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Dynatrace vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
345
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 10.8%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a comprehensive view by integrating with other monitoring systems
There may be an issue since there are many tools like Splunk involved in network monitoring. From an IP perspective, Dynatrace is performing well. If they want to develop in network monitoring, they can, as it's part of their product line. It's not rocketry, so they can accomplish it. If I, as an SI, look at it from an enterprise perspective, considering the cost from the client, I prefer not to go with multiple systems, as they don't provide a complete 360-degree view. They need to improve on claims about being an enterprise system. The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.
Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand
Our company uses the solution for one of our bank clients. We use App Connect middleware to monitor services and applications such as Docker, Kubernetes, MongoDB, and MS SQL Server. We also monitor the bottleneck for all servers.  We currently have 20 users at one of our branches. We plan to expand…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"On the Managed side tech support has been pretty good. Stuff gets turned around pretty quickly. With them being able to do the remote management from the back-end, they are able to fix stuff up if they need to."
"The NeoLoad plugin is awesome, and it gets results from load tests correlated with test scenarios."
"It has been doing a good job of alerting us to issues. It has been very helpful and effective at identifying how we can do things to make our infrastructure and application a little better."
"It is a product that helps developers, testers, and operations to make sure their applications work quickly and reliably."
"Dynatrace helped us with root cause analysis of poor performing components of our applications."
"Its monitoring and key purpose capabilities are the most valuable. It provides the root cause of problems and helps peers join the war room."
"The user experience allows us to be able to gauge customer experience and understand the performance impact of our platform."
"Enables me to proactively understand the user experience on our site."
"It is a stable solution."
"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"It is user-friendly, but we encounter issues processing input and understanding the graphics, such as seeing a flatline without knowing the cause. When these problems occur, I have to contact my support team to address and fix them. Also, monitoring processing is good."
"If a key monitored value has crossed a threshold, it sends out an alert. And the solution is able to intelligently find out if something is beyond the range that it normally resides in."
"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."
 

Cons

"I do not like after 60 days or 90 days it gets aggregated to summary data. I would like to be able to analyze specific PurePaths after 30 days or 60 days with real numbers."
"We would like to see more external tool integration, which is critical for us."
"I am unable to use Synthetic to automate user login."
"I do not like the performance of the UI. It is really slow."
"Ease of use could be improved because it can be hard to determine how you made it to the screen you are on and how to get back to it later."
"The GUI has the most room for improvement. Sometimes, it can be a little cumbersome to find things and be able to create your own views, or be able to dig in and understand where things are."
"The other feature that Dynatrace should have is - from what I see in Dynatrace in our PoC - when you auto-upgrade the agents, the JVM or the application has to be restarted. But if you have something like an "auto-attach" feature, to attach the agent for the running process, it would not require a JVM restart. That would be nicer. That is a killer point."
"The solution's user interface could be improved."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"We should be able to go back to scenarios during or before the issue. There should be something like a history playback. Such a feature or functionality would be good."
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"
"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."
"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They could improve their price ranges, as there is no option for startups or testing."
"Consider volume because that is where you will get the most benefit. Doing a point solution is not cost-effective."
"The price range is quite high."
"I think that the price is reasonable."
"The product is pricey, but it is feature-rich, which is why we probably haven't looked away from it."
"It's understandable to do a smaller scale initial evaluation. However, as you identify the product value, don't hesitant in your scope and scale to maximize the initial investment and your opportunity to do a bulk investment of the product."
"You get a really well-planned out monitoring suite for the money spent."
"The product is really fast to implement and gives customers instant value. This is important, because it reduces costs on the implementation."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"Its pricing isn't a big pain point. Its pricing seems to be better than some of the other competing products in the market, but they also have some of the features and functionalities that are better than Instana."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"Pricing is quite competitive. Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic were all several times more expensive than Instana, both the on-prem and the SaaS versions. Price-wise they are a lot more competitive than anyone else out there."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
36%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
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...
What do you like most about Instana Dynamic APM?
The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Instana Dynamic APM?
I rate the pricing a seven out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the product.
What needs improvement with Instana Dynamic APM?
Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Daxko Lifts Fitness Studios Through COVID Regulations with Quick Engineering PivotsAltissia Meets SLAs to Support Student DeadlinesImmocloud Unlocks Observability to Modernize Real EstateEnento Group Boosts Service Reliability with Real-Time Visibility into Application Performance Instana’s Observability for Amazon EKS Helps Yara Deliver Digital Farming Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.