We performed a comparison between Datadog and New Relic based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Datadog offers valuable features like dashboards, reporting, error reporting, log centralization, ease of use and setup, logs and analysis, user-friendliness for development teams, and interface and integrations. New Relic is known for its in-depth application information, monitoring capabilities, performance, scalability, and user-friendly interface. Datadog can improve in areas such as usability, integration, user interfaces, learning curve, monitoring external websites and SSL security, complex setup, security features, managing organizational structure, customization flexibility, deploying agents, and network monitoring. New Relic can improve in areas such as simplifying server removal, adding network monitoring features, providing detailed troubleshooting information, supporting on-premises licensing, extending the data retention period, and creating a dashboard for front-end and back-end performance monitoring.
Service and Support: Datadog's customer service is highly regarded for its availability and promptness, although there have been some instances of slow or unresponsive support in the Asia-Pacific region. New Relic's customer service has received mixed feedback, with some users praising its efficiency while others have experienced slow response times.
Ease of Deployment: Users have generally found the initial setup for Datadog to be easy and straightforward, although a few found it slightly complex and needed some adjustments. Integration with other applications and platforms was smooth. The initial setup for New Relic is described as simple and not overly difficult. Some users opted for professional services to aid them with the setup process.
Pricing: Some users perceive Datadog's pricing as costly, while others find it reasonable but perplexing. New Relic's pricing is generally regarded as expensive, although a few users deem it acceptable when compared to competitors.
ROI: Users have provided diverse feedback on Datadog's ROI. They have praised its ability to save time, uncover blind spots, and capture incidents. Opinions on New Relic's ROI are more divided, with some users expressing positive experiences while others remain uncertain.
Comparison Results: Datadog is the preferred choice over New Relic. Users find Datadog's initial setup to be easy, straightforward, and efficient. Datadog offers a wider range of features, including error reporting and log centralization, and is considered more user-friendly for development teams. It also provides flexibility with AI and ML capabilities. Users appreciate the helpful and responsive customer service.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The visibility into our network has allowed for quick diagnosis of failures, identification of underutilized or over-utilized resources, and allowed for cloud cost optimization opportunities."
"Datadog provides tracing and logging, whereas Dynatrace focuses on tracing, and Splunk is more of a logging tool. Datadog's advantage is that we don't need two tools."
"If we have a large load for users using our basic Datadog, it will immediately fire off an alert notifying us either something's wrong or not."
"The CCM, Workflows, Logs, APM, and RUM are all useful aspects of the solution."
"The most valuable features are the dashboards and the reporting."
"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."
"The solution's SaaS model is easy to manage and works well in single- or multi-cloud environments."
"Most of the features in the way Datadog does monitoring are commendable and that is the reason we choose it. We did some comparisons before picking Datadog. Datadog was recommended based on the features provided."
"There are many valuable features in New Relic APM. We developed some software applications and we are able to monitor the errors very easily. Their log security retention is very good."
"To me, the most valuable feature of New Relic APM is the traceability, mainly based on the time travel method, so you get the overall response time, which is pretty helpful for developers and ADR techs looking into issues on a deeper level. New Relic APM is a very good, tailor-made solution."
"The solution is quite stable."
"It has given us better insight into the performance of the system."
"We appreciate the way that this solution allows us to monitor the ongoing status of the UI at any given time."
"They instrument up from the bottom to the top – every piece of code - they have a very perfect read of what’s being done, and how long it’s taking."
"The pricing is pretty good."
"The breakdown of the response time of different components and getting in-depth details of the slow component are the most valuable features. It is easy to use, and it gets the job done."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"I found the documentation can sometimes be confusing."
"I sometimes log in and see items changed, either in the UI or a feature enabled. To see it for the first time without proper communication can sometimes come as a shock."
"It would be ideal if the product offered a bit more monitoring from our dashboard."
"Datadog could always lower the price!"
"Lately, chat support has a longer waiting time."
"It could probably be a little bit of a better user experience."
"It could use some additional features when working with metrics like Grafana or like New Relic has. Datadog does not use library technologies like Dynatrace does. Datadog has machine learning too, but it does not have this option in all layers of monitoring like infrastructure service process in applications."
"The pricing model could be simplified as it feels a bit outdated, especially when you look at the billing model of compute instances vs the containers instances."
"Documentation could be improved in New Relic APM, so users would have more clarity on configuring the dashboard. If New Relic gave better guidelines, users would find it easier to understand the metrics and features of New Relic APM. Another area for improvement is integration with Kubernetes. Currently, the process isn't user-friendly. It's challenging and lacks documentation for users to understand how to integrate New Relic APM with Kubernetes quickly. With multiple levels of Kubernetes dockers and other DBs on different clouds, it's tricky to gather all into New Relic APM on a single dashboard. What I'd like to see in the next version of New Relic APM is a single dashboard where you can easily view which applications fall under specific APMs. If there's a search feature where you can type in a keyword to find out if an APM is related to a particular application, that would be great."
"The scalability can be improved."
"The solution only supports the cloud platform and not on-premises."
"The initial setup can be made easier. Like Mixpanel, New Relic can also have a step-by-step guide for the setup process."
"Compared to their competitors, they are missing some features at the moment."
"I haven't come across any features that are lacking."
"It would help customers if there were an on-premises version available."
"There are certain features that are not supported in New Relic, such as CATSEARCH, which allows you to do a full-text search."
Datadog is ranked 1st in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 137 reviews while New Relic is ranked 3rd in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 151 reviews. Datadog is rated 8.6, while New Relic is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Datadog writes "Very good RUM, synthetics, and infrastructure host maps". On the other hand, the top reviewer of New Relic writes "Has a simple user interface and end-to-end monitoring and self-healing features". Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, AWS X-Ray, AppDynamics and Elastic Observability, whereas New Relic is most compared with Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana, Azure Monitor and Prometheus. See our Datadog vs. New Relic report.
See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors, best Network Monitoring Software vendors, and best IT Infrastructure Monitoring 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.
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitoring. We maintain critical processing on our mainframe so there was a desire to include this in our transaction trace. Due to a highly mature ELK implementation, we are not trying to incorporate log analytics into solution buy may consider in the future. We had AppD, Dynatrace, New Relic, and CA Wily all in house at the time of our evaluation. We eliminated Datadog due to a lack of real user monitoring and AppD based on experience and licensing. Between Dynatrace and New Relic, Dynatrace won based on the automation, integrated AI, support for "old" techs, and confidence we could eliminate multiple APM and infra monitoring tools.
I would not include products like BigPanda, MoogSoft, in this analysis. They are not monitoring solutions but event correlation solutions. You will need additional monitoring products to capture data and feed them. Having said that if you cannot consolidate tools you will likely need to purchase an event solution to make sense of all the alarms. We did evaluate these products but with Dynatrace AI did not feel the business value was there for the investment.
Here's a quick pro/con list on Dynatrace & New Relic from our analysis.
New Relic Pros: Insights is an awesome product and capability. Lots of capabilities and plugins to extend data collection. The APM dashboard is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. Good training and documentation are available to support the product.
New Relic Cons: Requires lots of manual configurations to implement and support. Insights product requires an investment of time to achieve value. Licensing is a nightmare as there is virtually no transparency in what you are being charged for. Lack of solution to consolidate alerts across implementation other than significant investment in insights to manually achieve this.
Dynatrace Pros: Very simple to implement and maintain with out of the box automation which supports modern (cloud/Kubernetes) and "old" (mainframe). In-app chat is helpful. High integration of infra and APM data for full-stack observability and engineering. Topology and trace discovery is more reliable than other products or our CMDB. Synthetics are easy to set up for any user. AI-assisted problem analysis on the trace discovery streamlines troubleshooting. AI includes "events" in an analysis like VMotion, deployment events. Have not done yet but looking to leverage monitoring as code for a fully integrated and automated delivery pipeline. See keptn.sh open source project.
Dynatrace Cons: User SQL lacks some functions of NRQL for user analysis. Host, process, and service data is not available to query within the product. Alarm processing lacks some granular controls. The Plug-in library is less robust.
Good luck with your decision!
We are currently going through a paper-based analysis to select an Enterprise APM solution.
Our Contenders are
1. Dynatrace
2. Cisco(AppDynamics)
3. Broadcom DX-APM
Shortlisted based on existing relationships with other products and services they provide.
We discounted New Relic- despite their growing capability - as they are yet to enter the enterprise APM solution scene.
With regards to your response "We eliminated Datadog due to a lack of real user monitoring and AppD based on experience and licensing .." :
Will you be willing to expand on Appd - what was your experience and issues w.r.t licensing. These could help us with our evaluation. Much appreciated. Regards Adrian
Could you please share your requirements ? There are a lot tools can be added to the list. I spent almost 6 months to test and check many tools then I select eG enterprise.
Thanks