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

Datadog vs New Relic vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Datadog is praised for high ROI, cost-effectiveness, reducing downtime, optimizing infrastructure, and improving efficiency and reliability.
Sentiment score
6.2
Users report improved performance and reduced downtime with New Relic, highlighting its value in quick issue resolution and efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.0
SolarWinds NPM enhances network management and cost efficiency, providing superior monitoring, fast issue resolution, and significant ROI.
Previously we had thirteen contractors doing the monitoring for us, which is now reduced to only five.
IT Manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance
Datadog has delivered more than its value through reduced downtime, faster recovery, and infrastructure optimization.
Sr. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Datadog is something which I can 100% rely on, and it is very cost-effective and totally worth it.
Tech Ops Engineer at Zeller
There is return on investment because since we reduced the downtime, we can definitely save a lot of money within that period.
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
There is a definite return on investment for New Relic, as we would not have invested in building its infrastructure if there were no returns.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
After implementing New Relic, we have decreased staffing requirements while saving time and money.
Senior Observability Engineer I at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Datadog's support is responsive and helpful, though some users seek faster resolutions and consistent communication for complex issues.
Sentiment score
7.4
New Relic's customer service is highly rated for responsiveness and expertise, though some suggest improvements for offline response times.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM support is knowledgeable and helpful but faces criticism for slow responses and aggressive sales tactics.
When I have additional questions, the ticket is updated with actual recommendations or suggestions pointing me in the correct direction.
Applications Web Services Technical Engineer at Ace Hardware
Overall, the entire Datadog comprehensive experience of support, onboarding, getting everything in there, and having a good line of feedback has been exceptional.
Systems Administrator at Townsquare Interactive
I've had a couple instances where I reached out to Datadog's support team, and they have been really super helpful and very kind, even reaching back out after resolving my issues to check if everything's going well.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
If I drop an email to them, they will respond quickly to my email.
Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Customer support from New Relic is very good, and we rarely need to create support tickets.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
They are very polite and helped him out.
Cloud Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
They have good technical support.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog offers scalable performance across varied environments, integrates with cloud services, but requires budget monitoring as data grows.
Sentiment score
7.7
New Relic is a reliable, scalable solution for various business needs, efficiently handling large environments and cloud integrations.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM offers scalable solutions for various environments, with possible increased costs and challenges on virtual platforms.
Datadog's scalability has been great as it has been able to grow with our needs.
IT Manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance
We did, as a trial, engage the AWS integration, and immediately it found all of our AWS resources and presented them to us.
Systems Administrator at Townsquare Interactive
Datadog's scalability is strong; we've continued to significantly grow our software, and there are processes in place to ensure that as new servers, realms, and environments are introduced, we're able to include them all in Datadog without noticing any performance issues.
Senior Custom Software Development Consultant at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
We currently use New Relic for tens of thousands of developers and hundreds of teams within our organization, and we have not encountered any scalability issues.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is also suitable for cloud native architectures, SaaS, or software as a service, and for high volume data ingestion also.
Cloud Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Regarding New Relic's scalability, it excels at the enterprise level for cloud integrations that can utilize tags.
Senior Observability Engineer I at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog is praised for its stability, consistent uptime, swift issue resolution, and robust performance, even during peak times.
Sentiment score
7.9
New Relic is generally stable and reliable, with minimal issues and praised for its consistent uptime and robustness.
Sentiment score
7.5
SolarWinds NPM is stable, with issues arising during upgrades; regular updates and support enhance its performance.
Datadog is very stable, as there hasn't been any downtime or issues since I've been here, and it's always on time.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
Datadog seems stable in my experience without any downtime or reliability issues.
Full Stack Developer at Townsquare Interactive
Datadog seems to be more stable, and I really want to have a complete demo before making a call to decide on this.
Enterprise solution architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
New Relic lags sometimes.
Cloud Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
New Relic is stable based on my experience, as I have not seen any problems with the UI.
Contingent Worker at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Datadog should enhance AI, improve customization, offer real-time insights, and optimize transparency for better user experience and performance.
New Relic users request better alerting, integrations, interface, documentation, AI, pricing, support, data insights, and navigation features.
SolarWinds NPM users seek improvements in network discovery, interface, integration, resource usage, cloud support, security, and pricing adjustments.
It would be great to see stronger AI-driven anomaly detection and predictive analytics to help identify potential issues before they impact performance.
Operations Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We want to be able to customize the cost part, and we would appreciate more granular access control.
Service Manager at PwC
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
Senior Software Engineer at Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC
If they could improve the customer support by reducing their SLA within three to five days, if they could remediate everything, that will be so much helpful.
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Using real-time data, if there are any malicious patterns or something happening, they can identify those.
Platform Software Engineer 4 at Nexthink
Because of the pricing model, organizations have experienced uncontrolled costs and were not able to afford New Relic.
Senior SRE Engineer at SentinelOne
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
Network Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Datadog offers flexible, usage-based pricing favored by SMEs, but enterprise users face complexity and potential high costs for new features.
New Relic's pricing varies, offering a free tier, but larger operations may find costs high, requiring careful evaluation.
SolarWinds NPM pricing is competitive yet complex, appealing to some while being costly for smaller enterprises or multi-module needs.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
Senior Performance and Architecture Analyst at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Everybody wants the agent installed, but we only have so many dollars to spread across, so it's been difficult for me to prioritize who will benefit from Datadog at this time.
Applications Web Services Technical Engineer at Ace Hardware
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is really expensive.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Considering the features New Relic offers, the pricing or cost setup has not been a blocker for our budget.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for synthetic monitoring is that minions used to cost a lot.
DevOps engineer at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The solution is considered expensive.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
It is not too pricey and is adequate.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Datadog offers seamless integration, real-time monitoring, and cost-effective performance insights, making it highly favored for centralized application management.
New Relic offers comprehensive performance insights with real-time monitoring, efficient error detection, and customizable dashboards for optimized system performance.
SolarWinds NPM offers easy deployment, strong monitoring, and seamless integration, enhancing network management with intuitive dashboards and real-time insights.
Our architecture is written in several languages, and one area where Datadog particularly shines is in providing first-class support for a multitude of programming languages.
Senior Software Engineer at Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC
Having all that associated analytics helps me in troubleshooting by not having to bounce around to other tools, which saves me a lot of time.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Datadog was able to find the alerts and trigger to notify our team in a very prompt manner before it got worse, allowing us to promptly adjust and remediate the situation in time.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
Using New Relic speeds up troubleshooting and resolution, giving us a clearer picture of where issues are, thus saving time and effort.
Head of API at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees
New Relic is very useful for teams that don't have much of a dedicated DevOps team but want to have observability for their platform, and it's an easy way to get started.
Senior SRE Engineer at SentinelOne
New Relic has positively impacted our organization by reducing errors, improving performance, and saving time.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Whenever any node is down in our network, whether it is a server or any network device, we receive information through email that the device is down.
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
Network Administrator at PT Bni Life Insurance
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 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 New Relic is 1.5%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.6%
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
New Relic1.5%
Other92.3%
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.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real-time alerts have reduced server outage impact and support fast incident response
In the dashboard, if they could show a little more metrics regarding the application and related things, that would be how New Relic could be improved. Currently, there are things showing from the server level and application level, but it can be improved. That is what I felt. Regarding user interface, I do not feel much concern, but for some kind of issues when we are trying to get support from the New Relic team, their SLA seems to be long. They are taking seven to ten working days for resolving some kind of scenario or issue. That is a bit difficult for us. If they could improve the customer support by reducing their SLA within three to five days, if they could remediate everything, that will be so much helpful. When it comes to the customer support part, I felt they need to be a little more improved on that part. The support overall is good, but they can improve. That is the reason I have given it eight out of ten.
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
5%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise77
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
 

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,...
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 time...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was t...
What do you like most about New Relic Insights?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?
I have noticed discrepancies between New Relic's documentation and Terraform resources. For example, there have been ...
What is your primary use case for New Relic Insights?
My day-to-day activities in New Relic include infrastructure monitoring, APM monitoring, browser monitoring, and data...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
New Relic Browser, New Relic Applied Intelligence, New Relic Insights, New Relic Synthetics, New Relic Servers, New Relic APM
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

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
World Fuel Services, Verizon, FootLocker, McDonald's, Trainline, Mondia Media, Confused, Costa Coffee, Ryanair, Marks & Spencer, William Hill, Delivery Hero, Skyscanner, BASF, DAZN, Veygo, Virtuo, movingimage, talabat, Australia Post, Tokopedia, Seven Network, Virgin Australia, Zomato, BigBasket, Mercado Libre, Lending Club
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.