We performed a comparison between Datadog and Instana Dynamic APM based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Datadog provides a range of valuable features such as customizable dashboards and reporting, efficient error reporting and log centralization, comprehensive logs and analysis, and seamless integration with development teams. It also offers excellent performance and infrastructure monitoring capabilities, and a SaaS model for easy access. Instana Dynamic APM is valued for its ability to generate real-time data, ensuring up-to-date insights into application behavior and user experience. Instana Dynamic APM also offers App Connect middleware, which visualizes flow and integration nodes, enhancing monitoring services and applications.
For Datadog, areas for improvement include user-friendly features, seamless integration, intuitive interfaces, simplified setup, and enhanced security measures. Instana Dynamic APM, potential improvements include increased integration with plugins or an open API, inclusion of synthetic monitoring and AI-based anomaly detection, and enhanced API monitoring and end-user experience monitoring.
Ease of Deployment: Based on user experiences, setting up Datadog is generally considered to be a relatively simple and straightforward process, taking anywhere from one hour to three days. Some users reported receiving assistance during the setup. On the other hand, the initial setup for Instana Dynamic APM is fast and uncomplicated, typically taking around 20 minutes. Once set up, no further maintenance is needed.
Service and Support: The availability and promptness of customer service for Datadog have received positive feedback. That said, there have been occasional instances of slow or unresponsive support in the Asia-Pacific region. The reviews for Instana Dynamic APM's customer service are varied, with some customers reporting positive experiences and others noting longer resolution times for issues.
Pricing: Users find the setup cost for Datadog's product to be costly and unclear, with some warnings about certain features becoming pricey rapidly. The pricing for Instana Dynamic APM is generally seen as fair and competitive, albeit slightly higher than other vendors. The licensing costs for Instana are deemed very reasonable, although there may be additional expenses for data transfer.
Comparison Results: Datadog is the preferred choice when comparing it to Instana Dynamic APM. Users appreciate Datadog's ease of use and setup, extensive dashboards and reporting capabilities, error reporting and log centralization features, and user-friendliness for development teams. They also value its wide range of integrations and flexibility in presenting data. Datadog stands out as a more comprehensive and flexible solution, offering a wider range of features and integrations.
"The solution has helped our organization with custom events to track specific cases."
"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."
"The most valuable features of Datadog are the flexibility and additional features when compared to other solutions, such as AppDynamics and Dynatrace. Some of the features include AI and ML capabilities and cloud and analysis monitoring"
"The most valuable feature I have found is the elastic container service."
"We have a better grasp of what is occurring during the deployment cycle. If something fails, we have an idea what has failed, where it has failed, and how it failed to better mitigate the situation."
"Datadog's ability to group and visualize the servers and the data makes it relatively easy for the root cause analysis."
"The service catalog helped improve our organization by giving a good view of the flow for our microservices applications."
"Having a clear view, not only of our infrastructure but our apps and services as well, has brought a great added value to our customers."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."
"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."
"If a key monitored value has crossed a threshold, it sends out an alert. And the solution is able to intelligently find out if something is beyond the range that it normally resides in."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"We need more visibility into the error tracking dashboard."
"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."
"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."
"They need to implement template variables into the message response body."
"While I like the ease of use, when compared with Tenable Nessus they could still improve their usability."
"Datadog is expensive."
"I would love to see more metrics or analytics in IoT devices."
"I'm still exploring the trial version, and it is fine. One thing that I haven't been able to figure out is how to retrieve a report. This is something that could be improved. I probably need to navigate to a place to access the reports."
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"We should be able to go back to scenarios during or before the issue. There should be something like a history playback. Such a feature or functionality would be good."
"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."
Datadog is ranked 1st in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 137 reviews while Instana Dynamic APM is ranked 23rd in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 12 reviews. Datadog is rated 8.6, while Instana Dynamic APM is rated 7.4. The top reviewer of Datadog writes "Very good RUM, synthetics, and infrastructure host maps". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Instana Dynamic APM writes "A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand". Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, New Relic, AWS X-Ray and Elastic Observability, whereas Instana Dynamic APM is most compared with Dynatrace, AppDynamics, New Relic, Elastic Observability and Azure Monitor. See our Datadog vs. Instana Dynamic APM report.
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