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Datadog vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
Datadog enhances efficiency, reduces downtime, and improves ROI by tracking instances, visualizing trends, and resolving performance issues.
Sentiment score
7.5
Users praised Splunk AppDynamics for boosting productivity, reducing bug resolution time, enhancing client experiences, and lowering operational costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Datadog's customer service is proactive and knowledgeable, but technical support quality varies with occasional delays and inconsistencies.
Sentiment score
7.3
Splunk AppDynamics offers responsive customer support with knowledgeable staff, though some experience delays with complex issues.
The customer service and support are helpful and responsive.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog efficiently scales with infrastructure demands, offering seamless integration and reliability, though cost management is essential.
Sentiment score
7.4
AppDynamics is highly scalable and adaptable, but some users face challenges with costs, license scaling, and container support.
I did not find any Docker solution available with it, and a separate instance has to be installed.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog is praised for its reliable stability, minimal disruptions, quick issue resolution, and efficient large-scale data handling.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk AppDynamics offers stable performance with seamless integration, though minor issues like slow metrics arise, often resolved easily.
 

Room For Improvement

Datadog users desire performance improvements, consistent APIs, clearer pricing, better support, enhanced features, and more user-friendly documentation and interface.
Users seek improved interface, mobile compatibility, integration, and performance, with enhanced dashboards, licensing, and network monitoring in Splunk AppDynamics.
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
There should be a clearer view of the expenses.
If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems.
 

Setup Cost

Datadog offers flexible, usage-based enterprise pricing, focusing on host count and log ingestion, requiring careful management to control costs.
Enterprise buyers find AppDynamics costly with a complex licensing model, but it offers valuable insights justifying the expense.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
Customers have to pay a premium price, however, they receive considerable value from the product.
 

Valuable Features

Datadog excels with integration, customizable dashboards, and monitoring, offering streamlined setup, centralized data, and enhanced user insights.
Splunk AppDynamics excels in performance monitoring with code tracing, intuitive dashboards, and efficient resource usage for troubleshooting.
Our architecture is written in several languages, and one area where Datadog particularly shines is in providing first-class support for a multitude of programming languages.
The technology itself is generally very useful.
The feature that I appreciate in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is the intuitive and user-friendly dynamic mapping it creates for workflows.
The real-time feature provides me with insights into what's happening.
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Ranking in Container Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th)
Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
244
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 9.0%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 4.6%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Q&A Highlights

BH
Dec 10, 2020
 

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.
Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Dynamic mapping enhances workflows that are user-friendly
One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging. Additionally, the agent sometimes creates performance issues in production environments. If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems. Moving to an agentless solution, like what some competitors are doing, would be beneficial.
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Answers from the Community

BH
Dec 8, 2020
Dec 8, 2020
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 monitoring. We maintain critical processing on our mainframe so there was a desire to include this in our transaction trace. Due to a highly mature ELK implementation, we are not trying to incorporate log ...
2 out of 5 answers
reviewer802371 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 20, 2020
Could you please share your requirements ? There are a lot tools can be added to the list. I spent almost 6 months to test and check many tools then I select eG enterprise.
reviewer1352679 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 20, 2020
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 monitoring.  We maintain critical processing on our mainframe so there was a desire to include this in our transaction trace.  Due to a highly mature ELK implementation, we are not trying to incorporate log analytics into solution buy may consider in the future.  We had AppD, Dynatrace, New Relic, and CA Wily all in house at the time of our evaluation.  We eliminated Datadog due to a lack of real user monitoring and AppD based on experience and licensing.  Between Dynatrace and New Relic, Dynatrace won based on the automation, integrated AI, support for "old" techs, and confidence we could eliminate multiple APM and infra monitoring tools.   I would not include products like BigPanda, MoogSoft, in this analysis. They are not monitoring solutions but event correlation solutions.  You will need additional monitoring products to capture data and feed them.  Having said that if you cannot consolidate tools you will likely need to purchase an event solution to make sense of all the alarms. We did evaluate these products but with Dynatrace AI did not feel the business value was there for the investment. Here's a quick pro/con list on Dynatrace & New Relic from our analysis. New Relic Pros: Insights is an awesome product and capability. Lots of capabilities and plugins to extend data collection. The APM dashboard is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. Good training and documentation are available to support the product. New Relic Cons: Requires lots of manual configurations to implement and support.  Insights product requires an investment of time to achieve value. Licensing is a nightmare as there is virtually no transparency in what you are being charged for. Lack of solution to consolidate alerts across implementation other than significant investment in insights to manually achieve this.   Dynatrace Pros: Very simple to implement and maintain with out of the box automation which supports modern (cloud/Kubernetes) and "old" (mainframe). In-app chat is helpful.  High integration of infra and APM data for full-stack observability and engineering.  Topology and trace discovery is more reliable than other products or our CMDB.  Synthetics are easy to set up for any user. AI-assisted problem analysis on the trace discovery streamlines troubleshooting.  AI includes "events" in an analysis like VMotion, deployment events. Have not done yet but looking to leverage monitoring as code for a fully integrated and automated delivery pipeline. See keptn.sh open source project. Dynatrace Cons: User SQL lacks some functions of NRQL for user analysis.  Host, process, and service data is not available to query within the product.  Alarm processing lacks some granular controls. The Plug-in library is less robust. Good luck with your decision!
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
39%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Educational Organization
48%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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 ...
APM tools for a Managed Service Provider - Dynatrace vs. AppDynamics vs. Aternity vs. Ruxit
Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your focus on SMBs and enterprises in Israel, Dynatrace seems like a solid choice with...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?
I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Splunk AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
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