No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Datadog vs Icinga 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

Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
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)
Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
27th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
31st
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.4%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.4%
Icinga1.3%
Other96.3%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Net Consulting
A stable, scalable and cost-effective solution that helps with inbuilt scripts for easy modification
I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has drastically reduced the amount of time we spend on debugging issues and tracking down the root causes of incidents."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the APM."
"Its integration is most valuable because you can integrate it with various service providers such as AWS, .Net, etc."
"Datadog gave us the opportunity to have a single platform for observability."
"Datadog has positively impacted my organization by making finding and resolving issues a lot easier and efficient."
"The solution has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc. Going from almost nothing to something that didn’t take a lot of time to set up has been great since we have so little time to spare."
"We have found that we're able to get in and out of troubleshooting issues much more rapidly, which in turn, of course, enables us to spend more time on our products."
"While my team is relatively new to Datadog, I already see immense value in switching over to Datadog as the primary APM and NPM tool."
"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."
"If you have a small infrastructure or a small number of devices that you want to monitor, then I think it's a good solution."
"The most valuable feature is one that not many are even aware of, as Icinga has a self-healing event handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted, and you can configure the handler to take action after the critical alarm without human interaction."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
 

Cons

"We need more integration with security tools like Drata."
"It would be ideal if the product offered a bit more monitoring from our dashboard."
"While the documentation is very good, there are areas that need a lot of focus to pick up on the key details."
"I'm not sure what kind of features are in the roadmap right now, but I encourage the development of features for defining your organization, and allowing the visibility of what kind of metrics you can get. Those features would be really useful for us."
"While I like the ease of use, when compared with Tenable Nessus they could still improve their usability."
"One area where the product could be improved is Application Performance Monitoring (APM)."
"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."
"The largest pain point we've had with Datadog to this point was onboarding."
"I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built."
"Scalability is problematic. If you have a stable environment it's good, but if the environment is growing, I had some problems with Icinga."
"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."
"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is budget friendly."
"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."
"The tool is open-source."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"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."
"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
"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."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"The solution is free to use."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"The solution is cheap."
"It's an open-source solution."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
892,776 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise100
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?
It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...
What needs improvement with Icinga?
There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...
What is your primary use case for Icinga?
We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Icinga Cloud Monitoring
 

Overview

 

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
Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Icinga and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,776 professionals have used our research since 2012.