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Dynatrace vs OpenText Real User Monitoring vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

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 OpenText Real User Monitoring is 0.2%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 4.8%, down from 6.2% 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.
Aphiwat Leetavorn. - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers back-end monitoring, so it can analyze user experience but when customers change the software or version, this tool is quite sensitive
Real User Monitoring tools help proactively identify problems before they become critical by monitoring thresholds. There is a threshold and an SOA threshold. For example, it starts to go yellow, and if it becomes red, the system will crash. When it starts to become yellow (Threshold Approaching), we have to resolve it. This is the same case where we'll know what happened before it's too late. So we can make an early decision to prevent it, maybe by kicking some users off the system before it crashes.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It helps our organization identify potential problems by doing thorough analysis of systems which integrate with one another."
"Logs files for JVM transactions help to debug most of the failures."
"We can see which step in a transaction is causing latency, right down to the particular Java class"
"Having OneAgent is the most valuable feature of Dyantrace, as well as the monitoring."
"The ability for Dynatrace to identify the root cause of problems in a timely manner through its powerful AI capability and dependency mapping is a real value add for the service that we offer."
"The dashboards are a really cool feature when I get to talking to clients. I ask them, "Why Dynatrace?" Because I need to push the tools that I have in my application. Then, they explain the monitoring of Dynatrace, saying the rate of the updates and features. They want to go with Dynatrace."
"I can get everything on a single page."
"The most valuable component of it is taking that guessing out of troubleshooting problems. We no longer have to rely on an architect, or an application person, or someone's memory of how the transaction moves throughout the infrastructure and the different dependencies that it has on it. We can see it right there and we find out more that we ever imagined."
"Very easy to implement."
"It offers near-real-time analytics, which is helpful."
"It is a good product."
"Real User Monitor has improved our productivity."
"The reporting feature is good for us."
"The most useful feature of this solution is tracking. When the application's traffic has been monitored it is taken from that particular application and analyzed. It is then given a live session of that particular user. For example, if you are using your bank application to do some kind of transaction, everything that you do can be tracked by that application."
"The Real User Monitor, with its transaction and synthetic transaction monitoring, is the typical classic in APM cases when the customer would like to do transaction monitoring. Micro Focus scores better where the underlying infrastructure management is also covered by Micro Focus tools."
"The technical support is good at resolving issues."
"The auto-discovery of the logs is the most valuable feature. It requires minimal configuration, we just need to set up on once and it automatically detects through the code."
"You have a live view of what happens when something goes wrong on the production or support side. You don't have to scramble and do guesswork. We can identify the query that creates the bottleneck or slows the performance of the database system. It can give you points on how to debug and fix the system."
"I like how the AppDynamics dashboard portrays the information flows. When a task is executed, various flows between different applications and databases happen in the background. The dashboard is intuitive and helps visualize the connections, the directions of the flow, and the information related to these specific sessions."
"It is easy to gain visibility into complex environments with AppDynamics. It has the ability to combine operation information of the environment and business information with strong business IQ support."
"The most valuable feature is the end-user monitoring."
"AppDynamics has a very broad range of supported technologies, and it's user-friendly. It looks nice, and it's easy to sell the solution to the stakeholders when we can visualize how the website is working. For example, where we have any problems through visual analytics."
"Users can configure business sections in their environment, and it's possible for customers to configure different sources for the name of the class, the name of the method, or the name of the web service, which is very interesting."
"There are many features that are very valuable to us, but the ability to monitor the status of the users' experience in real-time is one of them."
 

Cons

"This solution needs more powerful database monitoring capabilities."
"They've leveraged those security gateways and renamed them ActiveGates, and now there are different web plugins we can run on it... Sometimes the development of those seems to be running very fast and it's not complete. They don't yet function quite as easily as the OneAgents do. But I have hopes that that's going to get better. We have tried the MQ, the Citrix, and the Oracle ActiveGate plugins. They could be sharper. It's the right direction to go. It just seems like it could be smoother."
"We need more AI in the product to avoid manual analysis."
"One thing I'm missing and that is the JMX from the MBeans, it's missing completely."
"It requires manual intervention to uninstall the cloud agent from servers you want it removed from."
"The user interface is complicated, but recent web versions are getting better all the time."
"It's not very scalable, we cannot add another server onto it."
"Some technical architectures are based on an event mechanism operating via a publish/subscribe system. APM technology sometimes reaches its limits to go upstream."
"The product needs more R&D to make it easier and more compatible with other software."
"Customer support needs to improve by bringing in more people who are knowledgeable about the tool, as there are very few left."
"We would like to see support for non-Windows environments."
"The solution's technical support presents a lot of issues with too many delays."
"One area to improve is the user interface, of course. The second one is their R&D has virtually stopped building a product roadmap."
"When we want to monitor our encrypted traffic, this product doesn't work because our cipher is not supported."
"Some issues with login errors."
"Real User Monitor needs to cover more protocols to provide more in-depth information. It could also be better at monitoring voice-related traffic. There is currently no visibility in that channel."
"AppDynamics is dealing with a lot of products and technologies, so we need to have clear documentation."
"We have had downtime, which has been the result of config, application, or cord issues."
"The cost element is an issue. I can't expect the company to change its way of work. However, given the fact that we earn and do all our business in South African Rand, I would prefer to buy in Rand as opposed to the American dollar or British pound."
"The solution has performance issues after we deploy the agent."
"In the current version of AppDynamics, there is a correlated section, where we can see all servers’ performance along with application performance, but network performance is missing."
"I would like to be able to monitor both cloud an on-prem infrastructures, displayed in one dashboard."
"I’d like to see better out-of-the-box visual reporting so that we can roll this up to management."
"More native support for other hardware is needed because having to install various extensions and perform extra setup for different devices is really challenging, and not as easy or straightforward as it is in other products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Consider volume because that is where you will get the most benefit. Doing a point solution is not cost-effective."
"Licensing is a bit complicated for Dynatrace, and pricing is dependent on how much your organization invests."
"It's more expensive than other solutions, but worth it. We use full APM monitoring on our primary systems, but only resource monitoring on lesser systems. We shift licenses around our environment when a deeper dive into lesser systems is required."
"We have not fully been able to get the full value out of the product. It is expensive compared to other things that we have had in the past. Paying that much and not being able to get the full return on the product is a downgrade. ​"
"From what I have heard in the company, Dynatrace is expensive."
"Dynatrace is the most expensive APM that we sell, compared to competitors' products. The license pricing could be improved. My customers pay for licensing yearly."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace is excellent."
"It is quite expensive for startups."
"If I compare with other vendors, other vendors are more expensive"
"Not expensive."
"The price is approximately €30,000 ($35,500 USD) for the enterprise edition."
"Compared to other tools, OpenText Real User Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"We have a license-based solution. That means you need a license for each server you monitor."
"AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a very expensive product, but if you negotiate well, you get value for money...My company used to make early payments toward the licensing costs of the solution, but now my company has opted for a different licensing model."
"We have two different licensing models for this solution. One of them is the agent based model, which requires payment per agent. The other is an infrastructure based model, where the price is based on the CPU core. For the infrastructure model wholesale level pricing applies. All of the up to date licensing prices for this product are available on the manufacturers website."
"Yearly payments have to be made toward the licensing costs of the solution. The solution has no additional costs apart from the licensing costs."
"The pricing for AppDynamics is expensive, but it is possible to negotiate special pricing through bids."
"The product’s licencing policy is competitive. However, properly identify and size your needs to get the best rate."
"It is not a cheap tool, but you also save in manpower to setup because it is easy and fast. At the end of the day, I think the revenue is much better. BUT, they have an awful co-term mode of licensing."
"AppDynamics is really pricey as it requires licenses for every feature."
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Comparison Review

ITspe9886 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 24, 2019
Compared to AppDynamics where we are still trying to get it into production, we had the latest version of Dynatrace in production within three days
Our primary use case for both Dynatrace and AppDynamics is for application performance monitoring (APM). The main reason for having application performance monitoring is, when we see something is running slowly, we can immediately look to see where the issue is at before our systems crash on us…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
36%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
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?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if yo...
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 sta...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems,...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Real User Monitor?
The diagnostics perspective, particularly in terms of the root cause analysis of failures, should be improved. There ...
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Real User Monitor?
The use case is about user-level monitoring and the availability of a service for a user. It's about whether the serv...
What advice do you have for others considering Micro Focus Real User Monitor?
I rate the solution as nine. It is a good product. Everyone should have it as it is essential today, but choose the v...
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 f...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Micro Focus Real User Monitor, Micro Focus RUM, HPE RUM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Avea, Maccabi Healthcare Services, TEB
Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: April 2025.
849,475 professionals have used our research since 2012.