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.
"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."
"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."
"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."
"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."
"The solution has helped out organization gain improved visibility."
"Datadog has given us near-live visibility across our entire cloud platform."
"Anything I've wanted to do, I found a way to get it done through Datadog."
"I really enjoy the RUM monitoring features of Datadog. It allows us to monitor user behavior in a way we couldn't before."
"The CCM, Workflows, Logs, APM, and RUM are all useful aspects of the solution."
"Datadog has helped us a ton by allowing us to set up a multitude of easily configurable alarms across our tech stack and infrastructure."
"The full stack of integrations made it easier to monitor the different technologies and platform providers, including Software as a Service providers, that otherwise would need a lot of work and customization to be able to see what is happening."
"It lets us react more quickly to things going wrong. Whereas before, it might have been 30 minutes to an hour before we noticed something going on, we will know within a minute or two if something is off, which will let us essentially get something back up and running faster for our customers, which is revenue."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"The setup was a bit complex."
"It could probably be a little bit of a better user experience."
"The product is quite complex, and there are so many features that I either didn't know about or wasn't sure how to use."
"Some of the interface is still confusing to use."
"The parallel editing of the dashboards should not cause users to lose the work of another person."
"It would be nice to be able to graph metrics by excluding certain tags (like you can do in monitors)."
"Datadog could have a better business analysis module."
"It would be ideal if the product offered a bit more monitoring from our dashboard."
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 136 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.
We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability 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.
