We performed a comparison between Datadog and Graylog based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Datadog users like its customizable displays, error tracking, and advanced AI/ML capabilities. Graylog stands out with its exceptional search functions, seamless integration with Elasticsearch, and real-time data access. Datadog could enhance its usability and reduce its learning curve. Users said integration was another pain point. Graylog could benefit from additional customization options and an improved rule-creation process.
Service and Support: While many users spoke highly of Datadog’s support team, others reported slow support, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Graylog's customer service is generally well-regarded, with reviewers noting effective solutions and satisfactory experiences. While response times may differ, Graylog's support is considered superior compared to that of other products.
Ease of Deployment: Datadog’s setup is considered straightforward, and users often receive help from a partner or vendor. Some Graylog users said the setup was easy. Other reviewers faced challenges, but these were easily resolved with help from the vendor’s support staff. Graylog is easier to set up in smaller environments, but it could get complicated in large clusters.
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. Graylog offers an enterprise edition and an open-source option with a daily capacity restriction. Some users said that data costs can be expensive.
ROI: Users said Datadog saved them time and improved visibility into security blind spots. Graylog can offer some cost savings. The precise ROI may vary depending on the organization’s size and use case.
"The Datadog suite has allowed us to easily integrate log collection into all of our services and quickly detect unexpected changes in system data to declare security incidents."
"Because of our client focus, it is easy for us to sell. This is because it is easy to use and easy to set up."
"APM is great and has provided low-effort out-of-the-box observability for various services."
"The product has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc."
"Having a wealth of information has helped us investigate outages, and having historical data helps us tune our system."
"The installation step is pretty straightforward."
"The service catalog helped improve our organization by giving a good view of the flow for our microservices applications."
"Sometimes it's more user friendly for development teams. There are some parts of Datadog that are more understandable for development teams. For example, the APM in Datadog works more manually and works like the tools in New Relic or Grafana, or Elastic. It is easier to understand for software development teams."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"We run a containerized microservices environment. Being able to set up streams and search for errors and anomalies across hundreds of containers is why a log aggregation platform like Graylog is valuable to us."
"Open source and user friendly."
"The build is stable and requires little maintenance, even compared to some extremely expensive products."
"We're using the Community edition, but I know that it has really good dashboarding and alerts."
"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."
"Real-time UDP/GELF logging and full text-based searching."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"Datadog has a lot of features kind of cramped into one dashboard. It's quite hard to get around what feature does exactly what. There was a steep learning curve, trying to navigate through menus."
"We have asked technical support questions, and sometimes they don't get back to us right away. Or when they do, it is not the right answer."
"I've found that the documentation is lacking in certain regards."
"The menu on the left is pretty dense (and I know it has to be). I never knew about the cmd+k functionality until recently. It would be helpful to offer more tips/cheat sheets to see handy shortcuts like that."
"The current way accounts are billed could be vastly improved - especially when involving multiple organizations across multiple accounts in combination with reserved commitments."
"The way data is represented can be limiting. When I first tried it out a long time ago, you could graph a metric and another metric, and they'd overlay, but you couldn't take the ratio between the two."
"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."
"Datadog does not have the feature where you can monitor external websites or check the SSL secure for websites."
"It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."
"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."
"Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic."
"I would like to see a date and time in the Graylog Grok patterns so that I can save time when searching for a log. I like how the streams and the search query work, but adding a date and time will allow me to pull out a log in a milli-second."
"With technical support, you are on your own without an enterprise license."
Datadog is ranked 3rd in Log Management with 137 reviews while Graylog is ranked 11th in Log Management with 18 reviews. Datadog is rated 8.6, while Graylog is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Datadog writes "Very good RUM, synthetics, and infrastructure host maps". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Graylog writes "Great detailed search features and easy Java integration, but needs improvement in integration with Python". Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, New Relic, AWS X-Ray and Elastic Observability, whereas Graylog is most compared with Grafana Loki, Wazuh, syslog-ng, Splunk Enterprise Security and ManageEngine Log360. See our Datadog vs. Graylog report.
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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.