Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Checkmk vs Datadog comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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
11th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
13th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (5th)
Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Checkmk is 5.6%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 10.2%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Paolo Sala - PeerSpot reviewer
A reasonably priced tool for system and application monitoring
The main room for improvement is in the solution's presentation and the integration area. In our company, we use the integration capabilities from ServiceNow. We also have another big monitoring solution in place in our company, which is Dynatrace. At the moment, there doesn't exist an out-of-the-box integration for Dynatrace. I think that the integration and the exporting of the data collected are areas where Checkmk lacks but should try to improve the most. The only implementation of Checkmk that allows high availability is the virtual appliance that has the option for the availability of a different box. Otherwise, you have to find a way to implement it manually with some custom solution, which could be an improvement.
Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Checkmk are its resource monitoring, infra monitoring, and log factor configuration."
"The initial setup of Checkmk was easy...It is a very stable solution."
"Checkmk was built on a platform that was user-friendly, and I could build my charts easily."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it has a lot of different pieces, and they all work together...It is a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The alerting system in Checkmk really works properly."
"I really like the auto-discovery feature."
"Checkmk helps me compare data and foresee issues."
"It's versatile, scalable, and easier to use compared to other solutions like Nagios and OMD."
"Datadog has made it much easier to have a central place for people to look for logs and made it much easier to notify them of any elevated error rates or failures."
"The feature I've found most valuable is the log search feature."
"Dashboards and their versatility are among the most valuable features."
"The most valuable features of Datadog are the flexibility and additional features when compared to other solutions, such as AppDynamics and Dynatrace. Some of the features include AI and ML capabilities and cloud and analysis monitoring"
"The pricing model makes more sense than what we paid for against other competitors."
"The solution is sufficiently stable."
"This is definitely a good product and I would consider them one of the leaders within the application monitoring and cloud monitoring space."
"Profiling has been made easier."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"In Checkmk, the documentation can probably be improved a bit more."
"Checkmk does not allow running scripts at varying intervals."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"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."
"It is easy for tech-savvy people, but newcomers might find it intimidating."
"I think that the integration and the exporting of the data collected are areas where Checkmk lacks but should try to improve the most."
"I'm still exploring the trial version, and it is fine. One thing that I haven't been able to figure out is how to retrieve a report. This is something that could be improved. I probably need to navigate to a place to access the reports."
"We need more visibility into the error tracking dashboard."
"All solutions have some area to improve, and in Datadog they can improve their overall technology moving forward."
"They could enhance the alerting functions by creating a new feature to add direct SMS notifications, on-call rotation scheduling, etc., that could replace the need to have this as an external third-party solution integration."
"They should continue expanding and integrating with more third-party apps."
"We have recently had a number of issues with stability and delays on logging, monitoring, metric evaluation, and alerts."
"Datadog is too pricey when compared to its competitors, and this is something that its always on my mind during the decision-making process."
"In production, we intend to use trace IDs generated by RUM to attach to support tickets when a user experiences a traceable network error, and we want to display this trace ID to the user so if they were to contact us about a specific issue, they can provide us an exact ID displayed to them back to us. Currently, this is not possible out-of-the-box client-side without inventing our own solution for capturing these trace IDs, such as shimming the native fetch or returning the ID from the service response."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Checkmk is a fairly reasonably priced solution."
"The product is affordable."
"The price of Checkmk is cheaper compared to other enterprise products."
"The tool is open-source."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."
"This solution is budget friendly."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Checkmk?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that it has a lot of different pieces, and they all work together...It is a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
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...
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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.