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Datadog vs Riverbed NPM+ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

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 Cloud Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
Riverbed NPM+
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
41st
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
24th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.5%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Riverbed NPM+ is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog2.5%
Riverbed NPM+0.4%
Other97.1%
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.
SK
Senior Technical Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Provides deep packet visibility for tracing failed transactions and helps improve enterprise-level monitoring
Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution. Additionally, within Riverbed Portal, there is an Application Map module that could be improved. It can show the application's architecture and connectivity to the network. The applications map feature needs enhancements for better customization since currently, it is quite limited. The enhancements I recommend are not for the entire Riverbed product suite, but specifically for the application map feature within the Portal of Riverbed NPM+. This Portal is one of the dashboard modules and while there is potential for improvement, it must be enhanced significantly to provide better functionality. Currently, you cannot trace by transaction number alone; knowing the source and destination IP is necessary. For instance, if I transfer money and a transaction fails, tracing that transaction ID is not captured in AppResponse. I have raised this concern, and if this feature is implemented, it would greatly benefit banking customers, especially because it is not available with their competitors either.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboards provide a comprehensive and visually intuitive way to monitor all our key data points in real-time, making it easier to spot trends and potential issues."
"The most valuable aspect is for us to have everything in one place."
"Datadog has impacted our organization positively because the general feeling is that it's superior to the ELK stack that we used to use, being significantly faster in searching and filtering the information down, as well as providing links to our search criteria that our development teams and cloud operations teams can use to look at the same problems without having to set up their own search and filter criteria."
"I have found the logging and tracing features the most valuable."
"Datadog dashboards are pretty great."
"Thanks to frequent concurrent deployments, the DataDog alerts monitors allow us quickly detect issues if anything occurs."
"Since we integrated Datadog, we have had increased confidence in the quality of our service, and we had an easier time increasing our delivery velocity."
"Datadog has impacted my organization positively as this is our main observability tool when it comes to monitoring services, traces, and all resources within key services."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
"Alluvio Network Performance Management is good for troubleshooting."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
 

Cons

"The query performance could be improved, particularly when handling large datasets, as slower response times can hinder efficiency."
"Lately, chat support has a longer waiting time."
"I'd like to see better pricing and more integration in the next release."
"Datadog could have a better business analysis module."
"Alerting timing should be improved to be more fine-tuned and exact."
"There could be more easily identifiable documentation on how to find different things on the platform."
"The product needs to have more enterprise approach to configuration."
"One area where the product could be improved is Application Performance Monitoring (APM)."
"Alluvio Network Performance Management is good for troubleshooting."
"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."
"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."
"Currently, you cannot trace by transaction number alone; knowing the source and destination IP is necessary."
"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"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."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"The tool's pricing is high and I would rate it one out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Healthcare Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise97
No data available
 

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 Alluvio Network Performance Management?
The pricing of Riverbed NPM+ is indeed high, particularly as I work with enterprises in the banking sector primarily in India and the Middle East, and I have also interacted with clients in Europe....
What needs improvement with Alluvio Network Performance Management?
Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution. Additionally, within Riverbed Portal, there is an Ap...
What is your primary use case for Alluvio Network Performance Management?
Riverbed NPM+ has many primary use cases, making this NPM solution totally different from other tools like SolarWinds. They have a solution called AppResponse, which is not an agent-based solution ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Alluvio Network Performance Management
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Riverbed NPM+ and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.