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Datadog vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
186
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (9th)
Splunk ITSI (IT Service Int...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 9.9%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is 0.8%, up from 0.6% 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.
Sunil K R - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps improve our incident response time, and our mean time to resolve, but visibility is limited
In my previous project, I successfully led the end-to-end deployment of a Splunk migration. The process went smoothly thanks in part to Splunk's professional services team. They conducted a thorough assessment, identified all our potential pain points, and developed a tailored solution and migration plan. This comprehensive approach ensured a seamless transition. Our core deployment team consisted of 5 internal members and two specialists from Splunk. Additionally, the project included a project manager and a product owner. We also benefited from the expertise of two professional service consultants and two representatives from the customer's side. An on-site admin architect further provided valuable technical support. Throughout the deployment process, we leveraged support from various resources whenever necessary. This included assistance with configuration changes, deployments, and other related tasks. We also collaborated effectively with our teammates to ensure a smooth and successful implementation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We enjoy the multistep API tests."
"The fact that everything is under a single pane of glass is really valuable, as developers don't have to spend their time copying correlation IDs across tools to find what they need."
"The dashboards are super convenient to us for a more zoomed out view of what is going on with each integration that we utilize."
"The network map is crucial in identifying bottlenecks and determining what needs more attention."
"Log management is a great way for me to identify changes in behavior across services and environments as we make changes or as user behavior evolves."
"Most of the features in the way Datadog does monitoring are commendable and that is the reason we choose it. We did some comparisons before picking Datadog. Datadog was recommended based on the features provided."
"Using the data, our operation teams works with the dashboards to get their statistics, analytics, etc."
"Dashboards and their versatility are among the most valuable features."
"The most valuable features are the agility, being able to ingest many data sources with no limitation on capacity."
"Splunk ITSI offers a valuable visualization tree that allows us to map and analyze dependencies and co-dependency within our environment."
"Alerts and episodes are valuable to me."
"The observability is great and valuable."
"Having a structure on how to resolve incidents is the most valuable aspect."
"We can automate routine tasks. We're able to create alerts, reports, scheduled searches, et cetera. It's helping us to save time."
"Splunk's intuitive interface and scalability make it accessible to non-technical users, and its capacity to monitor every millisecond of data across multiple applications is truly impressive."
"We have a lot of teams using Splunk and they would be blind without it."
 

Cons

"Datadog's roadmap can be a bit unpredictable at times."
"We need more advanced querying against logs."
"They could enhance the alerting functions by creating a new feature to add direct SMS notifications, on-call rotation scheduling, etc., that could replace the need to have this as an external third-party solution integration."
"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."
"One thing to improve would be making it easier to see common patterns across traces."
"When I started using it years ago, it had stability problems. I remember, specifically, we ran everything in Docker containers. There were some problems getting it into a Docker container with very specific memory limits."
"It is very difficult to make the solutions fit perfectly for large organizations, especially in terms of high cardinality objects and multi-tenancy, where the data needs to be rolled up to a summarized level while maintaining its individual data granularity and identifiers."
"We have contact with many customers that cover many areas, so we have cases where the infrastructure administration could be improved."
"The dashboard function inside the individual episodes, not at the ITSI Notable Event Aggregation Policy level but actually at the correlation search layer, is an area where improvements are required."
"It would be good if an interface was included in the next release."
"Quality-of-life features have room for improvement."
"They should make it easier to use. Many people are new to it. It is hard and has a steep learning curve."
"It is pretty okay. I am not sure whether the current release has already moved to the new framework where instead of the glass tables, we can directly use the Dashboard Studio. It would be nice to have that integrated into the same framework."
"We'd like them to show more inputs on the dashboard."
"Splunk ITSI consumes a lot of CPU resources."
"Splunk ITSI generates numerous false positives and has the potential for enhancement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."
"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."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items."
"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
"Splunk ITSI is a pay-per-use service that is priced fairly based on the amount of data we use."
"Splunk pricing is high."
"It is interesting. I am not involved that much lately, but if I recall correctly, you license primarily on the volume of data that you are using in Splunk ITSI, but there is no way Splunk can ever check if that is true, so that is interesting. We are not doing it, but someone can pretend to just use 10%, and it would be super cheap. It is tricky, but it is more tricky for Splunk than for us."
"It would have been good if the product cost was much lower."
"Pricing was pretty good, and it is possible to just add on the features we want."
"Splunk ITSI is expensive; however, with the appropriate use case, it justifies the cost."
"Its pricing has been changed as per the market. You get a good support service with it as well. They have 24/7 customer support. There is a portal, and if you are having issues, they are available in order to resolve them. So, its pricing isn't too much."
"I wouldn't say there's been an issue with the solution's pricing because we went through the AWS marketplace and negotiated directly with Splunk."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
39%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
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 needs improvement with Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?
Currently, Glass tables in ITSI only display metrics related to KPIs. I proposed adding an option to show metrics related to entities. This would eliminate the need for custom SPL to achieve this f...
 

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
TransUnion, Cox Automotive, Carnival Cruises, Leidos, Econocom, National Ignition Factory, Entrust Datacard, Molina Healthcare, United States Census Bureau
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.