Amazon CloudWatch vs FileAudit comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IS Decisions are both solutions in the Log Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.9, while IS Decisions is ranked #55. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.7% mindshare in Log Management, compared to IS Decisions’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IS Decisions users who would recommend it.

Amazon CloudWatch

Read 48 Amazon CloudWatch reviews

5,745 Views
3,275 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

FileAudit

Read 3 FileAudit reviews

1,441 Views
821 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon CloudWatch

FileAudit

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

FileAudit and Amazon CloudWatch compete in the monitoring and logging category. Amazon CloudWatch holds the upper hand with its robust capabilities and comprehensive feature set, despite its higher complexity and cost.

Features: FileAudit offers ease of use, efficiently monitors file access and changes, and provides a straightforward pricing model. Amazon CloudWatch provides detailed performance insights across AWS resources, offers extensive integration capabilities, and features comprehensive monitoring that addresses diverse operational needs.

Room for Improvement: FileAudit could benefit from more advanced reporting, enhanced integration capabilities, and improved scalability for larger operations. Amazon CloudWatch users find its setup complex, face a steep learning curve, and desire simplified configurations for better usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FileAudit is known for its quick setup process and responsive customer service. Deploying Amazon CloudWatch is challenging due to extensive configuration options, yet its customer support is reliable for those familiar with AWS services.

Pricing and ROI: FileAudit users favor its transparent setup costs and tangible ROI through efficient file monitoring. Amazon CloudWatch, though more costly, offers significant ROI potential via its expansive feature set, making it appealing for organizations with substantial AWS infrastructure investments.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon CloudWatch vs. FileAudit Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch vs. FileAudit

April 2026

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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

Amazon CloudWatch

Ranking in Log Management

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (21st), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)

FileAudit

Ranking in Log Management

55th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (60th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.7%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FileAudit is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Amazon CloudWatch	1.7%
FileAudit	0.6%
Other	97.7%

Log Management

Featured Reviews

Azam S M

Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC

Has provided reliable monitoring and alerting through extensive metric tracking and dashboard configuration

Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch. We are also integrating Grafana with the application itself to get the application data and logs. Alternatively, there is AWS Kinesis and Glue where you can scrape the logs and have visualization, but a more easy option is Grafana. If you want to get a proper visual representation to see what is happening, then you need to integrate a third-party tool. Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.

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AntoSebastin

Cyber Security Consultant - APAC at Logon Software

A scalable SIEM solution for monitoring a user's activity in the file server

The most valuable features of the solution are its quick and simple features related to advanced permissions for files, allowing for what permission needs to be granted to the users when it comes to the monitoring folder in the solution. If someone who has been denied permission to use a particular folder tries to go to that folder, then the administrator gets a notification. In general, the administrator can easily gather and maintain records if a person who has been denied permission to a particular confidential folder tries to access it.

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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

"The solution offers very detailed metrics for their services."

"The scalability of Amazon CloudWatch rates as high scalability, scoring a perfect ten."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and UI."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."

"It's stable, the performance is good, it's reliable, there are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."

"There is a clear return on investment, as you can reduce a lot of manual staff and physical staff monitoring by getting CloudWatch to do that work for you and save a lot based on that."

"The monitoring feature is valuable."

"The most valuable features of Amazon CloudWatch are metrics, dashboards, alarms, logs, events, logs insight, and application insights."

More Amazon CloudWatch pros

"It is a good and stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

"Our customer acquires the complete report which is kept for future auditing purposes."

"Alerting upon file changes is the most valuable aspect of the product."

"Our customer acquires the complete report which is kept for future auditing purposes."

"FileAudit has helped our client to bring order to the day-to-day management of these folders, through the use of information triggers that inform department managers of both file obsolescence and changes made by employees."

Cons

"It's not an advanced way of monitoring."

"Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool."

"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."

"Better reporting is always something needed. That could be an answer to just about anything. But you always want better reporting, better dashboards, things that are just more dynamic and more accessible."

"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."

"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."

"This product lacks some features: real-time data stream monitoring, application performance monitoring, mobile app monitoring, and live dashboards. Its workflows also need improvement."

"I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing."

More Amazon CloudWatch cons

"Whenever someone cuts and paste, it shows as "file is deleted"."

"The DLP function, including installation of the agent on the workstation and controlling the DLP restrictions, are areas where the product lacks."

"Whenever someone cuts and paste, it shows as "file is deleted"."

"The updates management and central management console could be improved."

"Whenever someone cuts and paste, it shows as "file is deleted"."

"The updates management and central management console could be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"It’s an open-source solution."

"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."

"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."

"The price is okay for me."

"The product's cost is relatively inexpensive."

"What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us."

"We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."

More Amazon CloudWatch pricing and cost advice

"FileAudit provides a trial license for 30 days, and after that, customers can choose between perpetual licensing or the annual-based licensing option offered by FileAudit."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Transportation Company

Computer Software Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	24

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?

No specific setup costs were mentioned.

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What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?

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What is your primary use case for Amazon CloudWatch?

Amazon CloudWatch is a very small service that AWS provides. It is a monitoring service for applications within the AWS cloud, and we can integrate external applications using the APIs or SDK. The ...

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Comparisons

Grafana Loki vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 6% of the time

Zabbix vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 4% of the time

Datadog vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 4% of the time

Dynatrace vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 4% of the time

More Amazon CloudWatch Competitors

Fortinet FortiSIEM vs FileAudit

Compared 19% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs FileAudit

Compared 9% of the time

ManageEngine File Audit Plus vs FileAudit

Compared 6% of the time

Power Admin PA File Sight vs FileAudit

Compared 5% of the time

Snare vs FileAudit

Compared 5% of the time

More FileAudit Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch

April 2026

Download Amazon CloudWatch product report

Buyer's Guide

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

April 2026

Download FileAudit product report

Overview

Amazon CloudWatch integrates seamlessly with AWS, providing real-time monitoring and alerting features. Its interface supports task automation, enhancing troubleshooting and analytics capabilities, while offering strong security and scalability at a cost-effective rate.

Amazon CloudWatch is an impactful platform for monitoring AWS resources and managing application performance. It simplifies infrastructure performance monitoring by providing comprehensive analytics capabilities, including application insights and event scheduling. Users appreciate CloudWatch for its detailed metrics, dashboards, and support in issuing alerts to detect anomalies. It efficiently tracks performance, optimizes resource utilization, and ensures service availability. CloudWatch is recognized for its robust alerting features and integration with other AWS services, further supporting its resource monitoring capabilities. However, there is room for improvement in dashboard customization, log streaming speed, and integration with non-AWS services. Enhancements in API integration, machine learning features, and support for third-party tools are also desired.

What features does Amazon CloudWatch offer?

Seamless Integration: Works effortlessly with AWS for cohesive service management.
Advanced Metrics: Provides detailed monitoring of CPU, memory, and more.
Real-time Monitoring: Offers up-to-the-minute alerts on infrastructure status.
Dashboards: User-friendly and informative for quick insights.
Automation: Supports task automation for efficient troubleshooting.

What benefits does Amazon CloudWatch provide?

Cost-effectiveness: Efficient resource monitoring without high costs.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing infrastructure needs.
Security: Strong protocols for safe monitoring activities.
Improved Performance: Enhances application insights and operational efficiency.
Operational Insights: Provides comprehensive logging and performance analysis.

Industries implementing Amazon CloudWatch often focus on optimizing IT infrastructure. Companies in sectors like finance and e-commerce rely on its monitoring and alerting capabilities to ensure service uptime and performance. The platform's automation and analytics features empower teams to proactively manage performance and detect potential issues promptly.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Agentless, remote and non-intrusive, FileAudit offers a simple more user-friendly way to safeguard and secure file access in a Windows environment. FileAudit provides real-time monitoring and alerting on all access (or access attempts). FileAudit also implements contextual functions such as mass access and alteration alerts, tracking source IP address information for remote data access, and providing granular time and date alerting parameters to monitor folder and file access at unusual or unexpected times.

IS Decisions

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus

CommuniCare Health Centre, DP World, BAE Systems, Moet Hennessy, Ernst & Young, Honda, Volswagon, VTech, GlakoSmithKline, Lockheed Martin, US Navy, University of Alabama, Ministry of Interior Saudi Arabia, Total

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch vs. FileAudit

April 2026

Free Report: Amazon CloudWatch vs. FileAudit

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