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Datadog vs SolarWinds AppOptics vs Splunk AppDynamics 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 5.2%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 3.8%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog5.2%
Splunk AppDynamics3.8%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.8%
Other90.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

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.
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd
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.
Shamim Alsharif - PeerSpot reviewer
Performance Test Engineer at TANIM CONSULTING, LLC
Real-time monitoring has improved our banking API performance and supports detailed business transaction analysis
The real-time monitoring is what we can see for anything that is needed in terms of CPU, memory, or the connections or the sessions related. It's real-time monitoring of performance of each of the components, which is what we need and use all the time. It's highly effective, I would say. Infrastructure visibility, transaction monitoring, to check the actual user experience in terms of the response time, MRT and all those things. We do the component monitoring like the API performance and the connections and all those things, but we also do the business process monitoring and business transaction monitoring.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Log analytics give us a powerful mechanism for error tracking, research, and analysis."
"Since we started using the product, we were able to create dashboards, and utilize APM, continuous profiling, RUM, and distributed tracing for production support and user trends."
"Most of the features in the way Datadog does monitoring are commendable and that is the reason we choose it."
"Real user monitoring gives us invaluable insights into actual user experiences, helping us prioritize improvements where they matter most."
"The most valuable aspect for us is to have everything in the same place."
"The visibility that it provides is valuable. It is helping in being proactive around incident management. It is helping us to be able to get more visibility into our customers' applications so that we can assist them at the application layer. We also provide them the infrastructure from an AWS standpoint. We are able to make sure that our customers are aware of certain critical things around the analytical piece of either the network or the application. We're able to call customers before they even know about the issue. From there, we can start putting together some change management processes and help them a bit."
"The biggest thing I liked was the combination of all the things - monitoring, log aggregation, and profiling."
"It lets us react more quickly to things going wrong. Whereas before, it might have been 30 minutes to an hour before we noticed something going on, we will know within a minute or two if something is off, which will let us essentially get something back up and running faster for our customers, which is revenue."
"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."
"SolarWinds AppOptics does far more than what an individual may realize; it is not just a SIEM tool."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"AppNeta provides a range of products, all based around intelligent network testing algorithms."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"It's a solid application."
"Customer service is exceptional, as they are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction."
"The dashboards are very well-defined."
"We became 100% dependent on AppDynamics after we started using it."
"With Splunk AppDynamics SecureApp solution, we can easily see our application's vulnerabilities, attacks, and exploits in real time."
"AppDynamics is easier to install compared to other solutions."
"It gives me the ability to trace logs between transactions, for example, a DB transaction or JVM transaction from one hub to the other. I can easily find out where the problem is or where the bottleneck of the issues lies."
"With AppDynamics, we were able to identify where the database query was taking more time, whether it was taking time on logical IOs or physical IOs, and it is also giving proactive alerts that help us to narrow down issues much more quickly and fix them before they start impacting our customers."
"The features, ease of use, and customer service provided by AppDynamics was what tipped the scale towards them."
"From the monitoring perspective, it is a very good tool."
 

Cons

"Network device and performance monitoring could be improved, as we've faced some limitations in this area."
"Since the Datadog platform has so many separate features, solving so many use cases, there are often inconsistencies in feature availability and interoperability between products."
"The product could do better with its notifications."
"Graph filters for logs need to be set manually which works well for JSON but not for unstructured logs."
"It lacks consistency in the APIs."
"The solution needs to integrate AI tools."
"There could be more easily identifiable documentation on how to find different things on the platform."
"I rate Datadog an eight out of ten because the expense of using it keeps it from being a nine or ten."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"Because of its inability to monitor mobile solutions, I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"I'd like to see the ability to use other internal instrumented applications as filters in the overview/aggregation screen."
"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."
"There are many KPIs that are not available in AppDynamics."
"I would like to see something that lets me set real dollar figures, not just to outages, but to the solutions as well... when I'm looking at problems and have found a problem that I know I need to address. I could flag it off and have AppDynamics estimate how long a person would have taken to find that without it. That would give me a lot of leverage for justifying the existence of APM, which I really need."
"I would like the ability to choose from some pre-defined dashboards and reports because as it is now, you have to define them separately for each implementation."
"Stability-wise, we experienced some performance issues when upgrading from 4.4 to 4.5."
"Product-wise, everything is good, but the main concern is the extensions and their documentation, particularly for the installation of Azure app services."
"Nothing’s perfect."
"I don't really use AI-powered anomaly detection and root cause analysis for diagnosing performance issues because it makes many mistakes in my case, due to the nature of my work."
"The solution has performance issues after we deploy the agent."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."
"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."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"The tool is open-source."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"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."
"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."
"It would be better if there were more solutions incorporated into the base price. ​"
"AppDynamics Database Monitoring is expensive. I rate it a seven to eight out of ten."
"It's a very expensive product. Each of the licenses after this month for one server is around $9,000 or $10,000."
"It is not a cheap tool, but you also save in manpower to setup because it is easy and fast. At the end of the day, I think the revenue is much better. BUT, they have an awful co-term mode of licensing."
"In terms of pricing, I feel that when you compare the benefits that we get to the price that we paid, it is reasonable."
"The licensing cost is fairly high"
"AppDynamics is more expensive than competitors."
"The pricing is quite comparable to similar solutions in the market. All these solutions at the moment are cheap, but it is like paying for insurance; you pay insurance to avoid major damage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
 

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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise200
 

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...
Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?
I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on ...
What needs improvement with AppDynamics?
The solution is available at an inflated cost.
 

Also Known As

No data available
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
No data available
 

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
TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: March 2026.
885,789 professionals have used our research since 2012.