Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
188
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) (7th)
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
50
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 8.9%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is 0.7%, 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

"Infrastructure monitoring gives us real-time visibility into our servers, containers, and cloud resources, helping us optimize performance and reduce downtime."
"Anything I've wanted to do, I found a way to get it done through Datadog."
"The platform appeals to companies spanning many industries on a global scale."
"Even if we don't end up using Datadog, it revealed problems and optimizations to us that weren't obvious before."
"The ease of correcting these dashboards and widgets when needed is amazing."
"The monitoring functionality, in general, and tagging infrastructure are great."
"The logging in general is one of my favorite features."
"Because of our client focus, it is easy for us to sell. This is because it is easy to use and easy to set up."
"Having a structure on how to resolve incidents is the most valuable aspect."
"We have a lot of teams using Splunk and they would be blind without it."
"The solution has been stable."
"I like ITSI's glass tables. They're easy to navigate by clicking through them. The interface isn't that much different from other products I've used. It provides all the information we need in one place."
"The root cause analysis is very helpful for us."
"The observability is great and valuable."
"ITSI's KPI and correlation search aspects are powerful, and the service creation suits the project well. It allows for good segregation of the monitoring solution, and up-to-date quick-time monitoring. We're notified quickly when something goes wrong."
"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."
 

Cons

"It does not have the best interface."
"As a new customer, the Datadog user interface is a bit daunting."
"Datadog could always lower the price!"
"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."
"Geo-data is also something very critical that we hope to see in the future."
"I spent longer than I should have figuring out how to correlate logs to traces, mostly related to environmental variables."
"I would love to see more metrics or analytics in IoT devices."
"I would like testing for data in the future."
"Integration is the most critical area to improve in Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI). It wasn't a great experience because you had to do a little back and forth to integrate the solution."
"It would be advantageous to enhance the dashboard by incorporating sections for monitoring, service health, and a filter for the KPIs."
"There should be entity conflict resolution, specifically regarding duplicate entities. There should be case sensitivity for various keys amongst entities, specifically host names. We need IT metrics-based indexes and more content packs. I know they are coming out with these features"
"When we check the service analyzer, and we have custom inputs, there are issues."
"We're getting alerts with delays of maybe five minutes, however, we'd like to see real-time alerting in the future."
"We had issues with support that took a long time to resolve."
"The solution should integrate more features in NEAP."
"The user interface visualization could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
"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."
"​Pricing seems reasonable. It depends on the size of your organization, the size of your infrastructure, and what portion of your overall business costs go toward infrastructure."
"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"Splunk ITSI is expensive compared to other tools."
"The pricing of Splunk is a bit 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."
"The licensing is based on data usage."
"Pricing was pretty good, and it is possible to just add on the features we want."
"It would have been good if the product cost was much lower."
"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 know that it is expensive, but I do not think there is another solution that can do similar things for that price."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
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...
 

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: March 2025.
842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.