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Prometheus vs Sumo Logic Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Prometheus
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sumo Logic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
25th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd), AIOps (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Prometheus is 3.4%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sumo Logic Observability is 0.1%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Noam Blidstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 22, 2022
A very flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need
Make sure that you have dedicated manpower to configure and manage the solution. It requires handling, not necessarily on a daily basis, but it definitely requires someone who is focused and has expertise with the solution. Know in advance what you want to gain from the solution. Don't jump in to configuring or deploying before knowing what you expect from it. I like the solution very much. I think it is a major tool, especially in advanced environments. The open box provides a lot of flexibility and gives a very holistic view of the entire Kubernetes environment. Integrating with the Rancher management tool gives the solution even more abilities. There are several tools that we use behind the scenes to ease the process but the solution on its own is a very good tool. I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
David Onuh - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 2, 2024
Easy creation of custom fields, no need to alter applications; supports ten active logging applications simultaneously and faster than aster than default search tools
Alerting and consistency are key. We have different tiers with log collectors, and continuous querying provides near-real-time updates. It's almost like instantly when something happens, like pending transactions or error fees. This helps reduce incident resolution time compared to waiting for thresholds on other platforms. We can continue logging in with them seamlessly and quickly get into action. Another valuable feature is easy custom field creation in Sumo Logic. For example, recently, we had Sumo collect all our container tier load data. Containers can be expensive with heavy logging, so we only wanted important information there. We easily created custom fields without changing our applications because Sumo supported, I think, ten active logging applications at the time. These are heavy applications. Rerouting everything for that field change would have been difficult. So, configuring Sumo Logic, adding a new field, and having applications update that specific field was convenient. Sumo Logic automatically identified different logic categories for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure."
"The scalability of Prometheus is very good."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."
"It is an efficient solution."
"The most valuable feature is that we can receive information in different formats."
"Prometheus gives us high availability automatically."
"The solution offers an easy way to install and scratch values."
"The product is easy to learn."
"We use queries in Sumo Logic to trigger alerts based on logging. That allows us to proactively identify issues as they're happening."
"Alerting and consistency are key. We have different tiers with log collectors, and continuous querying provides near-real-time updates. It's almost like instantly when something happens, like pending transactions or error fees. This helps reduce incident resolution time compared to waiting for thresholds on other platforms. We can continue logging in with them seamlessly and quickly get into action."
"Sumo Logic Observability presents a range of valuable features, including well-crafted dashboards and a diverse selection of helpful apps. However, personally, I don't hold a favorable opinion of the solution. While I don't struggle with writing queries, my main difficulty lies in recruiting competent individuals and ensuring their proficiency in utilizing the solution. This often leads to additional challenges and complexities. From my perspective, when compared to Microsoft Sentinel or even Splunk, Sumo Logic Observability has a steeper learning curve. One contributing factor to this disparity is the solution's long existence in the market compared to Synlogic. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that there are capable and knowledgeable professionals employed at Sumo Logic Observability. The effectiveness of the solution largely depends on how it is integrated into your internal operations and environment. Its utility and benefits can vary significantly. It is worth noting that organizations like the NSA and, I believe, the CIA used it in the past, primarily for rapidly searching and analyzing large volumes of data. To leverage its capabilities effectively, you must determine how to tailor it to your specific needs."
"I have not seen any stability issues in the product."
"The solution allows multiple groups to converge on a unified platform, allowing for different utilization by various teams."
 

Cons

"Prometheus has a learning curve when setting it up. It definitely requires a little bit more hands-on than other solutions. It is an open source solution which means you do need to go through and read the literature that they have online for setting it up. The setup could be made easier."
"The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Prometheus can definitely improve its visualization. For example, the matrices represented in Prometheus do not have a very good visualization on their dashboard."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users."
"The primary area where Prometheus could be improved is in terms of pricing, particularly when used with managed services."
"Lacks the ability to clusterize."
"A slight alteration to the user interface should be made to increase efficiency and streamline the process. Currently, we are utilizing Prometheus to gather and compile metrics and then utilizing Grafana to display them in the form of a graph. However, I believe that Prometheus has the capability to handle both of these tasks on its own, with perhaps the addition of a supplementary plugin. By doing so, the need for utilizing two separate applications will be eliminated."
"There isn’t much clarity regarding the issues that happen at the server end. It is a push model and from the client’s point of view, it needs to look better and solve remote issues."
"Fine-grained data can be quite frustrating to work with and should be made easier."
"Documentation could be better. While it's generally good, sometimes finding what you need requires extensive searching. It's not always clear where to look for specific things."
"The speed of queries could be improved. When using more advanced functions, especially with large datasets like the 90-day log retention we had, queries could be slow, sometimes taking up to five minutes."
"SearchUI.exe is a bit clunky in the product, making it an area where the product needs improvements."
"Implementing a more streamlined enrichment process, and conceptualizing the observability data collection as an ETL pipeline would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."
"Prometheus is an open-source solution."
"Prometheus is an open-source tool."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"Prometheus is available as an open-source product."
"We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."
"The solution is free of cost."
"The solution is not expensive."
"Now, they’re not charging by ingests anymore. You should expect the price to be a bit of an unknown and to basically increase as the business increases."
"I started on the free tier to try it out, but because of our usage, we're now paying for it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Transportation Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Prometheus?
The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
We use Prometheus for observability and analyzing data for business metrics and system metrics. It helps us with messaging services observability. It also helps a lot with the architecture and scal...
What needs improvement with Sumo Logic Observability?
The speed of queries could be improved. When using more advanced functions, especially with large datasets like the 90-day log retention we had, queries could be slow, sometimes taking up to five m...
What is your primary use case for Sumo Logic Observability?
We used it for log observability – log aggregation specifically.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Prometheus vs. Sumo Logic Observability and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.