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Datadog vs FortiMonitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
FortiMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
22nd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (13th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.6%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FortiMonitor is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.6%
FortiMonitor0.7%
Other96.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger
Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling
Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.
reviewer2677554 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer III at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Managing diverse networks with detailed alerts enhances device oversight
FortiManager is very helpful in managing our networks. We use it to manage 20 farms and various networks with hundreds of devices. The version we are using provides more detail than the older dashboard. We appreciate the alerting capabilities, which are integrated with SolarWinds to notify our team via SMS.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Monitoring has been invaluable, and as we start to look to other products, bringing in logs and APM traces will create a full picture of what we need to do to resolve incidents."
"This solution has improved our organization by giving us deeper insight into what's running in our clusters and their performance of it."
"So far, Datadog has shown very good options to work on all of our operational and development issues."
"Every squad is now confident in their ability to quickly identify and diagnose issues when they arise."
"The ability to easily drill down into log queries quickly and efficiently has helped us to resolve several critical incidents so far this year, and we heavily rely on a series of dashboards showing us various queues and load on CPU and memory for servers."
"I like how we can customize alerts, and when alerts have become too noisy, we turn their threshold down fairly easily."
"While my team is relatively new to Datadog, I already see immense value in switching over to Datadog as the primary APM and NPM tool."
"Their interface is probably one of the easiest things to use because it lets non-developers and non-engineers quickly get access to metrics and pull business value out of them. We could put together dashboards and give it to people who are non-technical, then they can see the state of the world."
"Overall, I would recommend FortiMonitor to others."
"FortiMonitor is 100% stable."
"FortiMonitor offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, allowing me to track network traffic in and out effectively."
"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is user monitoring. We are able to see if the user is following the policy or not from their system. Additionally, the solution integrates well with Fortinet FortiGate and has centralized management."
"With FortiMonitor, you can get all the logs of the traffic information of the destination or the source."
"In FortiMonitor, we're linked up with our Netgear, CactusServer, and NOC. It's really valuable because everything's migrating to one dashboard for us system engineers. We can keep an eye on traffic, blocked sites, and the health of our hardware. That last part, about knowing if something's going to fail soon, is super important. It gives us time to sort things out before any big problems happen. As a system engineer, I need to keep tabs on everything – temperature, monitoring systems, and network operations. This data is really handy because it helps me ensure our site runs smoothly, whether it's turning systems on or off. Just last night, there was a system failure, but thanks to real-time monitoring, I quickly identified the problem and got the necessary replacement parts."
"FortiMonitor is a great compliment to Cradlepoint; we have big backups for our Cradlepoint solutions, but FortiMonitor is a great routing device and we love working with them."
"It provides the best firewall features."
 

Cons

"The menu on the left is pretty dense (and I know it has to be). I never knew about the cmd+k functionality until recently. It would be helpful to offer more tips/cheat sheets to see handy shortcuts like that."
"While I like the ease of use, when compared with Tenable Nessus they could still improve their usability."
"We would really like to see more from the Service Catalog."
"The real issue with this product is cost control."
"I often have issues with the UI in my browser."
"Managing dashboards as IaC is a bit hard to work out at times."
"As Datadog is a bit on the expensive side, I would recommend it for simple, uncomplicated, solutions."
"The ease of implementation needs improvement."
"FortiMonitor could improve by having compatibility with other operating systems, such as Linux."
"We use FortiToken, and it's a pain to use because you have to send things through your phone and then confirm by email."
"FortiMonitor could be improved by making it more convenient for smaller workloads, such as when configuring a few branches."
"FortiMonitor could be improved by making it more convenient for smaller workloads, such as when configuring a few branches."
"The tool's price in Vietnam is high, making it an area of concern where improvements can be made."
"FortiMonitor needs to improve its alert system."
"There is room for improvement in the FortiMonitor report. It is not ideal for showcasing to tech customers or managers, especially when trying to display high CPU usage from logins within a specific range of months or the most recent month."
"Additionally, there are no AI features in FortiMonitor, which might be an area for enhancement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"Pricing is somewhat affordable compared to other solutions but in order to really lower the costs of other products you need to plan very carefully your resources usage, otherwise, it can get expensive real quick."
"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."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"The price is better than some competing products."
"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."
"There are additional costs needed for certain functionality, such as scalability."
"The tool's pricing model in Vietnam is a bit high. I rate the product price as an eight out of ten."
"On a scale from one to ten, I rate the pricing a nine since it is a good solution that is available at a cheap price."
"The price of FortiMonitor is approximately $200 annually for 225 users. The price is competitive."
"In terms of licensing, while it may not be the most expensive option on the market, it's relatively cost-effective. You can obtain licenses at a lower cost, with the calculation being straightforward. For example, if you onboard around 5,000 devices, you'll need approximately 5,000 licenses, as each device typically counts as one license."
"We have a large customer base for Fortinet, and the additional buying power got us really great discounts."
"FortiMonitor's price is very high."
"Compared to other solutions, FortiMonitor is a very expensive solution."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
 

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...
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 ...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have a clear bias because I work for Panopta. We aren't a fit for everyone, but I can confirm that Panopta is a lot less work to stand up and maintain. It's also a lot easier to use and onboard n...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiMonitor?
FortiMonitor does save time but not significantly on costs, as there are still expenses related to procurement, installation, and licensing.
What needs improvement with FortiMonitor?
There are areas for improvement that FortiManager is addressing. We have not yet upgraded to the latest software versions, being a full revision behind, but we plan to update soon since the current...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Panopta
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
SONY, GoDaddy, HCL, ING, ARMOR, billboard
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. FortiMonitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.