Instana Dynamic APM vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Instana and VMware are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Instana is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.8, while VMware is ranked #29 with an average rating of 9.0. Instana holds a 1.0% mindshare in APM, compared to VMware’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of Instana users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Instana Dynamic APM

Read 14 Instana Dynamic APM reviews

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2,201 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 12 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

2,555 Views
1,456 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Instana Dynamic APM

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Instana Dynamic APM are two competitive APM solutions. Based on user reviews, Instana Dynamic APM seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and ease of use.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers robust monitoring and analytics tools, fast issue resolution, and valuable performance insights. Instana Dynamic APM provides automatic discovery, continuous monitoring, and real-time performance visualization, with users finding its features more comprehensive and user-friendly.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications needs better scalability, integration with third-party tools, and more intuitive configuration. Instana Dynamic APM could improve its documentation, troubleshooting guides, and provide more detailed control over monitoring settings.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications has a straightforward deployment process but faces initial configuration challenges, with responsive and helpful customer service. Instana Dynamic APM offers seamless deployment with minimal disruption and proactive, effective customer service.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is competitively priced, leading to a favorable ROI. Instana Dynamic APM has a higher cost, but users find its extensive features and effective performance monitoring justify the investment, resulting in satisfactory ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Instana Dynamic APM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

July 2025

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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

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

29th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan

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…

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ToniLindberg

senior consultant at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB

Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement

I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."

"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."

"It's great for monitoring services and applications."

"It is a stable solution."

"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."

"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."

"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."

"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The auto-remediation features must be improved."

"Maybe log monitoring could be better."

"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"

"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."

"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."

"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."

"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."

"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."

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."

"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."

"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."

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and packages from VMware.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing us to set up alerts for different components and send them via SMTP to a team d...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM

July 2025

Download Instana Dynamic APM product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

June 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

Instana’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated Application Performance Monitoring, discovers and maps all services, infrastructure, and their inter-dependencies automatically. Instana ingests all observability metrics, traces each request, profiles every process, and updates application dependency maps in real-time to deliver the context and actionable feedback needed by Dev+Ops to optimize application performance, enable innovation, and mitigate risk to help them add value and efficiency to the pipeline. Learn more at https://instana.com.

Instana

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

July 2025

Free Report: Instana Dynamic APM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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