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Datadog vs SolarWinds AppOptics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
58th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
57th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
43rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 8.6%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of dashboard creation and alarm monitoring has helped us not only stay competitive but be industry leaders in performance."
"It has turned into an operational dashboard. If you felt something is going wrong, you can immediately open up Datadog. It has been our go to application because we know the answer will be there."
"Having a clear view, not only of our infrastructure but our apps and services as well, has brought a great added value to our customers."
"The infrastructure monitoring capabilities, especially for our Kubernetes clusters, have helped us optimize resource allocation and reduce costs."
"The ease of graph building is nice, and MUCH easier than Prometheus."
"Integrating Datadog with other platforms has made our monitoring processes a bit easier. It's not super simple, but it's manageable."
"The performance of Datadog is good."
"Using the data, our operation teams works with the dashboards to get their statistics, analytics, etc."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"The product has a great dashboard."
 

Cons

"More granular control over dashboard sharing. Timeboard sharing."
"The PagerDuty integration could be a little bit better."
"Datadog lacks a deeper application-level insight. Their competitors had eclipsed them in offering ET functionality that was important to us. That's why we stopped using it and switched to New Relic. Datadog's price is also high."
"Federated views for Datadog dashboards are critical as large companies utilize multiple instances of the product and cannot link the metrics or correlate the metrics together. This stunts the usage of Datadog."
"The product needs a better Datadog agent installation."
"Sometimes it’s difficult to customize certain queries to find specific things, specifically with the logging solution."
"Auto instrumentation on tracing has not been very easy to find in the documentation."
"The logging could be improved in the future."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"The tool is open-source."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"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."
"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
37%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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Also Known As

No data available
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. SolarWinds AppOptics and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.