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CA App Synthetic Monitor 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

CA App Synthetic Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
69th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
3
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 July 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of CA App Synthetic Monitor is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dynatrace is 5.2%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dynatrace5.2%
CA App Synthetic Monitor0.5%
Other94.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2286675 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
A reliable solution for SSL offloading and to encrypt outside traffic
If you are responsible for monitoring the logs in F5, it isn't very easy. The format is complicated compared to different vendors. For example, Fortinet and Cisco have feasible formats for sending and fetching logs. Suppose I'm monitoring the logs and everything, and when I am retrieving logs from F5, I want to know whether it is regular traffic or any abnormality is happening. The logs itself is not user-friendly. It may not give you a clear way of what's happening. You have to go through different websites and work on it. You have to waste so much time on it.
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

"Each had strengths in one area or another, but CA covered the majority of our needs end-to-end."
"From our experience, it really helps managers in measuring application SLAs and viewing historical performance data."
"Email alert and mobile app alert are very useful for informing the team that something is going wrong."
"The main benefit right now is that we really know how production is behaving at any point in time and if we need to scale; we can be more proactive versus reactive, serving our customers."
"We monitor end-to-end availability of the application and deep dive PurePath analysis of real user visits."
"We are able to drill down and detect what the problems are; providing high-quality performance monitoring."
"We serve multiple customers and everyone wants to use Dynatrace, and it has paid for itself because we can now figure out issues so much quicker."
"It collects and analyses information with AI, which is useful."
"The daily metrics which help us analyze the page composition and the corresponding performance metrics so we can quickly and easily determine when something has changed, to aid in root cause analysis."
"The move valuable feature is the AI engine, which is amazing."
 

Cons

"The RBMS component is limited as you can only record using Internet Explorer."
"Pricing makes little sense. We had examples where it would be cheaper to have two basic accounts than one intermediate."
"The web-based UI needs to be improved. The client seems to be heavy on laptops and desktops."
"I need more experience.​"
"You have got cloning at one level, but it would be nice to have cloning at deeper levels."
"Pricing and the license model could be improved."
"Setting up the thresholds and alerting, it is complicated to understand their use cases."
"We need more AI in the product to avoid manual analysis."
"The one area that we get value out of now, where we would love to see additional features, is the Session Replay. The ability to see how one individual uses a particular feature is great. But what we'd really like to be able to see is how a large group of people uses a particular feature. I believe Dynatrace has some things on its roadmap to add to Session Replay that would allow us those kinds of insights as well."
"They expect the customer to do the basic analysis, do all the solutions, and find the solutions themselves. If it is really a product problem, only then will they be able to identify and spend time on the customer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The only limitation with scaling to cloud-native environments is licensing. It all depends on how many DEM units you're willing to license. The more of DEM units that you purchase, the more user data you can collect."
"The solution has saved us money through the consolidation of tools. With a hybrid landscape, we had multiple tools. When we consolidated, we removed four or five other monitoring tools with one. For the last ROI calculation that I did, Dynatrace was saving us up to $500,000 per year."
"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."
"Look at the product and the product features, not the price. Too often people look at the price and turn away. Dynatrace costs a little bit more than the other products I researched, but it can do far more.​"
"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."
"We license it for two environments, typically all of production and all of one lower environment, usually our staging environment. If there is a downside to Dynatrace, the only thing I can think of would be the cost. If it were cheaper, I'd have it in all my environments. I don't think they're charging more than it's worth, by any means. It's just that good software costs money."
"​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."
"The pricing and licensing are very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
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...
 

Also Known As

CA ASM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark
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 CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Dynatrace and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,146 professionals have used our research since 2012.