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Alluvio Aternity vs Instana Dynamic APM 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

Alluvio Aternity
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
32nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (4th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (6th)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Alluvio Aternity is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Caillin Peacock - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to be a lot more agile and proactive in troubleshooting endpoint issues thanks to accurate UX scoring
There are many valuable features. If I had to single out one, it would be the UXI score. That's a proprietary Aternity score that tells you how good or bad the experience is for a user on that particular machine, for a particular app. It neatly encapsulates the pain of the user in a single score. It's very easy to find issues and then drill down further into those issues, based on that score. A lot of tools will do a similar thing, but they will do it indirectly and it's not always relevant. The Aternity score is on the money pretty much every time. The Digital Experience Index (DXI) feature is also very valuable. We've incorporated it into the KPIs for our endpoint team. We can use that as a benchmark to improve our goals and our environment, and for ongoing life cycle improvement.
Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand
Our company uses the solution for one of our bank clients. We use App Connect middleware to monitor services and applications such as Docker, Kubernetes, MongoDB, and MS SQL Server. We also monitor the bottleneck for all servers.  We currently have 20 users at one of our branches. We plan to expand…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"DEM-Q (Digital Experience Management Quadrant) is very useful. This is where they stand out with their dashboard, because it gives us a picture of how our company is doing compared to the other businesses out there."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting. As soon as we click on an incident, it takes us directly to the problematic PC. It's a direct solution. We click on an alert and it takes us to the incident details. The details show in different colors, in a graphical representation, and I like that the most."
"The user experience it provides is the most valuable feature for us."
"Other features we use heavily are the WiFi analyzer, the Skype for Business analyzer, and the troubleshooting functionalities. We also use the Device Health quite religiously here for troubleshooting devices that are unhealthy, when we're talking about things like high CPU or memory consumption, or file system problems within the users' workstations."
"There are also built-in activities that let you measure things like preview mail, open address book, and send mail. Those are the activities that we are able to get measurements on, and those are things we have not seen in other software monitoring tools."
"It is useful for working out whether there are any issues in the network or between the endpoints. It is also useful for working out any performance issues. It has been useful for a lot of stuff around Teams. Our customers like to know what's happening with Teams when they call in. It is helpful for easily profiling users. It records all the applications that are being used for each user, and you can see what users are doing. It is very good in terms of performance. You don't have to wait forever to try and get reports or results. It is quite quick to get everything that you need out of the software."
"The most valuable feature for us is trend analysis, particularly with device-help type of events and computer help events, such as blue screens, application errors, and application crashes."
"Desktop monitoring, and being able to understand the performance of applications that runs on the desktop."
"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."
"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."
"It's great for monitoring services and applications."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."
"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."
 

Cons

"The other place for improvement, as an on-prem, non-SaaS customer, is that the system administration and management in Aternity are very difficult. They've even told me that most of their support calls come in due to configuration and system administration on their on-prem. Their on-prem solution is not easy to use."
"The thing that I think most companies like ourselves would want would be an easier way to customize custom scripts."
"When it comes to what is called creating signatures, it's not easy for a non-coding person for desktop applications. You need to run the recording and you need to have some exposure and knowledge. That is an area where they can improve. For web applications, they have the Web Activity Creator and that's an awesome and easy tool. Anybody can use it and capture the signatures. With the desktop applications it's a little more cumbersome and difficult."
"The only thing I can say which has been frustrating are the Tableau workspace/dashboard options out-of-the-box, at least prior to version 8."
"Its user interface and features should be improved. They don't support new versions of certain Linux editions. That is one of the reasons why we have to move to another solution."
"I think the workflow needs improvement"
"Being able to add custom monitoring to dashboards would be nice. Right now, if you want to monitor the value of a registry key on your systems, to get that added into the dashboard you have to reach out to Aternity so they can start looking for that value. It would be interesting if that were more of a self-serve function."
"Reliability: Issues interfering with the deployment and use of the product has made its use reduced in scope."
"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."
"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"
"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is definitely a premium solution; it is not an inexpensive product. We have to ensure that we are getting the most out of it in order to justify the cost. However, it is not cheap, especially when you want to install it on all your endpoints."
"The pricing is fair."
"It's not a cheap product. There are no two ways about that. If you compare it with a couple of the other solutions operating in the space, it might be on the slightly more expensive side, but it is one of those tools where, once you've got it, you understand the true value. You will get that money back."
"Its licensing cost is very low. That's one of the reasons why we have kept it for so long. We get more than a 70% discount on the maintenance licenses. Its cost is very low for us, but if you buy it new, it would be much more expensive at the retail price."
"The pricing is reasonable for the value that it gives because it does allow you to measure the cost ramifications of direct productivity loss for spends in both your infrastructure and on endpoints."
"The solution's price is pretty comparable to the industry."
"We always try to reduce costs and purchase the Alluvio Aternity Essentials license."
"If the scale of your monitoring will be to go everywhere in an organization, a site license is key."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"Pricing is quite competitive. Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic were all several times more expensive than Instana, both the on-prem and the SaaS versions. Price-wise they are a lot more competitive than anyone else out there."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"Its pricing isn't a big pain point. Its pricing seems to be better than some of the other competing products in the market, but they also have some of the features and functionalities that are better than Instana."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

APM tools for a Managed Service Provider - Dynatrace vs. AppDynamics vs. Aternity vs. Ruxit
Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your focus on SMBs and enterprises in Israel, Dynatrace seems like a solid choice with...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aternity?
The solution's price is pretty comparable to the industry.
What do you like most about Instana Dynamic APM?
The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Instana Dynamic APM?
I rate the pricing a seven out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the product.
What needs improvement with Instana Dynamic APM?
Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring.
 

Also Known As

Aternity, Workforce APM, Aternity Frontline, Riverbed SteelCenter Aternity
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Maersk, SwissRe, Travis Perkins, Michelin, National Instruments, Simmons & Simmons, Lighthouse Guild
Daxko Lifts Fitness Studios Through COVID Regulations with Quick Engineering PivotsAltissia Meets SLAs to Support Student DeadlinesImmocloud Unlocks Observability to Modernize Real EstateEnento Group Boosts Service Reliability with Real-Time Visibility into Application Performance Instana’s Observability for Amazon EKS Helps Yara Deliver Digital Farming Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Alluvio Aternity vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.