We performed a comparison between AWS X-Ray and Datadog based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: AWS X-Ray excels in error identification and resolution, providing comprehensive information for debugging capabilities. It also offers compliance and security features, as well as performance insights and event flow analysis. Datadog is known for its user-friendliness for development teams, offering dashboards, error reporting, and ease of use. It also provides logs and analysis, troubleshooting and instrumentation capabilities, and infrastructure monitoring. Datadog also offers APM and tracing capabilities, as well as observability features. While AWS X-Ray focuses on error identification and resolution, compliance, security, and performance insights, Datadog emphasizes user-friendliness, flexibility, and a wide range of integrations and additional features. AWS X-Ray could benefit from better log filtering, an improved user interface, better data interpretation, and potentially allocating more resources. Datadog could focus on improving usability, reducing the learning curve, monitoring external websites, ensuring SSL security, and addressing additional areas for improvement.
Service and Support: AWS X-Ray's customer service has minimal feedback, indicating that customers rarely need assistance. Datadog's customer service has received a mix of opinions. Some users appreciate the quick and supportive help, while others have encountered delays or unhelpful responses.
Ease of Deployment: Setting up AWS X-Ray is moderately challenging, involving the need for research and documentation. This process typically takes around one to two days to complete. The initial setup for Datadog is generally regarded as simple and direct, with the time required ranging from one hour to three days, depending on the complexity of the setup.
Pricing: AWS X-Ray is seen as a cost-effective option for setup, particularly for companies looking to scale up. Users have mixed experiences with Datadog's pricing and licensing, with some finding it costly and perplexing.
ROI: AWS X-Ray does not provide clear details about its ROI. That said, many users have reported experiencing substantial returns from using it. Datadog's ROI differs among users, with some expressing positive sentiments and estimating an ROI ranging from 10x to 20x.
Comparison Results: AWS X-Ray is preferred over Datadog. AWS X-Ray excels in identifying and resolving errors, providing a centralized location to view related requests and efficient issue detection. It also offers comprehensive information such as IP addresses and user locations, ensuring compliance and security.
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The most promising feature of AWS X-Ray is that you can debug the issues through the proper logs. You can also get an analysis out of the logs for some use cases, though I have yet to try all the features of AWS X-Ray."
"The most important one is compliance. We're able to achieve our regulatory levels. We're able to achieve the security level that we need for the federal government."
"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."
"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."
"The solution has made it easier for us to trace the problems that we have with our requests and to monitor the timing of each step in each request we do in our endpoints."
"The ease of correcting these dashboards and widgets when needed is amazing."
"By moving to Datadog, we did not need to manage our own monitoring infrastructure anymore."
"Integrating Datadog with other platforms has made our monitoring processes a bit easier. It's not super simple, but it's manageable."
"Datadog has flexibility."
"Dashboards and their versatility are among the most valuable features."
"We have found that we're able to get in and out of troubleshooting issues much more rapidly, which in turn, of course, enables us to spend more time on our products."
"We've found it most useful for managing Rstudio Workbench, which has its own logs that would not be picked up via Cloudwatch."
"Datadog's log aggregation is really helpful since it lets me and every other engineer on my team login, view, and share logs when we need to debug our application."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"Like most Amazon products, the user interface, configuration, and tuning aren't the easiest. That's the biggest reason why people tend to go to products like TerraForm and Terragrunt. We use TerraForm and Terragrunt. So, for setting things up and interacting with X-Ray, it's definitely the user interface that can be better."
"What needs to be better in AWS X-Ray is the log filtering. Predefined filters could be helpful because the power of analytics comes from how you can filter the data. I also want to see more KPIs from AWS X-Ray."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."
"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."
"Datadog could be improved if it could detect other software in a container or server."
"Even though it is powerful on its own, the UI-based design lacks elegance, efficiency, and complexity."
"The Log Explorer could be better. I don't think it has log manipulation as Splunk does."
"When the logs are too big, and Datadog splits them, the JSON format breaks and it is not so useful for us."
"The product needs to have more enterprise approach to configuration."
"Their security features could be improved. We looked at their Security Monitoring feature but it was early in its development. Datadog are just getting into the security space so I'm sure this will improve in the future."
"If there were a more cost-effective manner of deploying the tool, we'd be more likely to adopt it more widely."
"The ease of implementation needs improvement."
AWS X-Ray is ranked 13th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 6 reviews while Datadog is ranked 1st in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 137 reviews. AWS X-Ray is rated 8.0, while Datadog is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of AWS X-Ray writes "Saves time, is relatively cheap, and helps find errors". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Datadog writes "Very good RUM, synthetics, and infrastructure host maps". AWS X-Ray is most compared with Azure Monitor, New Relic, Sentry, Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) and Grafana, whereas Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, New Relic, AppDynamics and Elastic Observability. See our AWS X-Ray vs. Datadog report.
See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.
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