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Datadog vs Splunk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
Splunk APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 10.1%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk APM is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has improved the organization by providing good insights into app performance and offering good dashboards."
"The visibility into our network has allowed for quick diagnosis of failures, identification of underutilized or over-utilized resources, and allowed for cloud cost optimization opportunities."
"The web app has a real-time support chat window in which a support engineer is chatting with you within a minute."
"The infrastructure monitoring capabilities are really valuable. You can just log on and see everything that is happening within an IT environment."
"The solution is sufficiently stable."
"The most valuable features of Datadog are the flexibility and additional features when compared to other solutions, such as AppDynamics and Dynatrace. Some of the features include AI and ML capabilities and cloud and analysis monitoring"
"We also use APM and metrics to view the status of our Pub/Sub topics and queues, especially when dealing with undelivered messages."
"The CCM, Workflows, Logs, APM, and RUM are all useful aspects of the solution."
"The features are pretty much ready out of the box."
"The volume it handles is very good, including the number of metrics, the volume number of traces, and more."
"Splunk APM provides a holistic view of the application. Unlike other APMs, Splunk's service map is quite effective."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The product's deployment phase is good and very easy because it is done with OpenTelemetry for most of the parts."
"Splunk APM helps us to find errors immediately and resolve them."
"Detectors are a powerful feature."
"It is a good tool. It allows you to set alerts for application and infrastructure monitoring, and it allows you to create dashboards."
 

Cons

"I would love to see more metrics or analytics in IoT devices."
"One area where the product could be improved is Application Performance Monitoring (APM)."
"It can have a more modernized pricing mechanism. We're actually working with them to figure out how to become more modular and have a better and more modernized pricing mechanism. The issue with Datadog is that you have to buy the whole suite of different products, and you kind of get stuck in the old utilization of 40% of their suite. Most organizations today break down between application development, networking, and security. Therefore, there should be a way to break down different modules into just app dev, infosec, networking, etc. Customers have various needs across their business lines, and sometimes, they're just not willing to have tools that they're not using 100%. AppDynamics is probably a little bit better in terms of being modular."
"I'd like to see an expansion of the Android and IOS apps to have a simplified CI/CD pipeline history view."
"I sometimes log in and see items changed, either in the UI or a feature enabled. To see it for the first time without proper communication can sometimes come as a shock."
"Graph filters for logs need to be set manually which works well for JSON but not for unstructured logs."
"I'd like to see better pricing and more integration in the next release."
"I think better access to their engineers when we have a problem could be better."
"The licensing model is expensive. We need to monitor the amount of data ingested because the cost is based on the data collected."
"I've been using the Splunk query language, and it can be a bit time-consuming to set up the queries I need."
"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."
"Once you see the issues related to the scalability part, you need to understand that it is a warning triangle. After seeing the warning triangle, you need to realize that you cannot trust any of the numbers you see in the chart because it is not a complete, full data set."
"There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available."
"Primarily, the logs in Slunk APM can be challenging to navigate and comprehend, making it difficult to understand the details within each log. Compared to other tools like LogDNA, which are more intuitive in this aspect, the logs in Slunk APM can require more effort to understand."
"Splunk's functionality could be improved by adding database connectors for other platforms like AWS and Azure."
"The dashboards are used mainly to visualize information about the infrastructure, but it isn't easy to construct or use the dashboards. While we tried to resolve the issue by calling support, it would be easier if they had an AI co-pilot to identify the problem and help you solve it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"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."
"The tool is open-source."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"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."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"The price of Slunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
11%
 

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 SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...
 

Comparisons

 

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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
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Splunk APM and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.