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CA Application Delivery Analysis [EOL] vs Dynatrace comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Application Delivery Ana...
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dynatrace
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
359
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (2nd), Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1237194 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Director, DevOps at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Good monitoring functionality, but technical support and integration with other products need to be improved
My biggest complaint about ADA is that you have to rely on dedicated appliances. For CA Spectrum, the integration of this product is something that needs to be improved. Even some of their point products to not integrate very well, and ADA is one of them. The user interface needs to be improved. Technical support needs to be improved.
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

"Once it is setup and seeing traffic, it is an impressive tool to show potential problems long before the general users are complaining."
"The pricing is relatively low compared to other solutions in this area, and I'd go so far as to say it's even significantly less than the competition."
"Technical support is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the fault management monitoring."
"Dynatrace was the perfect fit."
"I would give Dynatrace's technical support a 100% rating. I feel like whenever I call or send an email that I get the right person automatically. For the most difficult answers, the most I have to wait is about three days and the answers have been relevant."
"With the Agent-less monitoring and ability to create custom plugins we've been able to transform the tool not just into a great APM solution, but a really good Enterprise Monitoring solution too which helps replace the need for other tools such as SCOM, OpenView, SiteScope, etc."
"Prior to the use of Appmon, our team was in the dark; we had zero visibility into our production application, and it would take up to days to find out why our clients were being impacted and how, but since Appmon has been leveraged, we are now down to just hours (sometimes minutes) in resolution times."
"PurePath view of methods and the call stack are extremely valuable for troubleshooting and performance review."
"I'm also involved on the practical side, putting in all the automation, that automation platform. To have a tool like Dynatrace, where I don't have to work out for hours how to configure and set up alerts and monitoring - especially in a solution that is not completed yet - it's not only a major time-saver, but I know going forward that it will be able to learn how the system operates. Day one, we're getting all of that stuff for free, out-of-the-box."
"Whether it is the server, database, network, or application, Dynatrace provides a consistent unambiguous view of performance."
"It is useful for analytics, web performance, end-to-end coverage of a user experience, and database analytics, and it is absolutely a monitoring tool that is worth having, with the visibility it provides being a unique feature of this product."
 

Cons

"Hard to setup right, hard to get the conversations right."
"Upgrades can be quite complex."
"It is not the best product on the market, but it is better than the competition if you were comparing prices."
"The user interface needs improvement."
"My biggest complaint about ADA is that you have to rely on dedicated appliances."
"I think Dynatrace can be improved in dashboard creation, as this is the face of a product."
"I have run into AppMon causing issues. There have been a lot times when I have waited for a release, AppMon does the release, then it ends up taking down our application."
"The extending of Dynatrace with plugins can be better."
"​I would like to see single pane monitoring."
"The new Managed Edition is too complex. I feel like a fish out of water."
"RFAs submitted via the forum need to be answered or resolved quickly."
"They're doing vulnerability assessments of the application stack by using OneAgent. It's a never-ending story if you are trying to be sure your application is also secure."
"The web-based UI needs to be improved. The client seems to be heavy on laptops and desktops."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an expensive solution and there is a single price to pay for licensing, with no options."
"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."
"Just go with Dynatrace. Just start with Dynatrace. Do not go into AppMon. Start with Dynatrace, because AppMon is going to give you so much extra stuff that 99% of your user base will not need it, including yourself."
"Price (of the product) is a major concern for all the clients I work with."
"They could improve their price ranges, as there is no option for startups or testing."
"The price range is quite high."
"The product is definitely worth taking a look at. Be aware that it is probably more pricey than other options on the market, but there are a lot of capabilities. Dynatrace has an eye toward the future and the computing and monitoring needs that we are gonna need for the cloud. ​"
"​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 is not bad, but it could be better."
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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 ADA, Application Delivery Analysis, NetQoS SuperAgent
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ERGO
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 Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: June 2026.
903,996 professionals have used our research since 2012.