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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
17th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
24th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (10th)
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
6.9
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (3rd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Checkmk is 2.4%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 5.6%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog5.6%
Checkmk2.4%
Other92.0%
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

"The alerting system in Checkmk really works properly."
"Overall, from one to ten, I rate Checkmk a nine."
"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 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 most valuable features of Checkmk are its resource monitoring, infra monitoring, and log factor configuration."
"We can monitor multiple sites using the product."
"Checkmk helps me compare data and foresee issues."
"The feature I have found most valuable is when I can reuse existing monitors and alerts for new dashboards."
"Features-wise, I'd give them a rating of ten out of ten."
"Being able to filter requests by latency is invaluable, as it provides immediate insight into which endpoints require further analysis and optimization."
"Being able to click on a UI and be pointed to the exact source of the problem is like magic."
"Datadog's seamless integration with Slack and PagerDuty helped us to receive alerts right to the most common notification methods we use (our mobile devices and Slack)."
"I have found error reporting and log centralization the most valuable features, and overall Datadog provides a full package solution."
"Additionally, integrations with, for example, GCP, Network, component, and Software providers are much easier as everything is now centralized."
"Datadog has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to gather complete data instead of looking all over the place at incomplete data and actually make pointed determinations for fixing issues."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"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."
"In Checkmk, the documentation can probably be improved a bit more."
"Checkmk does not allow running scripts at varying intervals."
"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."
"The Log Explorer could be better. I don't think it has log manipulation as Splunk does."
"Another issue that I have is with the search syntax, it could be simpler and it feels like there are too many ways to do the same things."
"Datadog could be improved if the menu system was a little clearer and less cluttered, making it easier to navigate."
"Managing dashboards as IaC is a bit hard to work out at times."
"More granular control over dashboard sharing. Timeboard sharing."
"Some of the interface is still confusing to use."
"We would really like to see more from the Service Catalog."
"Datadog could be improved if it could detect other software in a container or server."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Checkmk is cheaper compared to other enterprise products."
"The product is affordable."
"Checkmk is a fairly reasonably priced solution."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"​Pricing seems reasonable. It depends on the size of your organization, the size of your infrastructure, and what portion of your overall business costs go toward infrastructure."
"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."
"I am not satisfied with its licensing. Its payment is based on the exported data, and there was an explosion of the data for three or four weeks. My customer was not alerted, and there was no way for them to see that there has been an explosion of data. They got a big invoice for one or two months. The pricing model of Datadog is based on the data. The customer was quite surprised about not being alerted about this explosion of data. They should provide some kind of alert when there is an increase in usage."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing 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 Business82
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise100
 

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: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.