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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
208
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
FortiMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
23rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
22nd
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) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.5%, down from 3.5% 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 (%)
Datadog2.5%
FortiMonitor0.7%
Other96.8%
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

"Overall, the Data UI and the usability of customer features continue to improve."
"Being able to filter requests by latency is invaluable, as it provides immediate insight into which endpoints require further analysis and optimization."
"We have been able to set very specific CPU and memory alerts, at the very base level, then we started to pull real business value, like 99th percentile response rates for our API calls."
"The solution is stable."
"Anything I've wanted to do, I found a way to get it done through Datadog."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"This spectrum of solutions has allowed us to track down bugs faster and more rapidly, which allows us to limit revenue lost during downtime."
"The solution is sufficiently stable."
"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is user monitoring, as we are able to see if the user is following the policy or not from their system, and additionally the solution integrates well with Fortinet FortiGate and has centralized management."
"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is the overall ability to monitor the health of the environment."
"FortiMonitor has a very intuitive dashboard, which makes it particularly helpful for analyzing traffic, alerts, and other information."
"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."
"Overall, I would recommend FortiMonitor to others."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"It provides the best firewall features."
"Fortinet's customer support is very good."
 

Cons

"This service could be less costly."
"The more tools that they can build that allow you to run AWX playbooks, or other similar fixes, would benefit clients greatly."
"Datadog is so feature-rich that it is often hard to onboard new folks and tough to decide where to invest time."
"I would also like to see an improvement in the server's data extraction times, as sometimes it can take up to ten minutes to download a report for a critical issue that is costing us money."
"We would like to see smaller or shorter tutorials and video sessions."
"The product is quite complex, and there are so many features that I either didn't know about or wasn't sure how to use."
"We have recently had a number of issues with stability and delays on logging, monitoring, metric evaluation, and alerts."
"We would like to see some versioning system for the Synthetic Tests so that we could have a backup of our tests since they are time-consuming to make and very easy to damage in a moment of error."
"FortiMonitor's monitoring could be much better. It should be like, in Palo Alto."
"We use FortiToken, and it's a pain to use because you have to send things through your phone and then confirm by email. Only after this can you log in. It's dual-factor authentication. I wish that I could just log in or bring up a dashboard where I could log in from."
"We use FortiToken, and it's a pain to use because you have to send things through your phone and then confirm by email."
"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."
". Enhancements in the dashboard, such as clearer alerting, maintenance window management, software version tracking, and better visualization, would be beneficial."
"The tool's price in Vietnam is high, making it an area of concern where improvements can be made."
"FortiMonitor could improve by having compatibility with other operating systems, such as Linux."
"The solution's initial setup process is time-consuming."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is open-source."
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"I am not satisfied with its licensing. Its payment is based on the exported data, and there was an explosion of the data for three or four weeks. My customer was not alerted, and there was no way for them to see that there has been an explosion of data. They got a big invoice for one or two months. The pricing model of Datadog is based on the data. The customer was quite surprised about not being alerted about this explosion of data. They should provide some kind of alert when there is an increase in usage."
"The price is better than some competing products."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"The tool's pricing model in Vietnam is a bit high. I rate the product price as an eight out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"FortiMonitor's price is very high."
"We have a large customer base for Fortinet, and the additional buying power got us really great discounts."
"Compared to other solutions, FortiMonitor is a very expensive solution."
"There are additional costs needed for certain functionality, such as scalability."
"The price of FortiMonitor is approximately $200 annually for 225 users. The price is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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...
 

Comparisons

 

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.
886,719 professionals have used our research since 2012.