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Datadog vs Graylog comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (2nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
Graylog
Ranking in Log Management
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Datadog is 6.1%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Graylog is 6.4%, up from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 19, 2024
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.
Peter Malaty - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 30, 2022
I can create pipelines, charts, and data maps anyway I like, but the solution needs a better live logging display and improved authentication
Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Their AD integration is really bad. When it comes to ACL's, access control lists, where you want to have different group memberships and control who gets access to what, it really could use major improvements. It seems like a beta authentication version that they came up with in a hurry and said, "Hey guys, we've got something going for you. Use it until we think of something later on." I believe their enterprise version has improved some of these features, but I use the open source version. The second thing would be the way they handle live logging. The fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous. I've never seen anything that logs this way except for Graylog. I believe this is an issue because they have the selector going in that direction, so it would make sense that they have to implement it that way, but it's definitely not cool. When you're looking at Graylog's live logging, whether it's doing a one-second or five-second pull, you'll notice that new log lines are placed at the top of the screen, not the bottom of the screen. I find this ridiculous because normally when you're looking at logs anywhere, on Linux, even in Windows, you're going to see that the logs are generated at the bottom. That's one thing that Graylog definitely needs to improve. Graylog also needs to invest some time to improve the performance and how they handle the maintenance of Elasticsearch. An added feature I would like to see is the capacity to delegate most of the backend maintenance to the frontend UI. When you have somebody from the service desk working on the solution or somebody who's not a technical person, they could run some of the maintenance stuff directly from the UI. Another thing is something that I saw in LogDNA, where you could have a color based on log regex. For example, it would color the timestamps next to the log lines orange, make the source of the log purple, and then make the actual log content black. That would be very nice to see in Graylog.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The agents feature in Datadog stands out as a valuable asset within our organization due to its robust functionality, versatility, and role in providing comprehensive monitoring and observability capabilities."
"The most valuable features are logging, the extensive set of integrations, and easy jumpstart."
"Synthetic testing has been a game-changer, allowing us to catch potential problems before they impact real users."
"Dashboards are the most valuable."
"Its integration is most valuable because you can integrate it with various service providers such as AWS, .Net, etc."
"With Datadog I can look at the health of the technology stack and services."
"I find the greatest feature is being able to search across logs from various microservices."
"I like the amount of tooling and the number of solutions they sold with their monitoring. Datadog was highly intuitive to use."
"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."
"Open source and user friendly."
"We run a containerized microservices environment. Being able to set up streams and search for errors and anomalies across hundreds of containers is why a log aggregation platform like Graylog is valuable to us."
"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."
"We have scaled from a single machine installation (a VM with a Graylog + ES + MongoDB) to (2 Graylog + 2 ES + 3 MongoDB). This was done smoothly with a minimal impact on logging."
"The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed."
"UDP is a fast and lightweight protocol, perfect for sending large volumes of logs with minimal overhead."
"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
 

Cons

"I'm still exploring the trial version, and it is fine. One thing that I haven't been able to figure out is how to retrieve a report. This is something that could be improved. I probably need to navigate to a place to access the reports."
"The parallel editing of the dashboards should not cause users to lose the work of another person."
"There are some areas on log filtering screens where the user interface can take some getting used to."
"Once agents are connected to the Datadog portal, we should be able to upgrade them quickly."
"Datadog does not have the feature where you can monitor external websites or check the SSL secure for websites."
"Lately, chat support has a longer waiting time."
"One area where Datadog could be improved is its pricing structure, which can sometimes make it cost-prohibitive to adopt new features."
"The pricing model can be quite complex and might benefit from more flexible options tailored to different organizational needs."
"Elasticsearch recommendations for tuning could be better. Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable."
"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."
"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature.​"
"Graylog could improve the process of creating rules. We have to create them manually by doing parses and applying them. Other SIEM solutions have basic rules and you can create and get more events of interest."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"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."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"The price is better than some competing products."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"Graylog is a free open-source solution. The free version has a capacity limitation of 2 GB daily, if you want to go above this you have to purchase a license."
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"There is an open source version and an enterprise version. I wouldn't recommend the enterprise version, but as an open source solution, it is solid and works really well."
"It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."
"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."
"We're using the Community edition."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
36%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

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...
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 do you like most about Graylog?
The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive.
What needs improvement with Graylog?
Since it's a free tool, I don't have much to say. Troubleshooting is important to me. The initial setup is complex. I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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Graylog2
 

Learn More

 

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
Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Graylog and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.