CA App Synthetic Monitor vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

Broadcom and Instana are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Broadcom is ranked #68, while Instana is ranked #29 with an average rating of 8.0. Broadcom holds a 0.5% mindshare in APM, compared to Instana’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of Instana users who would recommend it.

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Read 3 CA App Synthetic Monitor reviews

778 Views
762 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

Instana Dynamic APM

Read 14 Instana Dynamic APM reviews

2,116 Views
2,053 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Instana Dynamic APM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

CA App Synthetic Monitor and Instana Dynamic APM compete in the application performance monitoring space. CA App Synthetic Monitor leads in deployment ease and customer service, while Instana Dynamic APM excels in features and long-term value based on user reviews.

Features:CA App Synthetic Monitor is known for its straightforward monitoring capabilities, robust alerting system, and simplicity. Instana Dynamic APM is praised for its comprehensive monitoring features, automatic root cause analysis, and dynamic capabilities for complex environments.

Room for Improvement:Users suggest CA App Synthetic Monitor could benefit from improved customization options, enhanced integration capabilities, and more intuitive interfaces. Instana Dynamic APM reviewers indicate a need for a more intuitive learning curve, better documentation, and improved integration with third-party tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:CA App Synthetic Monitor is highly rated for its simplicity in deployment and responsive customer support. Instana Dynamic APM, while feature-heavy, has a steeper deployment learning curve but offers satisfactory customer service. The clear edge in deployment ease goes to CA App Synthetic Monitor, while both products are comparable in support.

Pricing and ROI:CA App Synthetic Monitor is noted for its cost-effectiveness and reasonable ROI. Instana Dynamic APM, despite higher initial setup costs, provides higher ROI through its advanced features. Users feel the investment in Instana is justified for its comprehensive benefits over time.

To learn more, read our detailed CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM

March 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

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

68th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

29th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 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 Instana Dynamic APM is 1.1%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Instana Dynamic APM	1.1%
CA App Synthetic Monitor	0.5%
Other	98.4%

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.

Read full review

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan

IT Consultant at Arcana Info

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…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From our experience, it really helps managers in measuring application SLAs and viewing historical performance data."

"Each had strengths in one area or another, but CA covered the majority of our needs end-to-end."

"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."

"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable, and in case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out, drilling down to the application to understand what's going on and where the issue is."

"It's a good tool to implement across the board if you can make it into your images or as part of your configuration management tool."

"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."

"It's great for monitoring services and applications."

"It is user-friendly, but we encounter issues processing input and understanding the graphics, such as seeing a flatline without knowing the cause. When these problems occur, I have to contact my support team to address and fix them. Also, monitoring processing is good."

"It is a stable solution."

"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."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

Cons

"Pricing makes little sense. We had examples where it would be cheaper to have two basic accounts than one intermediate."

"The RBMS component is limited as you can only record using Internet Explorer."

"We should be able to go back to scenarios during or before the issue. There should be something like a history playback. Such a feature or functionality would be good."

"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."

"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."

"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."

"The API monitoring aspect could be better."

"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."

"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."

"PHP was less stable. The coverage of Python versions was maybe less than it could be, but we didn't have any stability issues with Python, as such."

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."

"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"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 solution's pricing is comparable to other products."

"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."

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."

"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."

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885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

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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.

See all answers

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.

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What is your primary use case for Instana Dynamic APM?

We use the solution to monitor the platform. If an issue arises, like a user experiencing errors, we can identify general errors and investigate specific secure areas to ensure the application runs...

See all answers

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Compared 21% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Datadog vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 7% of the time

New Relic vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 6% of the time

Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 6% of the time

More Instana Dynamic APM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

March 2026

Download CA App Synthetic Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM

March 2026

Download Instana Dynamic APM 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

Instana’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated Application Performance Monitoring, discovers and maps all services, infrastructure, and their inter-dependencies automatically. Instana ingests all observability metrics, traces each request, profiles every process, and updates application dependency maps in real-time to deliver the context and actionable feedback needed by Dev+Ops to optimize application performance, enable innovation, and mitigate risk to help them add value and efficiency to the pipeline. Learn more at https://instana.com.

Instana

Sample Customers

Lexmark

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

Buyer's Guide

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM

March 2026

Free Report: CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM

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