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Platforms like New Relic simplify enterprise cloud complexity, accelerating digital transformation, and simplifying cloud management. Their company serves over 10,000 businesses worldwide with AIops, distributed tracing, browser monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and synthetic monitoring solutions.
As a result of New Relic's lack of onboarding support, some engineers have complained about burnout while implementing the solution. Due to this, we will examine how the most significant rivals to New Relic rank. We will also analyse the leading New Relic alternatives based on their user ratings and key features.
Contents
1. Datadog
Datadog is an observability solution that allows for log, metrics and trace data to be collected centrally for analysis. In addition to its wide range of features, Datadog supports a wide range of native integrations and user customisations.
When comparing New Relic vs Datadog based on real user feedback over a range of criteria, it is evident that New Relic is rated slightly higher at 4.5 (Source: Capterra). New Relic is also rated higher for the quality of end-user training and quality of technical support.
Key Features:
- Map hosts and containers
- Anomaly detection
- Forecast monitoring
- Notebooks
- Alerting
2. Dynatrace
For engineers, Dynatrace offers a cloud monitoring and error resolution tool that simplifies troubleshooting and error resolution for cloud environments. As a result of comparing real user feedback for Dynatrace vs New Relic, we have discovered that Dynatrace has been rated equally to New Relic, netting a score of 4.5 for each solution. (scores sourced from Gartner).
Key Features:
- Dependency mapping in full
- Infrastructure monitoring
- Automated entity modelling
- Business Analytics
- AIOps
- APM
3. Splunk
There is no doubt that Splunk is one of the most notable data analysis platforms on the market. A key factor to consider when comparing Splunk with New Relic is that Splunk is well-suited for enterprise use whereas New Relic may be more affordable to smaller businesses.
According to user feedback comparing Splunk vs. New Relic, New Relic received a higher rating than Splunk at 4.5 in comparison to Splunk’s score of 4.2 (scores sourced from Gartner).
Key Features:
- Monitoring dashboards for compliance and auditing
- Issue identification and monitoring
- Infrastructure monitoring
- Data collection and indexing
4. AppDynamics
Microservice architectures often create visibility silos, AppDynamics offers a solution that eliminates these silos by offering full-stack observability.
Comparing AppDynamics vs New Relic, we can observe that both solutions score 4.3. Between the two, AppDynamics takes the lead for being rated higher on product direction, while New Relic was rated higher on ease of admin and setup.
Key Features:
- Monitor the performance of applications
- End-user monitoring system
- Infrastructure monitoring
- Database monitoring
5. Sentry
Using Sentry, you can identify errors and performance bottlenecks within your code. Sentry's distributed tracing service not only tracks separate services or applications but also stitches together related user instances from different sources.
In a comparison of Sentry vs New Relic based on real user feedback, New Relic seems to be rated higher at 4.5. Sentry is rated higher for a few specific features including ease of integration using standard APIs and tools as well as the availability of 3rd-party resources. (scores sourced from Gartner).
Key Features:
- Identify slow database queries
- Keep track of performance issues
- Identify poor API calls
6. Logit.io
When compared as a New Relic alternative, Logit.io offers an easier onboarding experience and easy-to-understand and transparent billing as well as log management, infrastructure monitoring, and application performance monitoring, all in one centralised location. Compared to New Relic, Logit.io is currently rated 5 out of 5 stars on Software Advice and Gartner compared to New Relic’s score of 4.5.
Key Features:
- Unlimited users
- Overuse protection
- Easy-to-understand billing
- Upgrade paths that are fully managed
- Logging, metrics, and tracing in one place
- High-availability global data centres
- Fast and knowledgeable support engineers
- Proactive support
7. Prometheus
Prometheus is a popular metrics-based monitoring stack for monitoring dynamic cloud environments. Through using Prometheus, it is possible to monitor both highly dynamic containers and bare server-based applications seamlessly. If we compare New Relic vs Prometheus we would find that New Relic is rated higher than Prometheus at 8.5 out of 10. It is important to remember that New Relic is a popular solution among enterprise organizations, whereas Prometheus is more popular with small firms due to the open-source nature of Prometheus.
Key Features:
- Time-series metrics are supported
- Dedicated query language
- Rich data models
- Highly available
8. Grafana
Due to its ability to visualise metrics, monitor them, and create alerts, Grafana is a favourite tool for metrics analysis. This analytics software can be used independently or in conjunction with other services such as Loki and InfluxDB. To facilitate cross-team collaboration, Grafana supports a variety of charts, graphs, and tables that you can use to create shareable metrics reports.
Our comparison of Grafana vs New Relic reveals that both solutions are rated 4.5 stars (according to Gartner). It is worth noting that Grafana would be more suitable for users who are used to hosting their own open-source solutions (unless they would be willing to use hosted Grafana to avoid future issues with scaling).
Key Features:
- Data source plugins
- Annotate graphs
- Built-in alerting
- Transform data
9. Cloudwatch
AWS CloudWatch monitors AWS cloud resources and applications running on AWS. Monitoring log files, collecting metrics, and setting alarms can all be done with Amazon CloudWatch. In addition to monitoring Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon DynamoDB tables, and Amazon RDS DB instances, AWS CloudWatch can also collect custom metrics generated by applications and services. Comparing New Relic vs Cloudwatch, we can observe that both solutions score 4.5 (via Gartner). Between the two, Cloudwatch takes the lead for being rated higher on its quality of technical support.
Key Features:
- Manage container and Lambda metrics
- Composite & high-resolution alarms
- Aggregate and stream metrics
- Log storage
10. Nagios
Using Nagios' open-source log monitoring solution, users can monitor logs across a variety of applications and operating systems. PagerDuty, OpsGenie, Flowdock, VictorOps, and ElementaryOS are some of the third-party tools that can integrate with Nagios. Nagios's ability to scale can be particularly difficult, which is one of the most common complaints from users. Comparing New Relic vs Nagios based on feedback from real users, we see that Nagios scored higher at 4.6 over New Relic’s score of 4.5 (scores sourced from GetApp). Notably, Nagios was rated higher for being better value for money and easier to use than New Relic.
Key Features:
- Monitoring applications
- Windows monitoring
- Linux monitoring
- Log monitoring
11. Bugsnag
For mobile apps, Bugsnag offers best-in-class error monitoring and reporting features. Any bug or error will be alerted to users using this tool. Bugsnag captures errors in web, mobile, and back-end applications, allowing users to immediately visualize the impact on their systems. When comparing New Relic vs Bugsnag we see that Bugsnag scored higher at 4.7 over New Relic’s score of 4.5 (scores sourced from GetApp). Both New Relic & Bugsnag were rated equally for their overall range of features and for their customer support services.
If you found this article informative then why not read our guide to Elasticsearch vs Splunk or all about the best Splunk alternatives next?