."
"Checkmk does not allow running scripts at varying intervals."
"The main challenge for us is that we're moving from Nagios to Checkmk, and we're still getting used to the new way of working."
"If an alert is generated for a specific pattern in the log, and if Checkmk catches that log, it will stay there even after the alert is resolved."
"I think that the integration and the exporting of the data collected are areas where Checkmk lacks but should try to improve the most."
"They need to implement template variables into the message response body."
"The pricing is a bit confusing."
"I find the setup cost to be too expensive. The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100. I am evaluating the usage of this solution, however, it is too expensive."
"It would also be nice if we had more insight into our own usage of Datadog (agents and custom metrics). They provide a usage page which does help, but it is not in real-time."
"While the UI and search functionality are excellent, further improvement could be made in the querying of logs by offering more advanced templates or suggestions based on common use cases."
"A big problem with Datadog is the billing. They need to make the billing more user-friendly."
"Deploying the agents is still very manual."
"They could have better log reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Checkmk is cheaper compared to other enterprise products."
"Checkmk is a fairly reasonably priced solution."
"The product is affordable."
"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."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"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."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
39%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Checkmk?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that it has a lot of different pieces, and they all work together...It is a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What needs improvement with Checkmk?
The main challenge for us is that we're moving from Nagios to Checkmk, and we're still getting used to the new way of working. But basically, we're okay with it. The difficult part was adapting fro...
What is your primary use case for Checkmk?
We use it to monitor mainly Linux servers, including operating system metrics, processes, services, and so on. We also use scripting and monitoring logs.
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...
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...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmk vs. Datadog and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.