Datadog Reviews

We are using Datadog to improve our monitoring and observability so we can hopefully improve our customer experience and reliability.  

I have been using Datadog to build better actionable alerts to help teams across the enterprise. Also by using Datadog we are hoping to have improved observability into our apps and we are also taking advantage of this process to improve our tagging strategy so teams can hopefully troubleshoot incidents faster and a much reduced mean time to resolve. 

We have a lot of different resources we use like Kubernetes, App Gateway and Cosmos DB just to name a few.

As soon as we started implementing Datadog into our cloud environment people really like how it looked and how easy it was to navigate. We could see the most data in our Kubernetes environments than we ever could. 

Some people liked how the logs were color coded so it was easy to see what kind of log you were looking at. The ease of making dashboards has also been greatly received as a benefit. 

People have commented that there is so much information that it takes a time to digest and get used to what you are looking at and finding what you are looking for. 

The selection of monitors is a big feature I have been working with. Previously with Azure Monitor we couldn't do a whole lot with their alerts. The log alerts can sometimes take a while to ingest. Also, we couldn't do any math with the metrics we received from logs to make better alerts from logs.  

The metric alerts are ok but are still very limited. With Datadog, we can make a wide range of different monitors that we can tweak in real time because there is a graph of data as you are creating the alert which is very beneficial. The ease of making dashboards has saved a lot of people a lot of time. No KQL queries to put together the information you are looking for and the ability to pin any info you see into a dashboard is very convenient. 

RUM is another feature we are looking forward to using this upcoming tax season, as we will have a front-row view into what frustrates customers or where things go wrong in their process of using our site. 

The PagerDuty integration could be a little bit better. If there was a way to format the monitors to different incident management software that would be awesome. As of right now, it takes a lot of manipulating of PagerDuty to get the monitors from Datadog to populate all the fields we want in PagerDuty.  

I love the fact you can query data without using something like KQL. However, it would also be helpful if there was a way to convert a complex KQL query into Datadog to be able to retrieve the same data - especially for very specific scenarios that some app teams may want to look for.

I've used the solution for about two years.

We previously used Azure Monitor, App Insights, and Log Analytics.  We switched because it was a lot for developers and SREs to switch between three screens to try troubleshoot and when you add in the slow load times from Azure it can take a while to get things done.

I would advise taking a close look at logging costs, man-hours needed, and the amount of time it takes for people to get comfortable navigating Datadog because there is so much information that it can be overwhelming to narrow down what you need.

We did evaluate DynaTrace and looked into New Relic before settling on Datadog.

Our company deploys the solution for our customers as an observability tool to define SLOs and SLIs along with logs and metrics. 

The solution includes incident, post-mortem, and root cause analysis that provides a level of truth for incidents and issues with applications. 

We have SREs and teams in operations, management, and applications who all access to the solution and ensure proper integrations. 

Our company is adopting SRE practices and the solution helps us to align the practices with our site reliability. We get more insights about issues at the outset which helps us to make better decisions such as continuing with agility or stopping to fix issues. 

We are at the beginning stages of using the solution but are defining it as our company standard for use by all teams. 

The solution allows flexibility and heightened observability for presenting data, creating indicators, and setting service-level objectives. There are interesting options for monitors and features that offer flexible ways to analyze data.

The solution should provide alerts for cloud outages that would allow us to report potential service impacts directly to applications or on the dashboard. Alerts are important because there is a need to determine the impact on your SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs to decide whether to move toward disaster recovery or another environment. 

I would like the ability to share dashboard screenshots via email rather than having to direct others to the dashboard because it sometimes requires permissions. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

Our SRE teams report that the solution is very solid, stable, and reliable. 

We are using the SaaS model so do not manage scalability because the product takes care of our scaling needs with no issues. 

I don't have direct access with support but our SRE teams work with them and are satisfied. 

Our company used other products in the past but wanted to move to the cloud. We found that the solution was a very good fit for us. 

The initial setup is not that easy because there are many choices for configuration, workloads, servers, and containers. 

We utilized technical support to help us understand integration and prepare patterns for other applications. 

We created small configurations and then utilized technical support to configure an application selected from our portfolio. 

We utilize a team approach for implementations that sometimes includes SREs. 

The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs. 

I rate the cost a four out of ten. 

The solution is appropriate for companies that are moving to the cloud and want a very solid tool for observability, logging, and everything related to SRE practices. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We use this solution for enterprise monitoring across a large number of applications in multiple environments like production, development, and testing. It helps us track application performance, uptime, and resource usage in real time, providing alerts for issues like downtime or performance bottlenecks. 

Our hybrid environment includes cloud and on-premise infrastructure. The solution is crucial for ensuring reliability, compliance, and high availability across our diverse application landscape.

Datadog has greatly improved our organization by centralizing all monitoring into one platform, allowing us to consolidate data from a wide range of sources. 

From infrastructure metrics and application logs to end-user experience and device monitoring, everything is now collected and displayed in one place. This has simplified our monitoring processes, improved visibility, and allowed for faster issue detection and resolution. 

By streamlining these operations, Datadog has enhanced both efficiency and collaboration across teams.

Synthetic testing is by far the most valuable feature in our organization. It’s highly requested since the setup process is both quick and straightforward, allowing us to simulate user interactions across our applications with minimal effort. 

The ease of configuring tests and interpreting the results makes it accessible even to non-technical team members. This feature provides valuable insights into user experience, helps identify performance bottlenecks, and ensures that our critical workflows are functioning as expected, enhancing reliability and uptime.

One area where the product could be improved is Application Performance Monitoring (APM). While it's a powerful feature, many in our organization find it difficult to fully understand and utilize to its maximum potential. 

The data provided is comprehensive, yet it can sometimes be overwhelming, especially for those who are less familiar with the intricacies of application performance metrics. 

Simplifying the interface, offering clearer guidance, or providing more intuitive visualizations would make it easier for users to extract valuable insights quickly and efficiently.

I've used the solution for four years.

The solution is very stable. Issues happen once or twice a year and are usually solved before we have any real impact on the service.

Scalability has never been a bottleneck for us; we've never felt any issues here.

Support is slow at the beginning, however, they are much better and responsive now.

Positive

Datadog offered the most consolidated approach to our monitoring needs.

This was a migration project, so it was rather complex.

We implemented the solution with our in-house team.

I'd recommend new users look down the road and decide on at least a three-year plan.

We evaluated AppDynamics and Dynatrace.

The primary use case of Datadog within our organization encompasses providing a comprehensive and sophisticated solution that caters to the diverse needs of our internal customers. We have strategically implemented Datadog to serve as a centralized platform for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing various aspects of our operations. With a robust suite of functionalities, Datadog empowers us to meet the dynamic requirements of over 40 internal customers efficiently.

Through Datadog, we offer a wide array of services to our internal stakeholders, allowing them to access and leverage its capabilities to enhance performance, troubleshoot issues, and make data-driven decisions. The tool's versatility enables different teams within our organization to monitor and track distinct metrics, such as application performance, infrastructure health, and logs, tailored to their specific requirements.

Moreover, Datadog serves as a pivotal component in our organizational ecosystem by streamlining processes, enhancing collaboration, and fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making. By harnessing the power of Datadog, our internal customers can proactively address issues, optimize resources, and ultimately improve operational efficiency across the board.

In essence, the primary use case of Datadog in our organization revolves around empowering our internal customers with a comprehensive and feature-rich solution that enables them to monitor, analyze, and optimize various aspects of our operations seamlessly and effectively. This strategic implementation of Datadog plays a vital role in enhancing our overall performance, fostering transparency, and driving continuous improvement within our organization.

Datadog has significantly contributed to enhancing the overall effectiveness and efficiency of our organization through various key improvements. One of the standout benefits has been the accelerated resolution of issues. By leveraging Datadog's monitoring and alerting capabilities, we have been able to swiftly detect, diagnose, and address issues before they escalate, resulting in minimized downtime and enhanced operational continuity.

Moreover, the implementation of Datadog has had a tangible positive impact on customer satisfaction. With improved visibility into our systems and applications, coupled with proactive monitoring and performance optimization, we have been able to deliver a more reliable and seamless experience to our customers. This has translated into higher customer satisfaction scores and strengthened relationships with our stakeholders.

Another notable improvement brought about by Datadog is the streamlining of our toolset. By identifying and removing multiple unused or redundant features and tools, Datadog has helped optimize our workflows and resources. This decluttering of unnecessary functionalities has not only increased operational efficiency yet also streamlined our processes, allowing us to focus on the tools and features that truly add value to our operations.

In summary, Datadog's impact on our organization has been profound, enhancing our ability to resolve issues rapidly, improving customer satisfaction levels, and streamlining our toolset for increased efficiency and focus. These improvements have led to a more robust and resilient operational environment, enabling us to better meet the needs of our internal and external stakeholders.

Within our organization, we have found the Agents feature in Datadog to be exceptionally valuable due to its rich set of functionalities and capabilities. The Agents play a crucial role in our monitoring and data collection processes, providing a comprehensive and reliable means to gather crucial performance metrics and insights across our systems and applications.

One of the key reasons why the agents feature stands out as particularly valuable is its versatility. The Agents offer a wide range of monitoring and data collection options, allowing us to capture diverse metrics and performance data with precision. This flexibility enables us to tailor our monitoring strategy to meet the specific needs of different teams and use cases within our organization.

Moreover, the agents feature in Datadog enhances the overall observability of our infrastructure and applications. By deploying Agents strategically across our environment, we can gather real-time metrics, logs, and traces, enabling us to monitor the health, performance, and behavior of our systems comprehensively. This deep level of observability empowers us to proactively identify issues, optimize performance, and make informed decisions based on accurate and timely data.

Furthermore, the agents feature in Datadog plays a pivotal role in driving actionable insights and facilitating efficient troubleshooting. With the detailed data collected by the Agents, we can perform in-depth analysis, detect anomalies, and troubleshoot issues quickly and effectively. This proactive approach to monitoring and analysis ultimately enhances our operational efficiency and resilience.

In essence, the agents feature in Datadog stands out as a valuable asset within our organization due to its robust functionality, versatility, and role in providing comprehensive monitoring and observability capabilities. By leveraging the power of the Agents feature, we can effectively monitor, analyze, and optimize our systems and applications to ensure seamless operations and performance excellence.

In assessing areas for potential improvement, one key aspect where Datadog could enhance its service is in the realm of billing CSV reports. Presently, the billing CSV reports provide insights into billing-related information yet are somewhat limited in functionality, typically offering reports with only three columns. Expanding the capabilities of the billing CSV reports to include more detailed and customizable information would greatly benefit users by allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of their usage, costs, and billing trends within Datadog.

Additionally, in considering features for inclusion in the next release of Datadog, the development of more robust and customizable billing CSV reports could be a significant enhancement. By allowing users to tailor their billing reports to specific metrics, timeframes, and parameters of interest, Datadog could provide greater transparency and control over billing data, enabling users to make informed decisions regarding resource allocation, cost optimization, and budget planning.

Moreover, the inclusion of features such as cost forecasting, budget tracking, and customizable alerts related to billing thresholds could further empower users to manage their expenses effectively and proactively monitor and control costs within Datadog. These additions would not only enhance user experience and satisfaction, however, also contribute to a more holistic and actionable approach to financial management within the Datadog platform.

By refining the functionality of billing CSV reports and incorporating advanced features for cost analysis, forecasting, and monitoring, Datadog can elevate its service offering and provide users with enhanced tools for optimizing their usage, expenses, and financial oversight within the platform.

I've used the solution for over three years.

Datadog is easy to scale. However, it's scaled for price, so be sure to measure what you need and not push all logs to the solution, or your price will skyrocket quickly.

We use multiple APM tools to have both price and value correlations relevant to the teams using them.

Request a test account during the POC phase to determine if the tool is the right fit; all providers do that for free.

We did POC with over five products. I can't name them due to the related NDA.

We use the solution for APM, AWS, Lambda, logging, and infrastructure. We have many different things all over AWS, and having one place to look is great.

We have all sorts of different AWS things out there that are in C# and Node. Having a single place to log and APM into is very important to us.

Keeping track of the cloud infrastructure is also important. We have Lambda, containers, EC2, etc.

Having a super simple interface to filter the searching for APM and logging is great. It is super easy to show people how to use. This is super important to us.

Finding issues quickly is super important. Being able to create dashboards and alert on issues.

Having the ability to create dashboards has really taught us how to utilize the searching part of the system. We are able to share them, and build upon them so easily. Many iterations later people are putting some solid information out there.

Alerting is also important to us. We have set up many alerts that help us spot issues in the platform before they become bigger issues. This has enabled my teams to use incidents and address the issues so they are no longer problems.

Alerting on running systems is very helpful. Finding issues is quick. We have one place for logging, searching through. Being able to save these and reference them in the future and build upon them.

The logging in general is one of my favorite features. The search is so straight forward and easy to use. Just being able to click on a field and add it to search has taught me so much about the interface, It might not be as useful without a shortcut like that to teach me the system. We have Cloudflare logs in there, and I have no idea sometimes how to filter on such a buried piece of JSON. That is where the interface helps me by clicking on the add to search I get what I need.

The "Pager Duty" replacement is something we are very interested in. We only really use pager duty to call the team when things are down.

I love to have some DD guru come in and do a department training directly at our setup. We would love to have someone come in and show us the things we could do better within our current setup.

Also saving a bit of cash would also help if there are things we are doing that are costing us. It's a big enough tool that it is tough to have someone dedicated to manage. 

I've used the solution for a bit over a year at this point.

The stability seems good here too.

Scalability seems good to me. I have no complaints

I get answers from our contact, and one team member did reach out. It went well.

Positive

We used Loggly. 

We switched because we wanted an all-in-one tool

Some parts of our setup were tough. Some Windows container setups cost us a lot of time.

The AWS infrastructure was tough to fully turn on due to the large cost of everything being run.

We handled the setup ourselves in-house.

This cost us more overall. ROI is hard to sell. That said, I can find issues way faster and see what is going on in my entire platform. I pay back the cost every month with productivity. 

It is going to cost you more than you think to keep everything running. We saw value in the one-for-all solution, however, it came at a premium to what we were paying. 

We did evaluate Dynatrace.

Our primary use of Datadog involves monitoring over 50 microservices deployed across three distinct environments. These services vary widely in their functions and resource requirements. 

We rely on Datadog to track usage metrics, gather logs, and provide insight into service performance and health. Its flexibility allows us to efficiently monitor both production and development environments, ensuring quick detection and response to any anomalies. 

We also have better insight into metrics like latency and memory usage.

Datadog has significantly improved our organization’s monitoring capabilities by centralizing all of our logs and making them easily searchable. This has streamlined our troubleshooting process, allowing for quicker root cause analysis. 

Additionally, its ease of implementation meant that we could cover all of our services comprehensively, ensuring that logs and metrics were thoroughly captured across our entire ecosystem. This has enhanced our ability to maintain system reliability and performance.

The intuitive user interface has been one of the most valuable features for us. Unlike other platforms like Grafana, as an example, where learning how to query either involves a lot of trial and error or memorization almost like learning a new language, Datadog’s UI makes finding logs, metrics, and performance data straightforward and efficient. This ease of use has saved us time and reduced the learning curve for new team members, allowing us to focus more on analysis and troubleshooting rather than on learning the tool itself.

While the UI and search functionality are excellent, further improvement could be made in the querying of logs by offering more advanced templates or suggestions based on common use cases. This would help users discover powerful queries they might not think to create themselves. 

Additionally, enhancing alerting capabilities with more customizable thresholds or automated recommendations could provide better insights, especially when dealing with complex environments like ours with numerous microservices.

I've used the solution for five years.

We have never experienced any downtime.

We previously used Sumo Logic.

We use the solution to monitor production service uptime/downtime, latency, and log storage. 

Our entire monitoring infrastructure runs off Datadog, so all our alarms are configured with it. We also use it for tracing API performance; what are the biggest regression points. 

Finally we use it to compare performance on SEO metrics vs competitors. This is a primary use case as SEO dictates our position from google traffic which is a large portion of our customer view generation so it is a vital part of the business we rely on datadog for.

The product improved the organization primarily by providing consistent data with virtually zero downtime. This was a problem we had with an old provider. It also made it easy to transition an otherwise massive migration involving hundreds of alarms. 

The training provided was crucial, along with having a dedicated team that can forward our requests to and from Datadog efficiently. Without that, we may have never transitioned to Datadog in the first place since it is always hard to lead a migration for an entire company.

The API tracing has been massive for debugging latency regressions and how to improve the performance of our least performant APIs. Through tracing, we managed to find the slowest step of an API, improve its latency, and iterate on the process until we had our desired timings. This is important for improving our SEO as LCP, INP are directly taking from the numbers we see on Datadog for our API timings. 

The ease of dashboard creation and alarm monitoring has helped us not only stay competitive but be industry leaders in performance.

The product can be improved by allowing the grouping of APIs to add variables. That way, any API with a unique ID could be grouped together. 

Furthermore, SEO monitoring has been crucial for us but also a difficult part to set up as comparing alarms between us and competitors is a tough feat. Data is not always consistent so we have been toying and experimenting with removing the noise of datadog but its been taking a while. 

Finally, Datadog should have a feature that reports stale alarms based on activity.

I've used the solution for six months.

Its very stable and we have not experienced an issue with downtime on Datadog.

Datadog works well for scalability as volume has not seemed to slow.

We haven't talked to the support team. 

Positive

We switched to Datadog as we used to have a provider that had very inconsistent logging. Our alarms would often not fire since our services were not working since the provider had a logging problem.

The initial setup was somewhat complex due to the built-in monitoring with services. This is not always super comprehensive and has to be studied as opposed to other metrics platforms that just service all your endpoints, which you can trace them with Grafana.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team.

The ROI is good.

Users must try to understand the way Datadog alarms work off the bat so that they can minimize the requirements for expensive features like custom metrics. 

It can sometimes be tempting to use them; however, it is not always necessary as you migrate to Datalog, as they are a provider that treats alarms somewhat differently than you may be used to.

We have evaluated New Relic, Grafana, Splunk, and many more in our quest to find the best monitoring provider.

Our primary use case is for custom and vendor-supplied web application log aggregation, performance tracing, and alerting. 

We run a mix of AWS EC2, Azure serverless, and colocated VMWare servers to support higher education web applications. We're managing a hybrid multi-cloud solution across hundreds of applications is always a challenge. 

Datadog agents are on each web host, and we have native integrations with GitHub, AWS, and Azure to get all of our instrumentation and error data in one place for easy analysis and monitoring.

Through use of Datadog across all of our apps, we were able to consolidate a number of alerting and error-tracking apps. Datadog ties them all together in cohesive dashboards. Whether the app is vendor supplied or we built it ourselves, the depth of tracing, profiling, and hooking into logs is all obtainable and tunable. Both legacy .NET Framework and Windows Event Viewer and cutting edge .NET Core with streaming logs all work. The breath of coverage for any app type or situation is really incredible. It feels like there's nothing we can't monitor.

When it comes to Datadog, several features have proven particularly valuable. 

The centralized pipeline tracking and error logging provide a comprehensive view of our development and deployment processes, making it much easier to identify and resolve issues quickly. 

Synthetic testing has been a game-changer, allowing us to catch potential problems before they impact real users. 

Real user monitoring gives us invaluable insights into actual user experiences, helping us prioritize improvements where they matter most. And the ability to create custom dashboards has been incredibly useful, allowing us to visualize key metrics and KPIs in a way that makes sense for different teams and stakeholders. 

Together, these features form a powerful toolkit that helps us maintain high performance and reliability across our applications and infrastructure, ultimately leading to better user satisfaction and more efficient operations.

I'd like to see an expansion of the Android and IOS apps to have a simplified CI/CD pipeline history view. 

I like the idea of monitoring on the go, yet it seems the options are still a bit limited out of the box. 

While the documentation is very good considering all the frameworks and technology Datadog covers, there are areas - specifically .NET Profiling and Tracing of IIS hosted apps - that need a lot of focus to pick up on the key details needed. 

In some cases the screenshots don't match the text as updates are made.

I've been using the solution for about three years.

We have been impressed with the uptime. It offers clean and light resource usage of the agents.

The solution scales well and is customizable. 

Customer support is always helpful to help us tune our committed costs and alerting us when we start spending out of the on demand budget.

We used a mix of a custom error email system, SolarWinds, UptimeRobot, and GitHub actions. We switched to find one platform that could give deep app visibility regardless of whether it is Linux or Windows or Container, cloud or on-prem hosted.

The implementation is generally simple. .NET Profiling of IIS and aligning logs to traces and profiles was a challenge.

We implemented the setup in-house. 

We've witnessed significant time saved by the development team assessing bugs and performance issues.

Set up live trials to asses cost scaling. Small decisions around how monitors are used can have big impacts on cost scaling. 

NewRelic was considered. LogicMonitor was chosen over Datadog for our network and campus server management use cases.

We're excited to dig further into the new offerings around LLM and continue to grow our footprint in Datadog.