Security
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Datadog is one of the most highly rated tools for network monitoring, application performance monitoring & log analysis. The platform is highly rated by engineers for its wide range of useful features, high integrability and support of both custom configurations and reporting dashboards.
Datadog’s pricing plans split out their offerings of infrastructure monitoring, network monitoring, APM, container monitoring, log management and security monitoring into separate packages so tailoring this solution to fit an entire organisation’s IT needs across a wide range of use cases can quickly become expensive.
Unfortunately, whilst being a favourite tool of many developers and ops engineers, there are a large number of users who run into issues with scale and affordability over time. Add this together with users who experience initial difficulty with onboarding and configuration, this leads many users to look for alternatives to Datadog each month.
Because of these significant factors around price and data growth, current Datadog users (or those still considering all of their available monitoring options) may wish to broaden their knowledge by learning more about the best alternatives to Datadog and the various other Datadog competitors currently operating.
In this guide, we’ve gathered information on some of the most commonly compared alternatives to Datadog for your convenience.
Contents
1. Solarwinds
Solarwinds provides solutions for not only network and infrastructure monitoring but also offers features for the monitoring of IT systems in general through their various products. You may have heard of their other solutions previously which operate under the name Papertrail & Loggly.
If we compare Solarwinds vs Datadog based upon their strengths and reputation as security service and monitoring providers there may be many users who would immediately flag Solarwinds negatively because of their relatively recent data breach without knowing that Datadog themselves also suffered a breach, albeit, this was back in 2016.
When comparing Solarwinds against Datadog we found that Datadog is rated higher for server monitoring performance, ease of deployment, integration with sources and higher availability of support documentation (scores sourced from Gartner).
Key Features:
- Storage resource monitor
- Application management
- Database management
- ITSM Platform
- IT Security
2. Splunk
Splunk is one of the most notable data analysis platforms in the marketplace and with integrations for PagerDuty, Wazuh, GuardDuty, OverOps and Rsyslog it is has shown itself to be highly interoperable with the majority of security tech stacks used by engineers today.
When it comes to making the comparison between Splunk vs Datadog, it is important to consider that Splunk is very well suited for enterprise use cases where a single organisation may wish to monitor in excess of 100,000 devices.
If we look at feedback from real users across a range of criteria comparing Splunk vs Datadog we can see that Splunk is rated higher for its ability to monitor networks, hypervisors and their understanding of customer needs (scores sourced from Gartner).
Key Features:
- Infrastructure monitoring
- Collect and index data
- Analyse and monitor
- Application delivery
- Compliance
3. AppDynamics
AppDynamics is a full-stack application performance management (APM) tool that was acquired by Cisco in January 2017. For new users considering whether or not to make the choice between Datadog vs AppDynamics, we’ve compiled some of the leading benefits that Appdynamics has shown significant strength in demonstrating.
These include a higher rating on their overall range of features (Source: Capterra), the availability of in-person training options & (according to Stackshare) real-time business transaction monitoring which Datadog does not currently mention on their comparison page.
Users across engineering forums have also mentioned in previous years that AppDynamics had much less of a significant learning curve for new users to navigate in order to successfully onboard onto this platform
Key Features:
- Application performance monitoring
- Business performance monitoring
- Infrastructure monitoring
- End-user monitoring
- Database monitoring
4. New Relic
New Relic offers AIops, APM, distributed tracing, browser monitoring, infrastructure monitoring and synthetics monitoring to over 10,000 companies around the world.
Whilst Datadog’s APM has many strengths, when we compared these two platforms we noted that based on user feedback comparing New Relic vs Datadog that New Relic is rated higher overall than Datadog at 4.6 stars and was particularly rated higher for their technical support and platform training (scores sourced from Gartner).
In terms of which company has been operating the longest, New Relic takes the lead on Datadog as the former platform was created all the way back in 2008 compared to Datadog’s 2010 founding date. Both New Relic & Datadog offer log management and integration with sending logs from the main cloud service providers, such as AWS & Microsoft Azure.
Some engineers have warned of burnout that they experienced due to New Relic's lack of onboarding support with one engineer stating that it took three engineers an entire year to completely onboard the solution.
Key Features:
- Proactive anomaly detection
- Incident intelligence events
- Unlimited querying
- Synthetics checks
5. Logit.io
The Logit.io platform provides a scalable alternative to Datadog by offering affordable log management, infrastructure monitoring and application performance monitoring within a single centralised data platform that offers easy to understand and fully transparent billing.
Compared to Datadog, Logit.io is currently rated 5 out of 5 stars on Software Advice compared to Datadog’s 4.5 score. The Logit.io platform also includes hosting for the following fully-managed open-source software: ELK (consisting of Elasticsearch, Logstash & Kibana), Grafana & Open Distro for Elasticsearch.
Key Features:
- Unlimited users
- No vendor lock-in
- No data egress fees
- Unlimited querying
- Database monitoring
- Overusage protection
- Easy to understand billing
- Autoscaling open platform
- Fully managed upgrade paths
- Two-factor authentication (2FA)
- Enterprise uptime SLAs available to 99.999%
- Highly available data centres in EU, UK and US regions
6. Dynatrace
Dynatrace provides a software intelligence monitoring tool that aims to simplify cloud monitoring to accelerate troubleshooting and error resolution for engineers.
We discovered based on feedback from real users comparing Dynatrace vs Datadog that Dynatrace is rated higher than Datadog for their quality of technical support and end-user training. Both of these tools were given the same scores on ease of deployment and quality of their peer user communities (scores sourced from Gartner).
Key Features:
- Complete dependency mapping
- Infrastructure monitoring
- Automatic entity model
- Business analytics
- AIOps
- APM
7. LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor offers users a fully automated observability platform that is built with monitoring datacenters as the primary focus of their solution.
We found that based on previous reviews comparing LogicMonitor vs Datadog that LogicMonitor is rated more favourably than Datadog for ease of use and value for money. Both tools were given the same score of 4.5 out of 5 stars on overall functionality and customer support (scores sourced from Software Advice).
LogicMonitor’s platform is well known for its ability to cater to managed service providers (MSPs) by offering fully automated hybrid monitoring for complex IT environments, it may be little known but Datadog also offers its solutions to MSPs via their partners page so it seems that the solutions are evenly matched on this particular benefit.
Key Features:
- Dynamic services monitoring
- Configuration monitoring
- Database monitoring
- Monitor 199 devices
- Dashboards
8. Honeycomb
Honeycomb is a platform for monitoring production servers, distributed services and troubleshooting the user experience of your services and applications.
When comparing Honeycomb vs Datadog we found that Honeycomb is rated higher for ease of use, customer service, features and value for money so this platform may be well worth considering as an alternative to Datadog (scores sourced from Capterra).
Unlike many providers in this space Honeycomb provide overusage protection (as Logit.io does also), which means that if you do happen to go over your plan limits, your data will not be automatically lost as they give users a grace period to resize their plan upwards.
Key Features:
- Query result permalinks
- Open telemetry support
- Activity & team history
- Distributed tracing
- Unlimited triggers
- Single-Sign on
If you enjoyed this article then why not take a look at our in-depth guide on the top 60 log management solutions?