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

Splunk AppDynamics vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
Splunk AppDynamics enhances productivity and efficiency with faster issue resolution, cost reduction, and improved application performance and customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.9
Organizations saw improved visibility, productivity, and efficiency, with reduced downtime and costs using Splunk Observability Cloud, enhancing KPIs.
According to errors, exceptions, and code-level details related to their application performance on a daily basis, the application development team tries to help with Splunk AppDynamics to reduce errors and exceptions, which helps the end users get application availability and feel more confident.
To understand the magnitude of it, when the company asked to replace Splunk AppDynamics with another tool, I indicated that for the proposed tool, we would need five people to do the analysis that Splunk AppDynamics enables me to do.
It's very hard to find ROI because we are currently focused only on the on-premises applications.
Using Splunk has saved my organization about 30% of our budget compared to using multiple different monitoring products.
Anyone working in front-end management should recognize the market price to see the true value of end-user monitoring.
I have definitely seen a return on investment with Splunk Observability Cloud, particularly through how fast it has grown and how comfortable other teams are in relying on its outputs for monitoring and observability.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Splunk AppDynamics is praised for responsive support, though some users note room for improvement post-acquisition.
Sentiment score
7.1
Splunk Observability Cloud support is generally responsive but can be slow, with improvement needed, especially in the APAC region.
AppDynamics is much more helpful.
We got a contact, an account manager, to work directly with for technical support.
They help us resolve any issues raised by our team relating to operations, application instrumentation, or any other issues.
On a scale of 1 to 10, the customer service and technical support deserve a 10.
They have consistently helped us resolve any issues we've encountered.
They often require multiple questions, with five or six emails to get a response.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Splunk AppDynamics is adaptable and efficient for scaling, but pricing and microservices monitoring present challenges despite valuable insights.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Observability Cloud is scalable and flexible but can be costly, with challenges in data ingestion and implementation.
We have reached maximum capacity in our tier, and extending capacity has not been cost-effective from Splunk's perspective.
I would rate the scalability of Splunk AppDynamics as a nine out of ten.
I assess how Splunk AppDynamics scales with the growing needs of my organization as good, since we are growing and adding more servers.
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
As we are a growing company transitioning all our applications to the cloud, and with the increasing number of cloud-native applications, Splunk Observability Cloud will help us achieve digital resiliency and reduce our mean time to resolution.
I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk AppDynamics is highly stable with minimal downtime, responsive support, and consistent performance, scoring 7-10 in stability.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Observability Cloud is highly stable, rated 8-10/10 for reliability, with minor issues usually from user configurations.
It is necessary to conduct appropriate testing before deploying them in production to prevent potential outages.
There are no issues or bugs with the 20.4 version; it is very stable with no functionality or operational issues.
I can rate it nine out of ten.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
Unlike NetScout or regular agents for APM, RUM has many problems during the POC phase because customer environments vary widely.
 

Room For Improvement

Splunk AppDynamics needs improvements in UI, ease of use, integration, and cost-effective scalability to enhance user experience.
Splunk Observability Cloud requires improved integration, scalability, cost-effectiveness, ease of use, monitoring features, customization, and enhanced customer support.
Splunk AppDynamics does not support the complete MELT framework, which includes metrics, events, logging, and tracing for the entire stack.
If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems.
A good integration with Splunk would be very interesting, as Splunk is a good product for logs, and that part is currently missing in Splunk AppDynamics.
The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders.
The next release of Splunk Observability Cloud should include a feature that makes it so that when looking at charts and dashboards, and also looking at one environment regardless of the product feature that you're in, APM, infrastructure, RUM, the environment that is chosen in the first location when you sign into Splunk Observability Cloud needs to stay persistent all the way through.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find Splunk AppDynamics expensive, with complex licensing; comprehensive features may justify costs, but smaller firms struggle.
Splunk Observability Cloud offers advanced features but can become costly as data volume and infrastructure needs grow.
We completed a three-year deal for Splunk and for AppDynamics, which costs millions of dollars.
Customers have to pay a premium price, however, they receive considerable value from the product.
All these solutions at the moment are cheap, but it is like paying for insurance; you pay insurance to avoid major damage.
Splunk is a bit expensive since it charges based on the indexing rate of data.
It is expensive, especially when there are other vendors that offer something similar for much cheaper.
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
 

Valuable Features

Splunk AppDynamics provides comprehensive monitoring, user-friendly interface, and efficient root cause analysis for application environments and business transactions.
Splunk Observability Cloud offers seamless data integration, real-time insights, and efficient monitoring, enhancing performance visibility across diverse environments.
We have multiple tools, but end users prefer to use Splunk AppDynamics because their portal navigation is very simple and clear.
The feature that I appreciate in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is the intuitive and user-friendly dynamic mapping it creates for workflows.
What I like the most about Splunk AppDynamics is the end-to-end observability for the application, along with traces.
Splunk provides advanced notifications of roadblocks in the application, which helps us to improve and avoid impacts during high-volume days.
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
 

Categories and Ranking

Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
252
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (3rd)
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th), Container Management (7th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 4.0%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.9%, up from 1.0% 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 AppDynamics4.0%
Splunk Observability Cloud1.9%
Other94.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Gyanesh Rahatekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Application performance management and error resolution improved with data-driven insights
Dynatrace has multiple functions compared to Splunk AppDynamics, so Splunk AppDynamics should add those functions, which are not available as of now. Dynatrace has a universal agent that collects all information related to their CI, and if one CI has multiple languages, then there is no need to instrument multiple agents. However, Splunk AppDynamics requires multiple agents; if I have one server with multiple applications in different languages, then I need to instrument different agents for each application. Splunk AppDynamics should work with Dynatrace with one single universal agent that works with all application languages, eliminating the need for multiple implementations.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
867,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business54
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise188
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise44
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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 do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk AppDynamics vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
867,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.