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Elastic Observability vs Honeycomb.io comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), Log Management (15th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
Honeycomb.io
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.6%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Honeycomb.io is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
Diego Gomes De Lima - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and the dashboard is very intuitive
We faced some OpenTelemetry metrics lost between the communication from the service and the Honeycomb.io. I can't say if this is a Honeycomb.io issue or if there are some limitations in OpenTelemetry. Alerts are very helpful in Honeycomb.io, but we don't usually merge because we can compare queries with queries for making alerts. We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"The product has connectors to many services."
"The most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities."
"Its diverse set of features available on the cloud is of significant importance."
"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."
"It is a powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"The solution allows us to dig deep into data."
"The solution's most valuable features are the queries for the OpenTelemetry events and all the tracing."
"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team."
 

Cons

"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."
"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."
"Improving code insight related to infrastructure and network, particularly focusing on aspects such as firewalls, switches, routers, and testing would be beneficial."
"Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low."
"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."
"The interface could be improved."
"There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities."
"Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal."
"The process of log scraping gets delayed on Honeycomb.io. At times, it gives false alerts to the application team."
"We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not that cheap."
"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
What do you like most about Honeycomb.io?
The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team.
What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?
We faced some OpenTelemetry metrics lost between the communication from the service and the Honeycomb.io. I can't say if this is a Honeycomb.io issue or if there are some limitations in OpenTelemet...
What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?
The solution is mainly used for stack observability. It observes service behavior or any kind of failure that may be happening. The tool is also related to research. My company is working more on t...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Honeycomb.io and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,466 professionals have used our research since 2012.