We performed a comparison between Amazon CloudWatch and Datadog based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Datadog ultimately won out in this comparison. According to reviews, Datadog appears to be a more comprehensive and high performing solution. Amazon CloudWatch does come out on top in the setup and pricing categories, however.
"CloudWatch immediately hooks up and connects to the KPIs and all the metrics."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap and easy-to-use solution."
"The most valuable features of Amazon CloudWatch are metrics, dashboards, alarms, logs, events, logs insight, and application insights."
"What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes. Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch."
"We can set CPU thresholds using the solution."
"You can enable alarms and metrics, and it has robust integration with AWS services. You can also trigger events. For example, if the CPU utilization is above 80%, it can launch a new instance for you."
"The product helps us collect and store various metrics to set test alarms."
"Amazon CloudWatch's best feature stems from its ability to monitor app performance."
"It has a nice UI."
"Datadog has so far been a breeze to use and set up."
"The solution has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc."
"The most valuable features are the dashboards and the reporting."
"The tool's deployment is easy."
"Going from viewing a metric to creating a monitor alerting on a metric is very easy."
"I really enjoy the RUM monitoring features of Datadog. It allows us to monitor user behavior in a way we couldn't before."
"The fact that everything is under a single pane of glass is really valuable, as developers don't have to spend their time copying correlation IDs across tools to find what they need."
"It's not an advanced way of monitoring."
"The graphical interface has room for improvement. CloudWatch only gives you a breakdown of what's wrong. However, it would be nice if it could automatically remedy the problems it identifies. You should be able to configure it so that when a specific condition arises, it will take a predefined action."
"The solution should provide human-readable metrics."
"The solution's pricing is a bit higher."
"CloudWatch doesn’t monitor disk throughput by default."
"The solution's integration could be easier for laypersons."
"The monitoring part and GUI are areas in Amazon CloudWatch that have shortcomings currently and can be considered for improvements in the future."
"The technical support must be improved."
"Datadog could have a better business analysis module."
"I've found that the documentation is lacking in certain regards."
"The installation is easy for me. However, if you are new to this solution it might not be so easy."
"Stability of the product has been a concern for us outside of the primary monitoring agents."
"Additional metrics should be included."
"Once Datadog has gained wide adoption, it can often be overwhelming to both know and understand where to go to find answers to questions."
"One thing we have run into is that it is so easy to add monitoring that we turn on things without really understanding the costs."
"I find the training great. That said, it is set for the LCD (lowest common denominator). Of course, this is very helpful to sell the product, yet, to really utilize the product, you need to get more detailed."
Amazon CloudWatch is ranked 12th in Log Management with 40 reviews while Datadog is ranked 3rd in Log Management with 137 reviews. Amazon CloudWatch is rated 8.0, while Datadog is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Amazon CloudWatch writes "Instantaneous response when monitoring logs and KPIs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Datadog writes "Very good RUM, synthetics, and infrastructure host maps". Amazon CloudWatch is most compared with Zabbix, Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver), Dynatrace, SolarWinds NPM and Nagios XI, whereas Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, New Relic, AWS X-Ray and Coralogix. See our Amazon CloudWatch vs. Datadog report.
See our list of best Log Management vendors and best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.
We monitor all Log Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
