Datadog Reviews

I used Datadog typically for monitoring website statistics and some of the cloud networking equipment.

The most valuable features are the dashboards and the reporting.

I have been using this solution for approximately three years.

I found the solution to be stable, I did not experience any bugs or glitches. However, some of the managing team did.

The scalability of the solution was good. Being a cloud solution, if there was an issue with the scalability it would be easily fixed with an update.

We have approximately 200 users using the solution in my organization.

I did not need to use the support.

I was previously using SolarWinds in the company I was working with before.

I rate Datadog nine out of ten.

We deploy agents on-premise to collect data on on-premise VM instances. We don't use Datadog in our cloud network. We do have some Cloud apps that we have it on and we also have Containers. We have it on their headquarters, the main software for them is on their own Cloud.

Eventually, we're building out the process now and using it better. We plan to use Datadog for root cause analysis relating to any kinds of issues we have with software, with applications going down, latency issues, connection issues, etc. Eventually, we're going to use Datadog for application performance, monitoring, and management. To be proactive around thresholds, alerts, bottlenecks, etc. 

Our developers and QA teams use this solution. They use it to analyze network traffic, load, CPU load, CPU usage, and then Tracey NPM, API calls for their application. There are roughly 100 users right now. Maybe there's 200 total, but on a given day, maybe 13 people using this solution.

It hasn't improved the way our organization functions yet, because there's a lot of red tape to cut through with cultural challenges and changes. I don't think it's changed the way we do things yet, but I think it will — absolutely it will. It's just going to take some time.

I like that you can build out a dashboard pretty quickly. There are some things that come out of the box that you don't really need to do, which is great because they're default settings. Once you install the agent on the machine, they pick up a lot of metrics for you that are going to be 70 or more percent of what you need. Out of the box, it's pretty good.

I have been using Datadog every day since September 2020. I also used it at a previous company that I worked for.

Stability-wise, it's great.

It seems like it'll scale well. We're automating it with Ansible scripts and service now so that when we build a new virtual machine it will automatically install Datadog on that box.

The tool itself is pretty good and the customer service is good, but I think they're a growing company. I think better access to their engineers when we have a problem could be better. For example, if I asked the question, "Hey, how do I install it on this type of component?" We'll try to get an engineer on the phone with us to step us through everything, but that's a challenge because they're so busy.

Technically-wise, everything's fine. We don't need any support, everything that I need to do, I can do right out of the box. But as far as, in the knowledge of their engineers on how to configure it on given systems that we have, that's maybe at six because they're just not as available as I would've hoped.

We were using AppDynamics. Technically, we still have it in-house because it's tightly wound into certain systems, but we'll probably pull that off slowly over time. The reason we added Datadog and eventually we'll fully switch over is due to cost. It's more cost-friendly to do it with Datadog.

Yes, we looked at Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic. Personally, I wouldn't have chosen Datadog for the POC if it were up to me. Datadog was a leader, but New Relic was looking really good. In the end, the people above me decided to go with Datadog — it's a big company, so they wanted to move fast, which makes sense.

If you're interested in using Datadog, just do your homework, as we did. We're happy so far I think; time will tell as we are still rolling things out. It's a very good company. It's going to be a year before we really can tell anything. If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good.

There are some strengths that AppDynamics and Dynatrace have that Datadog I don't think will have down the road, but they're not things we necessarily need — they're outliers. It would be nice to have them, but we can manage without them.

Know what you want. There is no need to pay for solutions like Dynatrace or AppDynamics that are more expensive or things that are just nice to have if you don't absolutely need to have them. That's something people need to understand. You just have to make sure you understand what it is that you need out of the tool — they are all a little different, those three. I would say to anybody that's going with Datadog: you just have to be patient at the beginning. It's a very busy company right now. They're very hot in the market.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Datadog a rating of eight. It does what we need it to do, and it seems to be pretty user-friendly in terms of setting things up.

Features-wise, I'd give them a rating of ten out of ten. The better access we get to assistance from the engineers on how to configure dashboards and pulling metrics that we need, that would bring it up a little bit. So overall it would be harder and it would have to be perfect for it. I would say maybe they could bring it to a nine.

Datadog is expensive. 

The tool's deployment is easy. 

The solution's pricing depends on project volume. 

I rate Datadog a seven out of ten. 

We mainly use the product to monitor our infrastructure and apps. It is the go-to tool when we want to check that things are running properly. We use Datadog synthetic monitors to ensure our app works across different locations in the United States. 

We also have set up Datadog monitors to send alerts if things stop working as expected. 

We use Continuous Integration Pipeline visibility to make sure our developers are not being blocked by infrastructure and other things that might be out of their control.

Datadog helps us detect issues early on and helps in troubleshooting. Creating Service Level Objectives and defining monitors is helping us to stay on top of potential issues that might affect our users. 

We take advantage of Application Performance Monitoring to ensure our applications are working as expected, and our users can get the healthcare they need at a price they can afford. 

Synthetic monitoring also helps us in testing our application in different browsers.

The most valuable aspects of the solution include: 

CI visibility, which helps us in making sure our CI systems are running efficiently and are not blocking our developers from releasing new software and fixing bugs.

Logs, which help us in debugging issues where we can search for logs and can make sure they are relevant to the issues we are looking at.

APM, which can help us to stay on top of our applications by giving us the confidence that our apps are running.

Monitoring. We use monitoring a lot to ensure we know about potential issues and fix them before they affect our customers.

Overall, we really like the quality and relevance of all of the Datadog products that are currently being used. 

The documentation is very well organized and is the go-to place for us to find answers to our questions. 

We would really like to see more from the Service Catalog. It is something that we are interested in. However, some might think it lacks some key features at this time. We will definitely keep our eye out for this and adopt it when all the features are implemented. 

We're really looking forward to all the great things DD will do.

I've used the solution for three years.

The stability is great.

The scalability is great.

Technical support is great.

We handled the initial setup in-house.

I don't have any insights into pricing.

We use Datadog to monitor our Kubernetes clusters. 

We have 3 different clusters for different parts of the SDLC. We run the Datadog agent DaemonSet as well as the Datadog cluster agent. Our services have the APM installed by default. 

To create monitors, we use Terraform. This is provided out-of-the-box for our service owner. 

We run EKS on top of K8s, therefore, we also make use of some of the AWS monitoring capabilities that can be integrated into Datadog. 

We are hugely reliant on Datadog for all aspects of our system.

With Datadog, we were able to gain observability in our system. 

The installation step is pretty straightforward. 

It's easy to use by non-DevOps users. For instance, our engineers do not interact with K8s often; therefore, it is hard for them to debug. However, with Datadog, they are able to view their containers and deployments with a single click. 

We also heavily use the tags to help us identify who the service owners are. This is super useful when we need to track owners for patching or pick up new features we implemented.

The APM and K8s monitoring are the most valuable aspects of the solution. The K8s monitoring allows all customers to view their infra, even if they do not use K8s daily. They can just click on a few tabs to get all of the information they need. 

It is also very easy to install on our system. APM has helped debug applications on our system as well. We were able to view why a service has suddenly shut down.

We also use Datadog for SLOs/SLAs as well. We check the live endpoint of services to ensure they are still up and running.

There is not much that needs to be improved. 

The UI is super user-friendly. The deployment process is easy. We enjoy using the integrations with Slack and PagerDuty. 

Customer support is awesome from our experience. There is a lot of documentation for us to be able to use if we need to. 

I'm not sure if Datadog can monitor K8s deployments in real-time. For instance, being able to see a deployment step by step visually. This would be helpful if there were any incidents during the deployment. 

In general, Datadog is a great solution.

I've used Datadog since I joined my company about a year ago.

We haven't had issues with the stability.

The scalability is really great.

We've had no issues with the product or support. 

The initial setup is super simple, and the documentation was helpful.

We managed the initial setup process in-house.

We've witnessed ROI in our DevOps.

Our use case is to provide cloud organization application monitoring. I use it for insight into what host in what region has activity or what market is using Datadog to its fullest potential and utilizing that for cost. This may also help determine who is using monitoring and setting alerts or just setting up monitoring and not doing anything about it. The use case can also be to check when the host or applications are down, or if the usage of CPU, memory, etc, is too high.

The solution has improved our organization from a market perspective. We have multiple departments and need some time to gather that data from a grouping point of view. Grouping that data via tag or seeing the separation is easy. In addition, it provides metrics and insights for senior leadership to have a high level of usage and cost. Application teams have better insight into their application, outages, when to plan for patches, updates, etc. Also, they have a better understanding of where the data gaps may be.

The infrastructure is the most valuable. It has a high-level insight into the infrastructure model of the application and provides important detailed data on the host and metrics, which is the main concern of our customers. It provides confirmation that the layer where the application is running is monitored and will be alerted when it is down and not functional. The customers can have ease of mind knowing their metrics are accurately being measured. The value of data provided, including service name, logs, and all other pertinent details tied to the host, makes it a valuable source of data

The solution can be improved via open communication to the broader audience on what has changed and what has not changed. I sometimes log in and see items changed, either in the UI or a feature enabled. To see it for the first time without proper communication can sometimes come as a shock.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The stability is great.

Technical support is great. Datadog has the resources and knowledge to tackle questions.

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The initial setup was handled in-house.

I did not evaluate any other solutions.

I am using the solution for monitoring metrics, logs, traces, etc. It's mainly for making dashboards as well as monitoring our services. 

We also use Datadog to help centralize our incident management to show the logs, where issues spiked, and some metrics. 

We use Datadog to do troubleshooting in Kubernetes, specifically in our Azure Kubernetes service. Beyond that, we are looking to use open telemetry in tandem with Datadog to further our log-tracing efforts. In the future, this may be expanded.

This solution improves our organization as now we have higher visibility into our application that we otherwise would not have. 

Since the Datadog agent comes in three forms, agentless, scraping, and through the API, it is very flexible. It is this flexibility in how to report our logs that keeps our logs centralized and organized. 

One major drawback of Datadog is the cost. Sometimes we set up flows in place to monitor resources that end up logging more than we thought, and the bill is too high.

Dashboards have been marrying the most valuable parts of Datadog. Dashboards use metrics that are very helpful for monitoring services. I recently used metrics to monitor the number of pods in Kubernetes, the spikes in requests in Kubernetes, and overall CPU and memory usage in our Kubernetes clusters. 

We can also use log analytics to further our understanding. We can handle debugging and find out why things are breaking in our applications. 

The log portion of Datadog has robust features to debug the applications we are running. I really appreciate the ability to use facets to par down the logs.

The documentation leaves a lot to be desired for new users. The documentation is way too much text and has no real information just to help get people started. Sometimes it doesn't help to read an entire essay just to get a grasp on how the logs or metrics work.

I've used the solution for two years.

The main use cases are to provide visibility to costs for each product in the company as well as to consolidate all the observability in one tool. We are moving the team from being an operational team that needs to keep the tool up and running (applying patches and resolving problems) to a team that is focused on providing meaningful visibility of the systems, applications, and services of the company. We want to add value where the developers and the systems administrators are not able to focus.

The organization changed from having a team to operate different tools and providers to being a team worried about enabling and creating different dashboards, alerts, and automations in order to reduce downtime and increase the visibility of all the products, systems, and applications used. 

We moved from a full operation team to a team that adds value to IT, finance, product, back office, and any other team that requires correct information about the services provided while providing the possibility for them to create their own views and dashboards.

The tags are quite useful. They are providing the capability to give meaning to on-premises hardware (since it was not possible outside of cloud solutions and containers) as well to tag traces and logs. 

The full stack of integrations made it easier to monitor the different technologies and platform providers, including Software as a Service providers, that otherwise would need a lot of work and customization to be able to see what is happening. We'd also need to use several other separate tools that would require an increase in the required staff to operate them. Datadog gave us the opportunity to have a single platform for observability.

The product could be improved by providing remote control to agents, enabling them to execute automation and collections without requiring another automation tool or integration. 

Also, there is a lot of space for the FinOps discipline. For example, it could potentially provide better and richer information for the teams to check the costs and optimize the product.

I've used the solution for one year.

The stability is very good even though we have had some minor problems recently.

The scalability is very good. We've had no problems until now.

Technical support is good. That said, we had some cases that needed to be escalated to get to a faster resolution.

Positive

We previously used AppDynamics. The tool was not providing good system visibility as it was limited and had a very high cost.

The initial setup is somewhat complex. There is a need to create a new automation to install and deploy agents that needs to consider the required security for a financial company.

We handled the implementation in-house.

The ROI is still being calculated.

Users need to be aware of licensing control. With autodiscovery, the product can begin to come at a high cost.

We also looked into Splunk, ELK, and Dynatrace.