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Datadog vs WhatsUp Gold 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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (3rd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
34th
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
21st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
17th
Ranking in Log Management
39th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
25th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (14th), Configuration Management (20th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.3%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.1%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.3%
WhatsUp Gold2.1%
Other95.6%
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.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found the logging and tracing features the most valuable."
"It has saved us a lot of trouble in implementation."
"The flexibility to create notebooks and dashboards and fully customize them gives us a lot of power to track the exact services and endpoints we are working on."
"We are loving the tool; it is great to have all those insights in one place."
"The ability to send notifications based on metadata from the monitor is helpful."
"The best way it has helped us is by consolidating all our logs into a single place and making it easier to find errors."
"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."
"Datadog is already covering much more than we normally need with exceptional quality."
"It is very good at monitoring the network and keeps us up to date on the status of internal devices."
"It is stable."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."
"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."
"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."
"In terms of pricing, I'd say that the pricing is nice and the product is good."
"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."
"It's a good product, and if one has the expertise to use it, it will be a good investment and it will help IT to save and plan for the future."
 

Cons

"There are some areas on log filtering screens where the user interface can take some getting used to."
"Stability of the product has been a concern for us outside of the primary monitoring agents."
"The parallel editing of the dashboards should not cause users to lose the work of another person."
"Even though it is powerful on its own, the UI-based design lacks elegance, efficiency, and complexity."
"To be very fair, I haven't had enough experience with Datadog to pick out improvements."
"We would really like to see more from the Service Catalog."
"Other than being restricted by cost, Datadog's scalability has been a little bit of a challenge to do the initial installation of the agent."
"I often have issues with the UI in my browser."
"The new release cadence needs to be improved. It takes a while for them to add new features and functionality. There should be a quicker turnaround with new versions."
"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."
"Improvements are needed in integration, especially for WhatsApp call and messages. Our region heavily uses WhatsApp Messenger for communication, and integration with this platform would be beneficial."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."
"There is a very big gap in the support."
"I think there are a few bugs now. Although they give some resolution for this, we cannot share the network remotely because of our company policy."
"The technical support does not bother to respond."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is better than some competing products."
"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."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"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."
"I am not satisfied with its licensing. Its payment is based on the exported data, and there was an explosion of the data for three or four weeks. My customer was not alerted, and there was no way for them to see that there has been an explosion of data. They got a big invoice for one or two months. The pricing model of Datadog is based on the data. The customer was quite surprised about not being alerted about this explosion of data. They should provide some kind of alert when there is an increase in usage."
"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."
"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"This is a well priced solution."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise100
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

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 WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Comparisons

 

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
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.