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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
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sumo Logic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
23rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (22nd), AIOps (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Prometheus is 3.3%, down from 3.7% 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
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
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 most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics."
"It lets me proactively identify and resolve system issues. This, in terms of, most of the time, really reduces downtime. Because when there are notifications on time when we engage it quickly on time, our downtime is highly reduced. So basically, Prometheus is for monitoring and alerting."
"The solution helps us to scale our products and services, and it helps me by gathering those metrics."
"The solution is useful to collect huge metrics."
"It is a stable solution...Based on the feedback I have received from my colleagues in our company's IT department, the setup phase of the solution is relatively easy."
"The product has an easy-to-understand interface."
"It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language."
"The good thing is it integrates well with the Grafana dashboard. It comes with a UI where you see everything as a graph."
"The solution allows multiple groups to converge on a unified platform, allowing for different utilization by various teams."
"The product is easy to learn."
"I have not seen any stability issues in the product."
"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."
"We use queries in Sumo Logic to trigger alerts based on logging. That allows us to proactively identify issues as they're happening."
 

Cons

"If you want to collect details of metrics, you should be able to write a query for it directly. I want the product to offer better queries for the metrics."
"The simplicity of the query language could be improved. The current query language is not easy to work with."
"If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."
"The alert functionality is kind of lackluster."
"When it comes to deployment, if you have no experience with something like a CI/CD pipeline, it might be a challenge."
"Prometheus can be initially difficult for users since it has its query language, PromQL. The minimalistic interface is complicated to understand. They need to improve their interface so that users who don't know PromQL can also use it. You can only leverage the tool when you know PromQL."
"Its documentation could be clearer to understand."
"The primary area where Prometheus could be improved is in terms of pricing, particularly when used with managed services."
"Implementing a more streamlined enrichment process, and conceptualizing the observability data collection as an ETL pipeline would be helpful."
"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."
"SearchUI.exe is a bit clunky in the product, making it an area where the product needs improvements."
"Fine-grained data can be quite frustrating to work with and should be made easier."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is free."
"Prometheus is available as an open-source product."
"The solution is open source."
"The solution is not expensive."
"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."
"We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"It is an open-source tool."
"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
21%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Transportation Company
7%
 

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.
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Prometheus vs. Sumo Logic Observability and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.