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Checkmk vs Datadog comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Checkmk
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
15th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
27th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
19th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (11th)
Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Checkmk is 4.1%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 6.5%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog6.5%
Checkmk4.1%
Other89.4%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1704309 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Administrator at a construction company with 201-500 employees
Utilizing data monitoring capabilities and scripting potential to optimize system management
I frequently program functions with PowerShell, and although Bash could be used, my specialization is in PowerShell. Two of us focus on programming in PowerShell for infrastructure optimization. I set up a dedicated server to run scripts every hour, generating files for Checkmk output. However, Checkmk does not allow running scripts at varying intervals. I am working on this in the raw version of Checkmk.
Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger
Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling
Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Checkmk was built on a platform that was user-friendly, and I could build my charts easily."
"The initial setup of Checkmk was easy...It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable features of Checkmk are its resource monitoring, infra monitoring, and log factor configuration."
"Checkmk helps me compare data and foresee issues."
"We can monitor multiple sites using the product."
"The alerting system in Checkmk really works properly."
"I really like the auto-discovery feature."
"It's versatile, scalable, and easier to use compared to other solutions like Nagios and OMD."
"When I reflect on the ways we used to track down issues, I can't imagine how we ever managed before Datadog."
"Even if we don't end up using Datadog, it revealed problems and optimizations to us that weren't obvious before."
"I really enjoy the RUM monitoring features of Datadog. It allows us to monitor user behavior in a way we couldn't before."
"The solution is sufficiently stable."
"Datadog has allowed us to ensure that we can look at how our beta testers are using our new UIs and seeing where their frustration points are, which has been important to us."
"The initial setup was straightforward from my own experience, helping integrate within the application and service levels."
"It is easy to implement and scale applications with standardized visibility, monitoring and alerting"
"We integrate our application logs. It is great to be able to tie our metrics and our traces together."
 

Cons

"I think that the integration and the exporting of the data collected are areas where Checkmk lacks but should try to improve the most."
"It is easy for tech-savvy people, but newcomers might find it intimidating."
"Sometimes we receive alerts, and it can become annoying when you acknowledge an alert. It is very clunky when you acknowledge the alert. The process is not very intuitive, and there are instances where it feels a bit cumbersome to acknowledge an alert."
"If an alert is generated for a specific pattern in the log, and if Checkmk catches that log, it will stay there even after the alert is resolved."
"The main challenge for us is that we're moving from Nagios to Checkmk, and we're still getting used to the new way of working."
"In Checkmk, the documentation can probably be improved a bit more."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"Checkmk does not work too easily with the PowerStore. I use a PowerShell script as Checkmk runs on Linux and a Windows system, connecting with the Checkmk agent."
"Datadog has a lot of features kind of cramped into one dashboard. It's quite hard to get around what feature does exactly what. There was a steep learning curve, trying to navigate through menus."
"The largest pain point we've had with Datadog to this point was onboarding."
"We'd like to see more advanced incident management capabilities integrated directly into the platform."
"When I started using it years ago, it had stability problems. I remember, specifically, we ran everything in Docker containers. There were some problems getting it into a Docker container with very specific memory limits."
"Interactive tutorials could be a game changer."
"Datadog is expensive."
"Lacks some flexibility in the customization."
"Ingesting data from various sources to monitor the log metrics of the system can always improve so that, if something goes wrong, the right teams are alerted."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is affordable."
"The price of Checkmk is cheaper compared to other enterprise products."
"Checkmk is a fairly reasonably priced solution."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"Pricing and licensing are reasonable for what they give you. You get the first five hosts free, which is fun to play around with. Then it's about four dollars a month per host, which is very affordable for what you get out of it. We have a lot of hosts that we put a lot of custom metrics into, and every host gives you an allowance for the number of custom metrics."
"The price is better than some competing products."
"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"Pricing is somewhat affordable compared to other solutions but in order to really lower the costs of other products you need to plan very carefully your resources usage, otherwise, it can get expensive real quick."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Checkmk?
I will get more information about Checkmk when the proof of concept is done. It's going to be before the summer. There will be a report about the tool and a recommendation to use it. So far, it loo...
What is your primary use case for Checkmk?
Checkmk ( /products/checkmk-reviews ) is a monitoring tool, so that's what I will use it for. Right now, it's not in production, but it's in a proof of concept phase. It looks good, so probably, du...
What advice do you have for others considering Checkmk?
I would rate Checkmk an eight out of ten, not knowing the final report.
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...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmk vs. Datadog and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,515 professionals have used our research since 2012.