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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
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
208
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
26th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
30th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
24th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.6%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.5%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.6%
Icinga1.5%
Other95.9%
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

"Datadog has given us near-live visibility across our entire cloud platform."
"The feature I've found most valuable is the log search feature."
"The most valuable features have been: Sharable dashboards, TimeBoards, dogstatsd API, Slack Integration, Event logging API. CloudTrail Events, Tags, alerts, and anomaly detection. EBS Volume Snapshot Age, which they added upon request."
"It has a nice UI."
"The solution has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc."
"The integration and configuration are incredibly simple. The SaaS offering is remarkably easy to set up, especially if you're coming from a Graphite environment or anything that uses a StatsD."
"The platform appeals to companies spanning many industries on a global scale."
"The technology itself is generally very useful and the interface is great."
"The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"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."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
 

Cons

"I find the setup cost to be too expensive. The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100. I am evaluating the usage of this solution, however, it is too expensive."
"The sheer amount of products that are included can be overwhelming."
"We need more advanced querying against logs."
"The documentation leaves a lot to be desired for new users."
"When the logs are too big, and Datadog splits them, the JSON format breaks and it is not so useful for us."
"There is occasional UI slowness and bugs."
"Datadog can be improved by addressing billing and spend calculation methods, as it would be better if these were more straightforward."
"Sometimes it’s difficult to customize certain queries to find specific things, specifically with the logging solution."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"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."
"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"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."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 price is better than some competing products."
"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."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is free to use."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"The solution is cheap."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
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: March 2026.
884,122 professionals have used our research since 2012.