We compared Datadog and Zabbix across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Datadog users like its customizable displays, error tracking, and advanced AI/ML capabilities. Zabbix is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, scalability, and reliable performance. It provides customizable dashboards, trigger dependencies, SNMP monitoring, and problem tracking.
Room for Improvement: Datadog could enhance its usability and reduce its learning curve. Users said integration was another pain point. Zabbix users say the solution could reduce false positives and improve integration, cloud monitoring, and reporting.
Service and Support: While many users spoke highly of Datadog’s support team, others reported slow support, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Users had mixed opinions about Zabbix customer service. Some found it helpful, while others feel it needs improvement. Customers generally rely on online documentation and community forums for assistance.
Ease of Deployment: Datadog’s setup is considered straightforward, and users often receive help from a partner or vendor. The complexity of Zabbix's initial setup varies. Some reviews said it may require an experienced group of administrators and engineers.
Pricing: Opinions about Datadog's price are divided. Some users found it costly, but others thought it was acceptable. Some said the pricing model could be clearer and better explained. Zabbix is a free, open-source solution but users can purchase support services and additional features.
ROI: Users said Datadog saved them time and improved visibility into security blind spots. Zabbix users said that it's a cost-effective solution.
Comparison Results: Datadog is praised for its customizability, easy setup, and robust AI features, but some users say it has room for improvement in areas like usability and integration. Datadog’s pricing and customer service received mixed reviews. Zabbix is a highly customizable open-source solution with a wide range of monitoring capabilities, including the ability to monitor virtual machines and databases. However, Zabbix’s setup can be complex and may require technical expertise.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The web app has a real-time support chat window in which a support engineer is chatting with you within a minute."
"It brings in observability, monitoring, and alerting capabilities - all of which we need to operate at scale."
"The solution is sufficiently stable."
"I don't have to worry about upgrades with the AWS version."
"We find they have a very helpful alert system."
"Datadog has flexibility."
"The application performance monitoring is pretty good."
"Integrating Datadog with other platforms has made our monitoring processes a bit easier. It's not super simple, but it's manageable."
"The most valuable feature is service assurance."
"Zabbix is a cost-effective solution. We're a small organization with a few dozen devices to monitor, and it was available for free. We can see what we need. We haven't done an in-depth analysis on it, but we're currently okay with the product."
"The level of discovery-based configuration that lets us auto-configure the monitoring for various systems is a valuable feature."
"Its overall flexibility is most valuable. When our customers have some custom applications that are not necessarily covered by the community or a standard monitoring tool, we use Zabbix to build our own modules with our own templates. This feature has been useful in using Zabbix for infrastructure and IT monitoring. It has also been useful for industrial equipment monitoring. Zabbix is very lightweight. It is efficient in terms of performance because it doesn't use a lot of resources."
"Dashboard and the customization of the items and triggers are the most valuable features."
"The solution is open-source, easy to manage, and user-friendly making it easy for anyone to use."
"It's a very reliable platform and we've never had any issues regarding the scalability or the stability of Zabbix."
"The implementation process is very straightforward."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"It can have a more modernized pricing mechanism. We're actually working with them to figure out how to become more modular and have a better and more modernized pricing mechanism. The issue with Datadog is that you have to buy the whole suite of different products, and you kind of get stuck in the old utilization of 40% of their suite. Most organizations today break down between application development, networking, and security. Therefore, there should be a way to break down different modules into just app dev, infosec, networking, etc. Customers have various needs across their business lines, and sometimes, they're just not willing to have tools that they're not using 100%. AppDynamics is probably a little bit better in terms of being modular."
"The more tools that they can build that allow you to run AWX playbooks, or other similar fixes, would benefit clients greatly."
"Datadog is so feature-rich that it is often hard to onboard new folks and tough to decide where to invest time."
"Datadog is expensive."
"I often have issues with the UI in my browser."
"The on-premise version is very difficult to upgrade."
"We need more integration with security tools like Drata."
"It can have an artificial intelligence component. Even though I can seamlessly look at end-to-end security, it would be better to have alerts and notifications powered by an AI engine. I am not sure if they have an AI component. We have not reached out to them or looked at it, but this is something that I keep on talking about within our company in terms of features. Such a feature would be good to have, and it would further optimize my Security Ops team's abilities."
"Implementation is always tailored to the customer and the kind of information we need from the client to carry it out can make them very uncomfortable. Sometimes the clients are not ready to share it."
"The documentation could be improved."
"We would like to monitor other touchpoints such as ATM machines. It would be great if it can provide monitoring of ATM machines. Compatibility with other products would also be great."
"The stability could be better."
"The event correlation could be better."
"The user web interface is a little bit too basic, we need to link Zabbix to Grafana to have more options, such as graphs and charts. The interface needs to be improved. Additionally, there could be better integration with Grafana API."
"For us, the initial setup was complex"
"I would like to remotely connect to the computer, and Zabbix doesn't have this capability."
Datadog is ranked 2nd in Network Monitoring Software with 137 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in Network Monitoring Software with 101 reviews. Datadog is rated 8.6, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Datadog writes "Very good RUM, synthetics, and infrastructure host maps". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, New Relic, AWS X-Ray and Elastic Observability, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios Core and Nagios XI. See our Datadog vs. Zabbix report.
See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors, best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors, and best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors.
We monitor all Network Monitoring Software 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.