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IBM Instana Observability vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 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

IBM Instana Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
45th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th), Container Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Tomas Kim - PeerSpot reviewer
Not expensive and offers good performance
The most valuable feature of the solution is performance. A one-vendor solution serves as a good feature of the tool. In the IT industry, the IT support team has lots of vendors to contact. DB monitoring is done by one company, while WaaS monitoring is done by another and done by another company, which makes it really complicated for the IT team concerned about the security levels. The tool's main feature is that it is a one-vendor solution. The analysis done by the tool is a good feature. The tool is used as an open-source tool. The tool is growing, and new features are being added to the product.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."
"The most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."
"The ability to create custom dashboards is one of the best features and that's typically why most people deploy Splunk. Users can create dashboards for just about anything."
"It is a good tool. It allows you to set alerts for application and infrastructure monitoring, and it allows you to create dashboards."
"It can monitor, get the data, and then report on the data."
"I have primarily used it to go back into the past and understand why something happened. It provides enough information to do research and figure things out."
"It supports proactive management, enhances security, and improves operational efficiency."
"Splunk's dashboards are great."
"We haven't really experienced any glitches or bugs."
"It is very easy to monitor multiple cloud environments. It's like a single pane of glass for us. We can use it to monitor our on-prem and both of our cloud environments as opposed to having different tools for each environment. It makes it all come together in one tool."
 

Cons

"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."
"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."
"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."
"They need more EDR functionalities."
"Splunk APM's performance could be improved - at the moment, it's very slow and takes forever to give me what I want."
"The price has room for improvement."
"There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts."
"There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience."
"They can improve the flow system and the keyword language. It has predefined keywords, but they can be improved."
"I would like to see an improvement and some innovation in the customer interface."
"It would be useful if they provided some help pages. If you don't know too much about the tool, there should be more documentation readily available. It would be useful if they had a help button embedded in the solution so you could ask questions and get answers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to that of its competitors like Dynatrace."
"The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
"The solution's pricing is costly."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?
The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive.
What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?
The tool should offer more LDR AI models. The monitoring is just a status, but the next level of a monitoring solution is to prevent an accident or stop an accident status. The solution should be t...
What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?
Before IBM, I ordered our company's engineer to have a look at the tool and test it. I think it was two years ago, the transfer to IBM happened in our company. At the beginning, IBM Instana Observa...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Instana Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
841,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.