CA App Synthetic Monitor vs IBM Instana Observability comparison

Broadcom and IBM are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Broadcom is ranked #47 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #41 with an average rating of 8.0. Broadcom holds a 0.1% mindshare in APM, compared to IBM’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Read 3 CA App Synthetic Monitor reviews

321 Views
318 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

IBM Instana Observability

Read 3 IBM Instana Observability reviews

750 Views
750 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CA App Synthetic Monitor

IBM Instana Observability

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 2025

CA App Synthetic Monitor and IBM Instana Observability compete in the IT monitoring solutions category. While CA App Synthetic Monitor offers strong pricing and support, IBM Instana Observability is a more robust solution with advanced features, justifying its higher price point.

Features: CA App Synthetic Monitor provides synthetic transaction monitoring, detailed alerting, and robust reporting functionality. IBM Instana Observability offers real-time monitoring, focuses on automation, and delivers AI-driven insights for deeper analysis and proactive issue resolution.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CA App Synthetic Monitor has a straightforward deployment model minimizing time to value and provides responsive customer service. IBM Instana requires a more complex initial deployment, which may take extra time, but the highly automated setup brings long-term efficiency and excellent customer service.

Pricing and ROI: CA App Synthetic Monitor offers a cost-effective setup and satisfactory ROI through its competitive pricing and comprehensive features. IBM Instana's higher initial investment is offset by a greater ROI due to superior monitoring and automation benefits, offering strong returns from enhanced performance and insights.

To learn more, read our detailed CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability

July 2025

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Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

47th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM Instana Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

41st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of CA App Synthetic Monitor is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

reviewer2286675

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.

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Tomas Kim

Managing Director at BA Solutions

Not expensive and offers good performance

The most valuable feature of the solution is performance. A one-vendor solution serves as a good feature of the tool. In the IT industry, the IT support team has lots of vendors to contact. DB monitoring is done by one company, while WaaS monitoring is done by another and done by another company, which makes it really complicated for the IT team concerned about the security levels. The tool's main feature is that it is a one-vendor solution. The analysis done by the tool is a good feature. The tool is used as an open-source tool. The tool is growing, and new features are being added to the product.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Hospitality Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CA App Synthetic Monitor?

The product comes with expensive annual licenses. The product is very good, very reliable but it costs a lot. Barracuda offers the same kind of services at a lower price.

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What needs improvement with CA App Synthetic Monitor?

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What is your primary use case for CA App Synthetic Monitor?

If you are sending mail or browsing anything, you don't want to send your traffic without encryption. We use SSL for traffic encryption and ASM for SSL offloading. It is a proxy server for SSL. The...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?

The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive.

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What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?

The tool should offer more LDR AI models. The monitoring is just a status, but the next level of a monitoring solution is to prevent an accident or stop an accident status. The solution should be t...

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What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?

Before IBM, I ordered our company's engineer to have a look at the tool and test it. I think it was two years ago, the transfer to IBM happened in our company. At the beginning, IBM Instana Observa...

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Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

August 2025

Download CA App Synthetic Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

August 2025

Download IBM Instana Observability product report

Also Known As

CA ASM

No data available

Overview

IT organizations require full visibility into business-critical applications regardless of where they're hosted in order to maintain service levels and proactively deal with issues before the end-user is impacted. CA App Synthetic Monitor uses synthetic transactions to provide performance insight for these applications no matter where they're hosted: outside the firewall, in the cloud or delivered via a managed service provider (MSP). Delivered as software as a service, CA App Synthetic Monitor provides end-to-end transaction response time visibility into cloud, mobile and traditional web applications using synthetic transactions delivered by a network of 95 monitoring stations across six continents, 48 countries, 93 cities and 15 time zones.

Broadcom

IBM Instana Observability offers real-time application monitoring and management, designed for automation and intelligence on modern cloud-based environments.

IBM Instana Observability provides deep visibility into application performance, empowering businesses with automated root cause analysis and intelligent alerts to optimize cloud-native applications. It captures and visualizes comprehensive health metrics to enhance operational efficiency across distributed systems, making it an invaluable tool for IT and DevOps teams seeking to improve application reliability and performance.

What are the key features of IBM Instana Observability?

Automatic Discovery: Identifies application components and dependencies without manual configuration.
Real-Time Monitoring: Delivers live data for instant visibility across application metrics.
AI-Powered Root Cause Analysis: Quickly pinpoints issues to reduce downtime and enhance user experience.
Intelligent Alerts: Provides actionable insights, minimizing false alarms.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with popular DevOps tools.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating IBM Instana Observability?

Increased Productivity: Reduces manual monitoring efforts, enhancing team efficiency.
Enhanced Performance: Improves application responsiveness and user satisfaction.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes resource allocation, leading to reduced operational costs.
Scalable Solutions: Adapts to growing business needs, ensuring long-term value.
Detailed Insights: Offers granularity in monitoring, aiding in swift decision-making.

IBM Instana Observability is widely adopted across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, addressing specific challenges in each sector. In finance, it helps manage high-volume transactions with minimal latency. Healthcare benefits from its compliance support and reliable data monitoring. Retail industries utilize it for maintaining seamless customer interactions and operational uptime, ensuring business continuity and customer satisfaction.

IBM

Sample Customers

Lexmark

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability

July 2025

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