Datadog vs Elastic Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 30, 2022

We performed a comparison between Datadog and Elastic Security (formerly ELK Logstash) based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Most users of Datadog felt the setup and deployment was straightforward, as long as they were familiar with the software. Users of Elastic Security said setup and deployment was easy, but with each additional server, it became more complex.
  • Features: Datadog users felt the software had great integration and error reporting, and that it provided great visibility, which helped proactivity around incident management. But users had a problem with stability and didn’t like that there was not enough monitoring through the dashboard.

    Elastic Security users thought the software was very flexible and scalable but felt the monitor was not mature enough. They also had difficulty retrieving data, and were unhappy that the solution didn’t offer predictive maintenance.
  • Pricing: Users of Datadog found the software expensive and the pricing model confusing. Users of Elastic Security said that licensing was expensive yet competitively priced.
  • Service and Support: Most Datadog users were satisfied with the level of support. On the other hand, Elastic Security users had mixed reviews regarding support; some said that response time took a while.
  • ROI: Users of Datadog had mixed reviews on the ROI; some thought the product was too expensive, which was why they hadn’t seen ROI yet.

Comparison Results: Datadog and Elastic Security have a similar user rating for ease of deployment, and users of both felt that the solutions were expensive. Users felt Elastic Security took too long to respond when it came to service and support. In terms of features, reviewers of Datadog had a problem with stability and felt there wasn’t enough monitoring through their dashboard. Reviewers of Elastic Security said they had difficulty retrieving data and felt the solution should offer predictive maintenance.

To learn more, read our detailed Datadog vs. Elastic Security Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
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 indicators of the health of our system. You can build very useful dashboards right out of the box using this solution. Our developers are able to see how code is running in production, and having custom built-in metrics gives us a wealth of knowledge and historical data that helps keep our system running smoothly. The pricing with Datadog can be very high. We feel there should be a more tiered approach to give users the opportunity to buy a more tailored product specific to their organizational needs. Datadog could also be more user-friendly. We would like to see deeper application-level insight and better incident management. Using ELK, you can gather authentication information from service providers and determine which identity provider is not performing properly. ELK is very flexible; you can have a number of scenarios and get logs from all of them. ELK is a very cost-effective solution. But it can be a complex solution to use. Better integration with 3rd party APMs would be very helpful. Currently, upgrades with ELK are released as stacks. Plugins or extensions would save removal and reinstallation and make the process move seamlessly. Conclusion We researched both of these solutions and concluded Datadog gave us the best visibility, better integration, and helpful, timely support. The logs and error reporting are extremely useful to conduct analysis and root cause analysis. The setup, ease of use, and flexibility with dashboard creation and reporting are just some of the things that our team liked about Datadog.
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 aspect is the APM which can monitor the metrics and latencies.""The solution has helped out organization gain improved visibility.""The solution is sufficiently stable.""The fact that everything is under a single pane of glass is really valuable, as developers don't have to spend their time copying correlation IDs across tools to find what they need.""Sometimes it's more user friendly for development teams. There are some parts of Datadog that are more understandable for development teams. For example, the APM in Datadog works more manually and works like the tools in New Relic or Grafana, or Elastic. It is easier to understand for software development teams.""The interface and the integrations make it so easy to connect to the cloud or to the on-premise environment.""Having a wealth of information has helped us investigate outages, and having historical data helps us tune our system.""It has scaled great. I haven't run into any problems anywhere that I've used it. They have handled everything that we have needed them to."

More Datadog Pros →

"I like that it's a SIEM platform. I like that I can sell Elastic Security quickly. Elastic Security has a large community that can support users.""The feature that we have found the most valuable is scalability.""It's a good platform and the very best in the current market. We looked at the Forester report from December 2022 where it was said to be a leader.""The scalability is good. It can be scaled easily in the production environment.""We like Elastic Security because it's a REST API-based solution. That's the primary reason we use it.""The most valuable thing is that this solution is widely used for work management and research. It's easy to jump into the security use case with the same technology.""Just the ability to do a lot more than just up-down is nice, which a lot of people take for granted.""ELK documentation is very good, so never needed to contact technical support."

More Elastic Security Pros →

Cons
"The Log Explorer could be better. I don't think it has log manipulation as Splunk does.""The correlation between the logs and the metrics needs improvement as most cases, we might use another logging tool (that is cheaper in cost) which we then have to link together.""Its pricing model can be improved. Its settings should be improved for a better understanding of billing. They should also provide some alerts when there is an increase in the usage. For example, if there is 20% more increase from one week to another, the customer should get an alert.""It would be ideal if the product offered a bit more monitoring from our dashboard.""The parallel editing of the dashboards should not cause users to lose the work of another person.""Sometimes it’s difficult to customize certain queries to find specific things, specifically with the logging solution.""At the beginning, when we started throwing logs at it, there was a bit of hiccup. However, this was during their beta period, so hiccups were expected.""It would also be nice if we had more insight into our own usage of Datadog (agents and custom metrics). They provide a usage page which does help, but it is not in real-time."

More Datadog Cons →

"We set up a cron job to delete old logs so that we wouldn't hit a disk space issue. Such a feature should be available in the UI, where old logs can be deleted automatically. (Don’t know if this feature is already there).""Elastic has one problem. In the past, Elastic Security was free. Now, they currently only offer the basic license or a certain period of time.""The process of designing dashboards is a little cumbersome in Kibana. Unless you are an expert, you will not be able to use it. The process should be pretty straightforward. The authentication feature is what we are looking for. We would love to have a central authentication system in the open-source edition without the need for a license or an enterprise license. If they can give at least a simple authentication system within a company. In a large organization, authentication is very essential for security because logs can contain a lot of confidential data. Therefore, an authentication feature for who accesses it should be there.""The Integration module could be improved. It is a pain to build integration with any product. We have to do parking and so on. It's not like other commercial solutions that use profile integration. I would also see more detection features on the SIEM side.""With Elastic Security, the challenge arises from the fact that there is a learning curve in relation to queries and understanding the query language provided to extract usable data.""Better integration with third-party APMs would be really good.""Its documentation should be a bit better. I have to spend at least a couple of hours to find the solution for a simple thing. When we buy Elastic, training is not included for free with Elastic. We have to pay extra for the training. They should include training in the price.""We'd like to see some more artificial intelligence capabilities."

More Elastic Security Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "​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 has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."
  • "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."
  • "At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."
  • "The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items."
  • "It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
  • "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."
  • "It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
  • More Datadog Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."
  • "We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."
  • "Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
  • "There is no charge for using the open-source version."
  • "This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
  • "It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
  • "It is easy to deploy, easy to use, and you get everything you need to become operational with it, and have nothing further to pay unless you want the OLED plugin."
  • "Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
  • More Elastic Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    HAPPY BHALLA
    Aji Joseph - PeerSpot reviewerAji Joseph
    Reseller

    It depends on your requirement. If you are looking for a SIEM/log management solution ELK would be a better option. 


    But if you are looking for more of a monitoring solution Datadog would be better. Also, Datadog provides out-of-the-box integrations with a lot of cloud applications. ELK could be cost-effective but a bit challenging to configure & finetune.   

    Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewerShibu Babuchandran
    Real User

    Datadog: Unify logs, metrics, and traces from across your distributed infrastructure. Datadog is the leading service for cloud-scale monitoring. It is used by IT, operations, and development teams who build and operate applications that run on dynamic or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Start monitoring in minutes with Datadog!


    Datadog features offered are:

    200+ turn-key integrations for data aggregation
    Clean graphs of StatsD and other integrations




    Elasticsearch: Open Source, Distributed, RESTful Search Engine. Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine capable of storing data and searching it in near real time. Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats and Logstash are the Elastic Stack (sometimes called the ELK Stack).


    Elasticsearch provides the following key features:

    Distributed and Highly Available Search Engine.
    Multi Tenant with Multi Types.
    Various set of APIs including RESTful

    reviewer1584621 - PeerSpot reviewerreviewer1584621 (Cyber Security Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees)
    Real User

    Dear,


    Unfortunately, I can't say much about Datadog but I have used ELK for a short period. 


    And I can tell you not everything works the way it should. For example, I noticed heavy CPU usage for a Windows client on MS AD servers. I advise you to consider this if it's important to you.


    Good luck!

    reviewer1352679 - PeerSpot reviewerreviewer1352679 (IT Technical Architect at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees)
    Real User

    Where do you want to spend your money, on people or licenses?


    ELK requires a long-term investment in engineering resources to manage the system and to provide the capability.  


    Datadog provides capabilities for you so you only need some administrators. What are the capabilities?  Some critical ones include availability, scalability, consuming log files, platform upgrades, ...

    If you are consuming smaller data sets (100's of GB) with shorter retention, the size and scaling are much easier making ELK easier.

    Do you have admins or engineers?  If your team doesn't have dedicated time & skills to spend developing solutions like elastic-alert you should look for a vendor to provide capabilities.

    I expect some capabilities in Datadog you will not be able to replicate in ELK....  so that answer makes this obvious.

    We are going to evaluate the same for our org. We do about 10 TB a day consumption in ELK and are looking to see if we can shift $$$ from engineers and infra to SaaS.

    Ovais Reza - PeerSpot reviewerOvais Reza
    Real User

    I have used both ELK and Datadog, and there are lots of variables to consider here. The three important points that I looked at are:


    - Cost. In addition to service costs, you have to consider egress and ingress costs as well.


    - Real-time observability that you need during development vs long-term Observability. Keep in mind, when you export data over the internet, it comes with the same reliability issues as any other service on the internet. Regardless of how Datadog classifies its service as real-time, it is not real-time, IMO. It very much depends on your definition of real-time.


    - Deployment and maintenance complexity. When your ELK cluster grows it has some pain points you need to be aware of.


    My general approach is to deploy ELK for development, tune the data, and then pivot toward commercial solutions if I need to. This gives you insight into your data and what you should be preserving and that way you are not paying high costs, when or if you do decide to take advantage of a commercial solution.

    it_user860751 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user860751 (IT Manager at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees)
    Real User

    Can you tell me what you actually want to do so that I can help you?

    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:It is an extremely stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
    Top Answer:The product offers an amazing pricing structure. Price-wise, the product is very competitive.
    Top Answer:There is a constant evolution in the product. I think that the solution has a strong roadmap in place. I believe that the tool is going to be a leader in a lot of spaces, considering that it is… more »
    Ranking
    2nd
    out of 94 in Log Management
    Views
    26,001
    Comparisons
    15,508
    Reviews
    94
    Average Words per Review
    433
    Rating
    8.6
    5th
    out of 94 in Log Management
    Views
    17,199
    Comparisons
    14,233
    Reviews
    25
    Average Words per Review
    491
    Rating
    7.7
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
    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.

    Elastic Security is a robust, open-source security solution designed to offer integrated threat prevention, detection, and response capabilities across an organization's entire digital estate. Part of the Elastic Stack (which includes Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana), Elastic Security leverages the power of search, analytics, and data aggregation to provide real-time insight into threats and vulnerabilities. It is a comprehensive platform that supports a wide range of security needs, from endpoint protection to cloud and network security, making it a versatile choice for organizations looking to enhance their cybersecurity posture.


    Elastic Security combines the features of a security information and event management (SIEM) system with endpoint protection, allowing organizations to detect, investigate, and respond to threats in real time. This unified approach helps reduce complexity and improve the efficiency of security operations.

    Additional offerings and benefits:

    • The platform utilizes advanced analytics, machine learning algorithms, and anomaly detection to identify threats and suspicious activities.
    • It offers extensive integration options with other tools and platforms, facilitating a more cohesive and comprehensive security ecosystem.
    • With Kibana, users gain access to powerful visualization tools and dashboards that provide real-time insight into security data.

    Finally, Elastic Security benefits from a global community of users who contribute to its threat intelligence, helping to enhance its detection capabilities. This collaborative approach ensures that the solution remains on the cutting edge of cybersecurity, with up-to-date information on the latest threats and vulnerabilities.

    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
    Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization31%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm30%
    Computer Software Company26%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise38%
    Large Enterprise46%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business59%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise23%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise57%
    Buyer's Guide
    Datadog vs. Elastic Security
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Elastic Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Datadog is ranked 2nd in Log Management with 136 reviews while Elastic Security is ranked 5th in Log Management with 58 reviews. Datadog is rated 8.6, while Elastic Security is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Datadog writes "Very good RUM, synthetics, and infrastructure host maps". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Elastic Security writes "A stable and scalable tool that provides visibility along with the consolidation of logs to its users". Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, New Relic, AWS X-Ray and AppDynamics, whereas Elastic Security is most compared with Wazuh, Splunk Enterprise Security, Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. See our Datadog vs. Elastic Security report.

    See our list of best Log Management vendors.

    We monitor all Log Management 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.