Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Akamai mPulse vs Dynatrace comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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
55th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
359
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 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 Dynatrace is 6.0%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dynatrace6.0%
Akamai mPulse0.6%
Other93.4%
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.
Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are a worldwide company and we need to have a solution with good performance which the solution is providing us with; it has helped our company."
"It provides real-time monitoring for performance and availability of specific portions of the website without a significant data overhead."
"It provides a great overview for management regarding user experience."
"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."
"Enables dynamic injections from within the product which is great."
"It’s a very good product for performance tracking, I haven’t used many others, so I can’t comment on a competitive level."
"There's a good relationship between the price and the licences."
"The most valuable feature is the solutions overall performance. It is very efficient and accurate for our usage."
"It has been doing a good job of alerting us to issues; it has been very helpful and effective at identifying how we can do things to make our infrastructure and application a little better."
"Whether it is the server, database, network, or application, Dynatrace provides a consistent unambiguous view of performance."
"Dynatrace gives us a live view on our multi-tiers application."
"It provides a better understanding of what is going on."
"This solution has helped us with faster identification of the root cause, allowing faster resolution and increased uptime."
"Dynatrace has allowed us to pinpoint quickly any pain points our clients experience with our applications and respond accordingly."
"The "holy grail" has always been the ability to decompose response time and Dynatrace has done that and integrated all of my APM needs in one tool."
"I would definitely recommend this solution, because it has all of the new features coming with Dynatrace OneAgent."
 

Cons

"They work very well, only thing is they need more time to improve and fix all the issues."
"The solution didn't help us much and that's the reason we never used mPulse on a full scale and why we chose to go with Dynatrace."
"In the next release, I would like to see the possibility of sharing the metric from this solution with other solutions."
"The end-to-end distributor tracing connectivity isn't there."
"Scalability to larger volume of data seems to be hit or miss."
"It needs a more intuitive GUI and more customization options."
"I don't think the limitations are technical at this point, honestly. My limitations are more to do - and maybe it's because of the nature of the job I have - but they have to do with pricing."
"I was hands on in the setup of the solution. Initially, it seemed a little daunting."
"Dynatrace needs to improve its configuration."
"​The AppMon 6.5 is problematic in configuring. It is little finicky. When we configured the JVM, it did not work."
"Enterprise application monitoring for synthetic, as is, only captures http/https transactions."
"The heavy client is not really user-friendly and the concepts (while powerful) are unintuitive."
"Possibly include some network monitoring capabilities."
"Sometimes it is hard to find the right setting for what you want to change."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"​I would recommend doing a PoC."
"It's expensive."
"Financially Dynatrace was a lot more expensive than AppDynamics."
"​A Dynatrace partner will always be willing to give you a trial. Go through the trial to see if there is a benefit for your company."
"While it is quite good in respect to its functionality, there are few area in regards to pricing that they can look at how to possibly change. I have heard it's costly."
"Dynatrace is bit costly and not easily affordable."
"The limitations I see are more to do - and maybe it's because of the nature of the job I have - but they have to do with pricing. It's a little bit pricey. It's a very good tool. It's worth the price, to a certain degree. But it's hard to justify when it's that costly."
"Dynatrace is the most expensive APM that we sell, compared to competitors' products. The license pricing could be improved. My customers pay for licensing yearly."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
885,286 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise299
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

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
Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai mPulse vs. Dynatrace and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,286 professionals have used our research since 2012.