Prior to implementing AppDynamics, we did evaluate New Relic and Instana. 

I've evaluated Dynatrace and have been working with it for ten years. Compared to other APM solutions, Dynatrace is far better, even in database monitoring. The database monitoring functionality is an out-of-the-box offering of Dynatrace, while in AppDynamics Database Monitoring, you have to pay a licensing fee. Dynatrace also has plug-ins that help you monitor databases.

We did a proof of concept with the AppDynamics and also with the Dynatrace. The feedback that we received from our users, and from the IT department, was that the AppDynamics interface was more user-friendly than that of Dynatrace.

We have evaluated Dynatrace and eventually it could replace AppDynamics. It is a simple comparison of the pros and cons between the two products. Dynatrace is easier to instrument and implement and Dynatrace gives the clients quicker results. Also, Dynatrace points to the root cause of an issue instead of just correlations which are a lot more vague.  

There weren’t really any other companies we looked at before we chose AppDynamics. In our company, we have another tool that they use. I think AppDynamics is quickly picking it up. But we as a group never looked at any other tool.

In general, when I look at working with a vendor, the capabilities in the product is definitely the most important criteria. That's number one. The second thing is, as I’ve mentioned, if you have a good partnership and a good representative from the vendor side who can represent your issues to the product teams and get those features in. I think that's kind of critical for us.