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Elastic Observability 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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (13th), Log Management (16th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
51st
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 August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 1.7%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Observability1.7%
Instana Dynamic APM0.9%
Other97.4%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities
In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.
Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant at Arcana Info
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

"Good design and easy to use once implemented."
"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."
"I found Elk to be excellent for log analytics, security analytics, application code-level analytics, collaboration with DevOps teams, CI/CD, microservices, and Kubernetes, specifically cloud-native or cloud-specific tasks."
"I think Elastic Observability is already in very good shape."
"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."
"It has always been a stable solution."
"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 over a month from multiple data sources can be completed within seconds."
"The solution has been stable in our usage."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"It's a good tool to implement across the board if you can make it into your images or as part of your configuration management tool."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
 

Cons

"With Elastic, you need to code and program more things compared to Dynatrace."
"The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language."
"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."
"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"Improving code insight related to infrastructure and network, particularly focusing on aspects such as firewalls, switches, routers, and testing would be beneficial."
"When I go to the portal, I do not see many insights on the endpoints or where there could be latencies."
"More web features could be added to the product."
"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."
"The API monitoring aspect could be better."
"PHP was less stable. The coverage of Python versions was maybe less than it could be, but we didn't have any stability issues with Python, as such."
"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"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."
"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."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...
What is your primary use case for Elastic Observability?
My use case for Elastic Observability is observability, as we upload our customers' data, including logs, and when there is an issue, we can analyze what went wrong.
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
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 Elastic Observability vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,153 professionals have used our research since 2012.