Akamai mPulse vs Dynatrace comparison

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Akamai mPulse

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Dynatrace and Akamai mPulse are both performance monitoring solutions. Users report a preference for the extensive capabilities of Dynatrace, while Akamai mPulse is noted for its robust real-user monitoring features.

What features are offered by Dynatrace in comparison to Akamai mPulse?

Dynatrace users appreciate its AI-driven problem detection, automated root cause analysis, and proactive system management. Akamai mPulse is valued for its real-time user monitoring, deep analysis of user experience, and live performance tracking.

What areas of improvement can be found in Dynatrace in comparison to Akamai mPulse?

For Dynatrace, areas needing improvement include cost management, configuration settings, and the need for enhanced user-friendly configuration. Akamai mPulse users seek better data visualization, integration with third-party tools, and improved integration capabilities.

How is the ease of deployment and customer service of Dynatrace in comparison to Akamai mPulse?

Dynatrace is straightforward to deploy due to its automated setup and comprehensive support. Akamai mPulse is more complex in its deployment process but receives high marks for responsive and knowledgeable customer service.

What setup costs and ROI can be seen with Dynatrace in comparison to Akamai mPulse?

Dynatrace users report higher setup costs but justify this with strong ROI due to its extensive feature set and automation. Akamai mPulse users find it more affordable initially but note that the ROI depends heavily on the specific use case.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai mPulse vs. Dynatrace Report (Updated: June 2026).

Akamai mPulse vs. Dynatrace

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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

58th

Average Rating

6.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

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 (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Akamai mPulse is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dynatrace is 5.3%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dynatrace	5.3%
Akamai mPulse	0.6%
Other	94.1%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Arivu Arumugam

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.

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Manish Indupuri

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"It provides real-time monitoring for performance and availability of specific portions of the website without a significant data overhead."

"The most valuable feature is the solutions overall performance. It is very efficient and accurate for our usage."

"It provides a great overview for management regarding user experience."

"Enables dynamic injections from within the product which is great."

"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."

"There's a good relationship between the price and the licences."

"It’s a very good product for performance tracking, I haven’t used many others, so I can’t comment on a competitive level."

"This tool enables us to make intelligent, fact-based decisions faster."

"Being able to have that visibility and that insight into what is going on for our customers was immensely valuable across the board from the development perspective all the way through to higher level business people."

"With AppMon, looking at the translation flows and the PurePaths, we can with one or two members can identify and start to find where the problem is."

"It functions well, we are getting good support, and it gives us everything that we were looking for from it."

"This solution is perfectly stable. The main feature with this solution is that you do not need to do a lot stuff. Everything is being done by the tool itself. Everything is in there for you. There is nothing much needed from your resources; it is all in there."

"It has an integration with ServiceNow, which is great. Dynatrace creates tickets for things and its AI finds root cause. We have integrated that with our ServiceNow to generate events and incidents, so that all of our event management will be done in the ServiceNow Developer."

"The benefits we receive using this tool increase productivity, which increase revenue for the state."

"Being able to get down to the individual code level to see where transactions are taking time. It has helped troubleshoot issues immensely and other tools can't provide this."

More Dynatrace pros

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see the possibility of sharing the metric from this solution with other solutions."

"Scalability to larger volume of data seems to be hit or miss."

"The end-to-end distributor tracing connectivity isn't there."

"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."

"It needs a more intuitive GUI and more customization options."

"With Dynatrace we need to upgrade and restart often. New Relic is more stable than Dynatrace."

"The dashboard tool needs to be improved. We need more options, because the look and feel is too old-fashioned."

"The usability is worse than it used to be."

"Filters should have a “negative” option."

"Needs more compatibility of platforms out-of-the-box."

"Our main problems have been that it has a high learning curve to it. I've used it for about three years now and I'm still learning it. There are some videos and there is some documentation out there, but it still requires you to delve into the tool to learn it. A little bit more comprehensive self-paced training would help."

"We're developing more and more microservices and, each time, for an AppMon license, you have to deploy it, you have to configure it, you to get charged for it. It's very time-consuming."

"AppMon is lacking the AI that can be found in Dynatrace Managed."

More Dynatrace cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"We have not fully been able to get the full value out of the product. It is expensive compared to other things that we have had in the past. Paying that much and not being able to get the full return on the product is a downgrade. "

"Dynatrace is bit costly and not easily affordable."

"I would recommend doing a PoC."

"Always gives good ROI and total cost of ownership."

"Dynatrace's pricing for their consumption units is rather arcane compared to some of the other tools, thus making forward-looking calculations based on capacity planning quite hard."

"There are additional Professional Services costs which ensure the solution is configured with meaningful names so you're getting the most money for your investment."

"Pricing is still too expensive."

"There is time savings. People's times have been cut in half using this solution because we were previously doing a lot of that manual work. Now, it's a lot more automated, and the data is just there."

More Dynatrace pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	80
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	299

Questions from the Community

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

New Relic vs Akamai mPulse

Compared 12% of the time

OpenText Real User Monitoring vs Akamai mPulse

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Akamai mPulse

Compared 6% of the time

Grafana vs Akamai mPulse

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Akamai mPulse

Compared 5% of the time

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Datadog vs Dynatrace

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Dynatrace

Compared 5% of the time

New Relic vs Dynatrace

Compared 4% of the time

Avantra vs Dynatrace

Compared 3% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Dynatrace

Compared 3% of the time

More Dynatrace Competitors

Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Download Akamai mPulse product report

Download Dynatrace product report

Also Known As

SOASTA mPulse

No data available

Overview

Akamai mPulse delivers real-time data on web performance, helping businesses optimize user experience to drive engagement.

Designed for performance analytics, Akamai mPulse offers in-depth insights into user interactions with digital assets. By monitoring real-time performance metrics across devices, it delivers actionable data that supports enhanced decision-making processes, enabling improved site efficiency.

What are the key features of Akamai mPulse?

Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant performance insights to address issues promptly.
User Journeys: Tracks detailed user interactions, offering a comprehensive view on user behavior.
Customizable Dashboards: Lets users tailor data displays for specific needs and focus areas.
Anomaly Detection: Identifies and alerts deviations in normal performance metrics.
Advanced Analytics: Delivers data-driven insights for strategic planning and optimization.

How does Akamai mPulse improve ROI?

Reduced Downtime: By promptly identifying and resolving performance issues, availability remains high.
Enhanced User Satisfaction: Optimized load times and performance boost user engagement and retention.
Data-Driven Decisions: Insightful analytics guide strategic initiatives, fostering growth.
Cost Efficiency: Identifying inefficient areas allows targeted improvements and cost reductions.

In e-commerce and media industries, Akamai mPulse is often utilized to ensure seamless user experiences, crucial for retaining customers and viewers. This is achieved by leveraging its robust data analytics to fine-tune web performance, meeting industry-specific demands for speed and reliability.

Akamai

Dynatrace offers AI-driven root cause analysis, full-stack observability, and more. Its seamless integration and automated alerts enhance operational efficiency for application performance monitoring across diverse environments.

Dynatrace provides users with comprehensive tools for proactive monitoring, leveraging AI-powered insights to detect bottlenecks and monitor user behavior. It enhances system dependency visualization via Smartscape and offers deep transaction insights through PurePath. Session Replay captures real user experiences, while custom dashboards emphasize essential metrics. Integration capabilities and seamless deployment are key, though users face challenges with navigation, integration, and licensing. Enhancing third-party training tools and optimizing real-time AI diagnostics is desired, with demands for better database monitoring reports and simpler UI.

What are Dynatrace's key features?

AI-Driven Root Cause Analysis: Identifies issues with precision.
Full-Stack Observability: Monitors across all platforms.
Smartscape: Visualizes system dependencies.
PurePath: Provides transaction flow insights.
Session Replay: Captures user interactions.
Custom Dashboards: Focuses on essential metrics.
Automated Alerts: Minimizes downtime.

What benefits should users consider?

Operational Efficiency: Enhances performance management.
Seamless Deployment: Reduces manual intervention.
Integration Capabilities: Ensures smooth system coexistence.
User Experience Insights: Tracks behavior and reliability.

Dynatrace is implemented in industries like finance for monitoring infrastructure and user experience. In manufacturing, it helps ensure system reliability. Its AI-driven approach is crucial for cloud deployments, supporting performance optimization and proactive monitoring.

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

Akamai mPulse vs. Dynatrace