Splunk AppDynamics Reviews

Our primary use case involves performance monitoring of applications. We use it when an application is deployed, and we need to monitor it from a performance testing standpoint and engineering standpoint.

The solution helps us with performance testing by enabling us to monitor applications. It is particularly useful in identifying and resolving bottlenecks quickly.

The drill-down feature that allows tracing the transaction down to the method level and identifying the specific method causing the problem is very useful. This feature enables faster resolution of issues. Additionally, the tool has good alerting capabilities and stability.

Improvements can be made in the area of AI integration. Dynatrace has its own AI-enabled agent, but AppDynamics does not seem to have a similar feature. This is an area that needs focus.

We have used the solution for about two years.

The stability of the solution is good, and no major glitches were observed.

The solution is easy to scale with no major limitations in terms of scalability. It has enough alerting capabilities to trigger alerts when it finds an issue.

There is good support available when needed.

Positive

The process of procurement was slightly tough, but we were not directly involved in the installation or initial setup.

Using AppDynamics provides a potential cost-avoidance benefit. It saves time in analyzing and fixing production issues, though it is not straightforward to quantify the direct savings.

Based on the features it provides, AppDynamics is comparatively cheaper than alternatives like Datadog or Dynatrace. The licensing model, from a cost standpoint, is reasonable.

We have compared AppDynamics with alternatives like Dynatrace, Datadog, and New Relic. When compared with Dynatrace, the process of procurement for AppDynamics seemed slightly tougher. Dynatrace was easier to obtain cost information for.

Focusing on the integration of AI capabilities should be a priority for AppDynamics to improve its offering. Additionally, there should be an easier procurement process. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for application performance monitoring.

The most valuable features of the solution are diagnostic sessions and alerts. The diagnostic features and ability to create custom dashboards are the key features of the tool.

The integration ability of AppDynamics with other performance testing tools is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required.

I have been using AppDynamics for two to three years.

It is a stable solution.

My company has purchased a scalable version of the product.

I have experience with the solution's technical support. The solution's technical support is fine and responsive. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The product's initial setup phase was difficult. There is a need for those involved in the setup process to go through the proper documentation and training available from AppDynamics.

I rate the product's initial setup phase a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is the difficult setup process, and ten is the easy setup phase.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The product's deployment phase is taken care of by our company's DevOps team.

The tool is expensive.

My company chose AppDynamics over other products in the market since we found it to be the most compatible tool with the products we used in our organization.

The product's installation process is a bit difficult. Users need to thoroughly understand the documentation and take care of the setup phase to be able to use certain features offered by the tool, which, technically, is something that users should be able to use. Generating heap dump for Java usage and Java application monitoring are areas that can be pretty difficult with the product.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

We use it to monitor the end-user responses of Oracle and Microsoft SQL. We still use OEM for deep dives.

The product provides visibility to the end-users who didn’t have visibility before.

Visibility to the end-users is a valuable feature.

The solution must improve security and setup. It runs off its own box now. The metrics could be standardized. It should add more databases.

I have been using the solution since 2016.

I rate the tool’s stability a seven out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a six out of ten. We run quite a few servers.

I have used a lot of database monitoring products like OEM and SolarWinds SQL Sentry. We chose AppDynamics Database Monitoring because we bought APM.

The tool is deployed on the cloud, but we put an agent on-premise. The initial setup is straightforward. There are some complexities if we want additional features like automatic password rotation. We needed five people to deploy the product. It requires maintenance. There's not a great way to know when it's not reporting. We have to figure it out. It does not have a good alarm system to notify us when it stops.

We have seen a return on investment.

The price is okay.

We’re planning to replace the solution. It is a good tool. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

My company uses AppDynamics Server Monitoring for end-to-end application performance monitoring. The solution is integrated with the database managed by back-end and end-user teams.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it automatically gets connected with all the entities. The solution discovers your transactions automatically without any customized configuration class or classes or method declaration, like some of the previous solutions we used in our company. Even for databases and end users, you can connect all the entities without much customization and user intervention, which are a few things I like about AppDynamics.

The analytics portion of AppDynamics Server Monitoring could have been better. In the analytics portion, I could not find a user-friendly interface for querying, and analytics sometimes gives the wrong results, so it is not well connected in the back-end. I feel that analytics could have been better in searching and running the analytical queries.

I have been using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for five years. My company is a customer of the solution.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I don't see any problems in the solution.

Scalability is a problem for my company since we have deployed the solution on an on-premises model. Scalability would not have been a problem if the solution had been deployed on a SaaS model.

My company has around 3,000 to 4,000 users of the solution.

The solution's technical support was good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

Though I have experience with Splunk, I would not be in a position to compare AppDynamics Server Monitoring with Splunk since I currently don't use Splunk.

I was also working with a solution named CA Wily. Dynatrace is better than AppDynamics since it offers more features and granularity. Dynatrace is something where I could find that it is better than AppDynamics. With all other solutions in the market, I feel AppDynamics is good.

With synthetic monitoring, Dynatrace is good at giving the data and granularity. Dynatrace OneAgent can be used on any stack irrespective of the platform, which I think is a feature AppDynamics introduced recently. Dynatrace performs better than AppDynamics in the aforementioned areas.

The installation phase of AppDynamics Server Monitoring is pretty easy, and it depends on how we automate the process. The solution integrates with your environment. If you have the pipelines, you can integrate them into your pipeline, the steps for which are well documented by AppDynamics, and since it goes with the application, I don't see there is any downside with the installation. Operation-wise, the product is all okay.

The solution's deployment depends on a variety of factors since, in our company, we don't do manual deployments, so it doesn't take any time for us to deploy it. In our company, we just declare the arguments before the application installation. Whenever there is a new release, the AppDynamics agents will work on the deployment without any issues, so we don't feel a lot of time is taken during the installation phase. When the users are installing the solution manually, it may take quite a lot of time. Our company did not have any dependencies during the product's installation phase, so we didn't deploy it as a central team. A team to whom an application has been assigned is given the steps. My team just helps other teams integrate the playbooks into their environment, and they deploy it themselves, so we don't track the time taken for deployment.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model, so it is a bit difficult because we have to maintain the platform. It would have been easy to maintain if my company had opted for a SaaS platform.

Whether a person would view the solution as a cheap or expensive product depends on how that person negotiates with AppDynamics. In some other organizations, I have seen a different price for AppDynamics Server Monitoring. Though the product may come across as an expensive solution, I have worked with organizations that have negotiated very well on the pricing part with AppDynamics and secured the solution at a very competitive price. In short, the price of the solution is something that depends on how you negotiate with AppDynamics. AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a very expensive product, but if you negotiate well, you get value for money. If you can't negotiate with AppDynamics over the price, you won't get value for money. My company used to make early payments toward the licensing costs of the solution, but now my company has opted for a different licensing model. I am unsure if my company makes additional payments apart from the licensing costs of the solution.

My company is a bank, so we can't we could not go with the SaaS model of deployment, because of which we have some dependencies on maintenance. As a product, it requires a lot of maintenance.

Around six to seven employees do the solution's maintenance.

I would tell those planning to use the solution that when it comes to AppDynamics, the adoption phase has always been a big challenge since people from AppDynamics only install AppDynamics Server Monitoring, and then they forget it. I would tell others to work on the right adoption method and metrics, like VictoriaMetrics or Golden Signals while keeping an eye on optimizing those configurations so that you always get to see the right picture.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

We use AppDynamics to monitor application performance.

I like how the AppDynamics dashboard portrays the information flows. When a task is executed, various flows between different applications and databases happen in the background. The dashboard is intuitive and helps visualize the connections, the directions of the flow, and the information related to these specific sessions. 

AppDynamics is agent-based, so some customers are reluctant to install the agents in all their production environments. It would be helpful if they had an agentless version. It covers applications on the server, but the solution is weak on the network side. The agent is not deployed on the network components, so it cannot provide complete information about issues on the network layer.

I have used AppDynamics for about a year.

I rate AppDynamics six out of 10 for stability. The agent sometimes stops working when users perform upgrades on the application side. We have to restart it. 

I rate AppDynamics seven out of 10 for scalability. I haven't had any difficulty receiving information on the main controller and propagating it on the dashboard. It also has a high-availability option. 

I rate AppDynamics support nine out of 10. 

Positive

SolarWinds monitors the applications, but it only provides information within the system and does not tell you about information flows. 

We can roll it out in a week if everything goes smoothly. However, we sometimes have compatibility issues with the agent. If the agent is not working correctly and providing the information, we might need to develop a customized agent or get one from the user community. 

The customers are happy, and we hear positive feedback from the users. It helps the application team and the developers by providing an excellent tool for troubleshooting performance problems. 

I rate AppDynamics seven out of 10 for affordability. AppDynamics is an expensive solution. The price depends on the size of your environment. It's about $500,000 for a large enterprise. 

I rate AppDynamics eight out of 10. It's on the high end of the Gartner quadrant, but it's lacking some features. 

We're using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for the IT infrastructure and server of the customers.

What I like most about AppDynamics Server Monitoring is that it's easy to manipulate and easy to implement. All solutions have the same features, but what sets AppDynamics Server Monitoring apart is that it's really quick to implement.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring has a great interface. As a developer, it doesn't matter whether it's SolarWinds, Dynatrace, or any APM you're using, but it would matter to the customer. A product must be easy to manipulate or use, for example, AppDynamics Server Monitoring, for the customer, but for developers like my team, there's no pressure, even if a solution requires coding.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring has room for improvement in terms of pricing. If the price could be cheaper, it would be great for both the customer and the integrator.

What I'd like to see in the next release of AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a better dashboard for the customer. The dashboard should be more interactive.

I've been using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for three years now.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a stable solution. Its stability is good.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring can be scaled up and down according to your needs, so it's a scalable solution.

I find the technical support for AppDynamics Server Monitoring interactive and quick. You can get support WebEx sessions, and if I would rate support from one to five, I'd give a five.

My company works with a lot of solutions as it's an integration provider. For example, I work with AppDynamics Server Monitoring, and a colleague works with SolarWinds. Another colleague works with Kubernetes. The team works with different monitoring solutions, including Nagios.

Setting up AppDynamics Server Monitoring is easy. It's not hard to implement. It's straightforward and quick, and even the architecture isn't that complex. The solution is easy to implement.

I'm rating the setup for AppDynamics Server Monitoring five out of five because it's very easy. Sometimes, you might find some difficulty, but the support team can help resolve that quickly.

The pricing for AppDynamics Server Monitoring in Africa and the Middle East is too expensive, so it's very hard to sell it to customers. If there could be different pricing or package for the region, that would be great.

My company pays for the license of AppDynamics Server Monitoring on a per-agent, per-server basis. It's $700 to $1000 per server, and it's paid annually. My company is on a subscription model for the solution.

On a scale of one to five, where one is expensive and five is cheap, my rating for the price of AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a two.

I'm using the monitoring solution AppDynamics Server Monitoring.

My rating for AppDynamics Server Monitoring is nine out of ten.

My company is a reseller/integrator of AppDynamics Server Monitoring.

Monitor 1000's of .NET, Java, Node.js, and Go applications using an auto-discovering agent-based tool.

We have cut our MTTR by half just by deploying agents. It significantly reduced the amount of time that we spend building synthetic monitors. To the point, we rarely have to build any monitors unless it is a vendor app or appliance we can't access to install an agent on.  

• Autodiscovery of application topology, based on real user traffic
• Baselining of every single metric that you throw at it.
• Easy to use API
• Customizable extensions
• Facilitates business, dev and ops communication
• Agents have low CPU overhead compared to other agent-based products we have tried.

The GUI can be overwhelming at first to a novice Dev or Ops support person, and the possible root causes of an issue do not bubble up to the first screen you see.  We usually walk everyone through a few simple steps: 

1. Click here to see errors and exceptions.
2. Click here to see what is causing response time problems.
3. Click here to view the timeframe of a past issue.
4. Click here to drill down into the root cause at the method level snapshot.   

Very rarely. Solid performance on our controllers.

None. The SaaS team worked with us on our rollout and expansion, making sure our controller is tuned for the metric and event loads.

• Great SaaS support, performance and uptime
• Responsive support team
• Responsive extension Dev team

The previous tool was:

• Clunky
• Had difficulty in configuring alerting.
• Did not use baselines.
• Required hard thresholds for each metric.
• Had a Java-based GUI, performed poorly.
• Nobody wanted to use it.

There is currently no automated agent management/upgrades for every agent type (currently the Universal Agent supports Java, expanding to .NET and machine agents in the future). So, if you do not have a solid automation tool already in use, deploying agents can be time consuming.   

We had an in-house team of two people, and a vendor team assisting. The team was a mix of beginner to expert, and it worked out great.

Dynatrace and HPE Diagnostics.

RUM, synthetics, mobile, network, and browser analytics make this a well-rounded tool.

The benefits are less man hours, less downtime, and faster resolutions. In the past, it was, "Oh no. The application isn't working. Let's fix it." It might get fixed within 24 hours because we did not have any idea what the issue was. It always came down to, “Well, reboot the servers. That usually works.” It worked, but we never knew what the root cause was.

Once we got AppDynamics, we could see that this part of the application is where the issue is. When they're trying to process these certain files, something's wrong in this sector. We may still have to reboot the servers to get the customers up and running immediately, but then we can circle back around that day and address the actual issue.

The most valuable feature is the live reporting on the current health\performance of our application: Are all of our transactions going smoothly? Are we having a bottleneck somewhere? Identifying problems before they impact the users. The live reporting and dashboard(s) allow us, at a quick glance, to see the overall health of our nationwide (US) application. We can see the health of our individual office locations (cities) and the individual users (PCs). At any given time we can tell which specific city and\or user is experiencing poor application performance. It even helps us determine if the issue is application, network, or user specific. Before we had AppDynamics APM, we were reactive. We’d wait for a phone call or email to tell us there was a problem and then go looking for it, find it, and resolve it. Now, after installing AppDynamics APM, we’re proactive. We can see the problems developing in real time. We can identify a problem and be half way to resolving it before we’ve even received a phone call or email. We’ve even discovered and resolved problems without the end users or management even realizing there was a problem.

A year earlier, if someone had asked me about room for improvement, I would've said end-user monitoring, which they have now. Analytics was great. I didn't even think that we would need that.

I think I would like to see a better way to deploy and upgrade the machine agents that we use. Currently, we have to use SCCM, and that might just be our environment with the customer. Personally, I am not the best with Linux commands; I'm learning. I'm a GUI person. Give me a button to click on with a mouse pointer, and that's just me.

I personally don't have anything I think they need to add. They're the great minds. They're the leaders of technology, so they'll think of what I need before I do.

I’ve never had a stability problem with it. It's always working; it's always operational. I’ve never had a glitch; never had the server just stop working. It's spot on.

I can't address scalability because we haven't been able to scale yet. As I’ve mentioned, the way the customer works, it's just one little group that wanted it, and everybody wants it now. Again, we have to go through the process of approval and funding. We haven't been able to touch on the scalability yet.

We have it on 400 servers and machines.

We use technical support all the time. They were great when we finally acquired it. They came in and they helped set it up in our environment; made sure everything was discovered, reporting was working; explained the transactions, reports, the dashboard, all of that to us. We had some more questions at the 2015 AppSphere, and it is great because you can see the guys. We got in touch with someone else and they helped us with licensing issues. There was a couple of extensions we were trying to get working that we couldn't. They got all that squared away.

Recently, we had some consultant hours we needed to use. One of their guys spent three days with us on WebEx, fully customizing even more on the dashboards and the reporting center; and explained baselines to us better.
Technical support is excellent.

We did previously did not use an APM at all. It was just, applications would stop working; there would be bottlenecks; they'd be real slow; and complaints. You'd have the network guys saying, "No, everything's good on our end." You’d have the middle-tier guys saying, "Nope, my servers are online and running." You have the devs for the application saying, "No, no, no, no, it's not my code." It was just, point the finger, pass the buck.

With AppDynamics, we're able to say, "No, it is the network. Something's going on in this city.”, or “No, it is the middle-tier servers because of this." We can tell where the issue is and what the issue is.

I do know that they tested with CA. There was a third one because with our customer, we have to have three competitors. We have to have three products and say, "This is why we're picking AppDynamics. This is why these two will not fit the bill." I don't remember who the third person was.

I think they ended up going with AppDynamics because of the personality of the marketing reps and the engineers that we talked to. It was pricing. It was the capabilities of AppDynamics versus CA and the third company. AppDynamics just brought more to the table.

Personality is quite big when selecting a vendor like AppDynamics. If you come in, and you're snotty, and high and mighty, you go down the list. That's just what it is; that's business.

Pricing: We don't want the cheapest; we don't want the most expensive; we want somewhere in the middle, like when you're buying a TV; you don't want something that's going to break in six months.

The historic background of the company: If you've only been around for six months, it's a bit of a gamble. If you've been around for six years, you're not going to have IBM, HPE, or Xerox buy you. We've had problems with that before. You are your company; you're not going anywhere. In five years, you'll still be there to support us.

Ongoing support: Can we give you a call on a Tuesday at 3:00 PM and get an answer? Or, do we have to submit a ticket, wait a week, maybe get a phone call back and then get a guy who doesn't really know what he's talking about, doesn't want to be at work that day?

It's the overall package.

Give them a call. Check out the field. I know that AppDynamics was more than willing to give us temporary licenses; come in and help us set it up in a dev environment; and show us how it works in our environment, not just the canned demo: “Here's the little website we made and this is how it works.” Of course, it works perfectly because we've made it work perfectly.

They will do a demo in your environment, on your servers, so you can see, “Yes, this is our data. This is what we will see. This is how it will help us.”

The only reason I did not give it a perfect rating is because I don't think anything is 100% perfect. Nothing is the best ever. There's always room for improvement. There's always room to grow. This is the highest I can give because I don't believe in giving that perfect rating.

We’re not yet using any other AppDynamics products. Due to our customer, we can't just buy the newest and greatest, and implement it. There is a long process for testing, approval, and funding; and then more testing and implementation. We're usually about a year and a half behind the latest and greatest.