Datadog vs Elastic Observability comparison

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56,987 views|37,430 comparisons
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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Datadog and Elastic Observability based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Performance Management (APM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Datadog vs. Elastic Observability Report (Updated: March 2023).
690,226 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
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 are the dashboards and the reporting.""The monitoring functionality, in general, and tagging infrastructure are great.""We integrate our application logs. It is great to be able to tie our metrics and our traces together.""Because of our client focus, it is easy for us to sell. This is because it is easy to use and easy to set up.""Datadog is providing efficiency in the products we develop for the wireless device engineering department.""The ease of correcting these dashboards and widgets when needed is amazing.""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).""The management of SLOs and their related burn-rate monitors have allowed us to onboard teams to on-call fast."

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"The solution allows us to dig deep into data.""It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible.""The solution has been stable in our usage.""Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution.""The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests.""We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical.""Elastic APM has plenty of features, such as the Elastic server for Kibana and many additional plugins. It's a comprehensive tool when used as a logging platform.""Good design and easy to use once implemented."

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Cons
"Deploying the agents is still very manual.""There is occasional UI slowness and bugs.""Auto instrumentation on tracing has not been very easy to find in the documentation.""We need more integration functionality, including certain metrics integration.""The installation is easy for me. However, if you are new to this solution it might not be so easy.""While I like the ease of use, when compared with Tenable Nessus they could still improve their usability.""When it comes to storing the logs with Datadog, I'm not sure why it costs so much to store gigabytes or terabytes of information when it's a fraction of the cost to do so myself.""I would like better navigability across pages."

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"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base.""Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage.""The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome.""If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful.""Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low.""Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included.""In the future, Elastic APM needs a portfolio iTool. They can provide an easy way to develop the custom UI for Kibana.""The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • "Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
  • "They prefer monthly subscriptions."
  • "Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
  • "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."
  • "While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
  • "The price is better than some competing products."
  • "The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
  • More Datadog Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
  • "There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
  • "Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
  • "The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
  • More Elastic Observability Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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 core… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Good design and easy to use once implemented.
    Top Answer:Licensing costs are reasonable and we definitely get our money's worth.
    Top Answer:Using this solution is quite complex and there's a steep learning curve if you've never used it before.
    Ranking
    Views
    56,987
    Comparisons
    37,430
    Reviews
    106
    Average Words per Review
    427
    Rating
    8.6
    Views
    12,951
    Comparisons
    10,318
    Reviews
    9
    Average Words per Review
    620
    Rating
    7.4
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

    Datadog is a cloud monitoring solution that is designed to assist administrators, IT teams, and other members of an organization who are charged with keeping a close eye on their networks. Administrators can use Datadog to set real-time alerts and schedule automated report generation. They can deal with issues as they arise and keep up to date with the overall health of their network while still being able to focus on other tasks. Users can also track the historical performance of their networks and ensure that they operate at the highest possible level.

    Datadog Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by deploying Datadog include:

    • Gain an integrated view of the services and programs that IT teams are employing across their networks. Users can view and monitor all of the disparate programs that they have running across their networks with this one solution. They can track these programs across the entirety of the data’s life cycle.
    • Analyze and utilize massive amounts of data in real time. Datadog’s dashboards gather data in real time. Administrators can utilize their network’s data the minute that it becomes relevant to them. Decisions can be made based on the most current information available.
    • Keep your cloud network secured against digital threats. Datadog enables users to create alerts that will notify the minute that threats arise. IT teams and administrators can rapidly address any issue that comes up and prevent any existing problem from growing worse.
    • Easily get it up and running. Users can set up Datadog, configure it, and employ API integrations to connect it to external solutions with ease.

    Datadog Features

    • Customizable and prefabricated monitoring dashboards. Administrators are supplied with two different types of dashboards that they can choose from when they are setting up Datadog. They can customize the dashboards to fit any specialized monitoring need. Additionally, users can choose to use prefabricated dashboards that come with the solution.
    • Disaster recovery feature. Datadog has a built-in feature that enables organizations to continue functioning if some disaster strikes their network. If the network suffers damage, Datadog can restore lost data and infrastructure. Should a digital threat do damage to the network, Datadog ensures that the damage is not irreparable.
    • Vulnerability scanning tool. Users can keep ahead of threats to their networks by employing Datadog’s vulnerability scanning feature. This tool scans the entirety of a user’s network and warns them if a vulnerability is detected. Users can then move to patch these holes in their security before the threat to their network can escalate.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Datadog is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. It can offer organizations many advantages. Two major advantages are the dashboards that users can create and the monitoring capability that it gives system administrators.

    A senior manager in charge of site reliability engineering at Extra Space Storage writes, “The dashboards we created are core indicators of the health of our system, and it is one of the most reliable sources we have turned to, especially as we have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately. We can usually rely on logs to tell us what the apps are doing.”

    Housecall Pro’s senior director of DevOps writes, “We value the monitoring capability since it allows us to be pushed alerts, rather than having to observe graphs continually.

    To effectively monitor and gain insights across your distributed systems, you need to have all your observability data in one stack. Break down silos by bringing together application, infrastructure, and user data into a unified solution for end-to-end observability and alerting.
    Rely on the most widely deployed observability platform available, built on the proven Elastic Stack (also known as the ELK Stack) to converge silos, delivering unified visibility and actionable insights.
    Offer
    Learn more about Datadog
    Learn more about Elastic Observability
    Sample Customers
    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
    PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Pharma/Biotech Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Educational Organization9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Large Enterprise100%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise69%
    Buyer's Guide
    Datadog vs. Elastic Observability
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Elastic Observability and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    690,226 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Datadog is ranked 1st in Application Performance Management (APM) with 106 reviews while Elastic Observability is ranked 11th in Application Performance Management (APM) with 9 reviews. Datadog is rated 8.6, while Elastic Observability is rated 7.4. The top reviewer of Datadog writes "Easy to set up and good UI but needs better customization capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Elastic Observability writes "Allows us capture data in observability points, place it into a database, and analyze it". Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, New Relic, Azure Monitor, Splunk Enterprise Security and AWS X-Ray, whereas Elastic Observability is most compared with Dynatrace, New Relic, AppDynamics, Sentry and Azure Monitor. See our Datadog vs. Elastic Observability report.

    See our list of best Application Performance Management (APM) vendors, best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors, and best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.

    We monitor all Application Performance Management (APM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.