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Akamai mPulse vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai mPulse
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
53rd
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
259
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Akamai mPulse is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 3.6%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk AppDynamics3.6%
Akamai mPulse0.6%
Other95.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Arivu Arumugam - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Lacking in regard to observation of the entire platform but does dynamic injections from within
There is little that's unique about mPulse but since the solution is part of Akamai, you can do dynamic injections from within the product which is a great feature. the UI is quite good. It offers a basic set of features but nothing unique other than that as part of Akamai, you can do dynamic injections.
DK
Technology lead at Infosys
Has enabled us to detect issues instantly through alerts and monitor every service from a single dashboard
Splunk requires significantly more improvements compared to Splunk AppDynamics, specifically regarding the licensing aspect. Splunk renews licenses every six months, which is inconvenient. It would be better to have a one-year license to avoid needing to update keys constantly, which can only occur on weekends, making it a burdensome task. Although Splunk is better for certain use cases, Splunk AppDynamics is broader in functionality. Specifically, I want enhancements related to creating dashboards not only for logs or minor services but also for configuration levels, allowing us to check configurations immediately without manually opening the entire code when exceptions arise—a feature I wish to see improved in Splunk, although it may not be necessary for Splunk AppDynamics.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the solutions overall performance. It is very efficient and accurate for our usage."
"Enables dynamic injections from within the product which is great."
"The initial setup is simple."
"Provides monitoring more around business processes versus just servers, applications, etc. E.g., with complex systems, where a business process passes across multiple applications, the business needs us to monitor the heath of the process, not just a segment of the application."
"We were able to correct problems, which led to an increase in availability, time savings, and performance for our solutions."
"We're a large organization, so we appreciate AppDynamics' wide coverage. It may not work in all areas, but it has broad coverage. We can use the same dataset for different use case aspects. That is the beauty of AppDynamics. You can coordinate APM, EUM, and infrastructure through one dataset."
"The most valuable features of AppDynamics Database Monitoring are you can configure the performance and see in real-time what is exactly happening with the applications. Additionally, the dashboards are good."
"It is a stable solution."
"We set up alerts recently so we can fix any issues more quickly in production."
"The dashboards are very well-defined."
 

Cons

"The end-to-end distributor tracing connectivity isn't there."
"In the next release, I would like to see the possibility of sharing the metric from this solution with other solutions."
"The GUI can be overwhelming at first to a novice Dev or Ops support person, and the possible root causes of an issue do not bubble up to the first screen you see."
"The tool should provide information like the number of connections and processes utilized in real time."
"The overall performance of this solution could be improved. The hot-hot infrastructure features could also be improved."
"I believe they need to increase their level of visibility in the infrastructure, particularly in the infrastructure monitoring section, which currently lacks visibility."
"They could align the product strategy to evolve as a complete solution."
"There are certain limitations with the agents in the solution"
"There could log management features included in the product."
"It could be more user-friendly for beginners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"For those who appreciate the value and had issues with the visibility of the performance of their applications, then the pricing is good. For somebody who does not need it, it can be pricey, but overall, it is worth the money which it costs."
"I was not involved with the procurement of AppDynamic, but I believe it's expensive."
"The pricing for AppDynamics Server Monitoring in Africa and the Middle East is too expensive, so it's very hard to sell it to customers. If there could be different pricing or package for the region, that would be great. My company pays for the license of AppDynamics Server Monitoring on a per-agent, per-server basis. It's $700 to $1000 per server, and it's paid annually. My company is on a subscription model for the solution. On a scale of one to five, where one is expensive and five is cheap, my rating for the price of AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a two."
"The licensing scheme is very complex. They need to make it easier."
"We buy the platform's yearly subscription."
"We find its pricing reasonable and competitive. After it was acquired by Cisco, we found it acceptable."
"The pricing is quite comparable to similar solutions in the market. All these solutions at the moment are cheap, but it is like paying for insurance; you pay insurance to avoid major damage."
"AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring does have licensing cost associated with it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise194
 

Questions from the Community

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Any advice about APM solutions?
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 monitor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?
I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need ...
 

Also Known As

SOASTA mPulse
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nordstrom, Gatwick, DirecTV, MSN, SquareSpace, SAP, Lenovo, Hallmark, myspace, Intuit, Kentucky Derby, Toys "R" Us, Netflix, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Lowe's, Nike, REI, Apple, Sears, Verizon, Wendy's, Huawei
Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai mPulse vs. Splunk AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,036 professionals have used our research since 2012.