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DX SaaS vs Dynatrace comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

DX SaaS
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
71st
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (18th)
Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
347
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of DX SaaS is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dynatrace is 10.3%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

JM
It's highly customizable but lacks many features of available in competing solutions
DX SaaS is a latecomer to the APM market. Some things that are straightforward in Dynatrace are complicated in DX. For example, upgrading the agents is a seamless process in Dynatrace, but it's a pain in DX SaaS. You should be able to upgrade in the Application Command Center. However, it is not working correctly. They upgrade the product every 15 to 30 days, and the process isn't seamless. It's like implementing the solution all over again. We monitor around 1,000-plus applications and have more than 100,000 agents, so we require a smooth upgrade process. It's nearly impossible to stay updated on the latest version. Upgrading the Dynatrace agent is smoother. You don't need to worry about it. If the agent is on the Dynatrace server, you only need to push it. After that, you will be notified to reboot the APM or CLM. That's it. It took us three years to deploy the agent on 1,000-plus applications across 40,000-plus servers. Now, they are saying they are ending support for 7.0.49, and we need to upgrade. The path to upgrading isn't straightforward. The first process is manual, and we can push it to different servers so it is visible. What's our configuration? Who is going to do the configuration? It's not typical or practical. I don't understand how product teams don't see that. That feature is not there. We hope they add this feature to the new product called DX Platform, which consists of net apps. All those network monitoring tools will be combined into DX Platform. All the monitoring functionality is moved to DX Platform. You can't see a trend of your metrics grouped according to the last month, six months, one year, etc. The resolution is not there. I want granular visibility into data captured in the last 15 seconds. Those are essential features. I am not saying that DX lacks solid features, but they need to consider it. Some core functionality of the product is missing. We have around 50-plus requests to add previously available features in the on-premise version. That is one reason application teams are reluctant to go to DX SaaS. We are struggling to make them understand and trying to find alternatives for the existing features. We've had many discussions with the product team, telling them we need this functionality. However, they tell us it's not on their product roadmap. They are gradually adding other features, but we need our requirements to be a priority. You cannot say you will try to add those requested features that aren't on your product roadmap. There is always a catch in the product. We use around 10 tenants in production and six in the test run. First of all, there is nothing in the pane. If we are trying to see the data from an application, how do we know which tenant and application are reporting? There was a feature called Enterprise Team Center, but that functionality has been removed. All the applications are connected to the manager, which is connected to ETC. If you go to ETC, you can find the server and see your data, but that functionality was not there. Every product should have a management feature, but that is missing, and they are saying that it is not there in the roadmap. It is a basic requirement. You need to understand that. That is not there, manager, and they are saying that is not there in the roadmap as well. They have created a new tenant page temporarily. It is not there currently. It is not a required thing. There is a feature called Domain, but that concept is gone. We've struggled a lot, and what they provided in the initial migration stage is no longer working. We were delayed for two months because we didn't give them the correct input. They don't know their product. We tell them there is a problem, and they say they're fixing it. Are we their Guinea pig? You cannot treat your customers like this.
Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a comprehensive view by integrating with other monitoring systems
There may be an issue since there are many tools like Splunk involved in network monitoring. From an IP perspective, Dynatrace is performing well. If they want to develop in network monitoring, they can, as it's part of their product line. It's not rocketry, so they can accomplish it. If I, as an SI, look at it from an enterprise perspective, considering the cost from the client, I prefer not to go with multiple systems, as they don't provide a complete 360-degree view. They need to improve on claims about being an enterprise system. The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It supports numerous platforms."
"DX allows you to customize and gives you a high degree of control."
"Actionable insight is the most valuable feature."
"The stuff that's coming with the new pieces around the Dynatrace Managed SaaS implementation. The ease of implementation there is significant. We've spent a lot of time with AppMon and DC RUM - that's a lot of time to set up, configure. With Managed solution, you just drop it in and everything pretty much auto-instruments."
"We are not blind anymore with our digital services performance; no more fire fighting."
"The Dynatrace solution has an important role in optimizing application code and SQL queries for customer solutions."
"PurePath does deep dive analysis, has dashboards, and provides real user experience monitoring. It has allowed us to do analysis which was never possible before."
"Dynatrace AppMon has allowed a deep dive review of performance problems in near real-time for our primary external website and related web apps and web services."
"We had a very quick turnaround, and it solved our problems. We get more insights into what our code is doing, where the bottlenecks are. The tool helps us to find the root cause much faster than other tools in the market. Our team can then work with the engineering team to fix the problems at a much faster rate."
"Great tool for deep diving into performance data and tracking issues through all the connected systems to better diagnose and pinpoint the real issues."
"You get a good insight into what is going on inside your code."
 

Cons

"DX SaaS is a latecomer to the APM market. Some things that are straightforward in Dynatrace are complicated in DX. For example, upgrading the agents is a seamless process in Dynatrace, but it's a pain in DX SaaS. You should be able to upgrade in the Application Command Center. However, it is not working correctly."
"Old user interface and dashboards could be improved."
"The ability to scale presents a challenge as the cost of handling vast amounts of data in the cloud must be taken into account."
"The thread traceability is something that needs improvement."
"I do know that for the size of our organization, we're talking thousands of agents and hundreds of applications, it does get to the point where the servers themselves that house Dynatrace are at a point where, in some cases, they are just too big for one machine, since you have to have an entire application ecosystem all funnel into a single system."
"The documentation of Dynatrace needs to be improved. There needs to be a more detailed description and additional examples for background understanding for beginners trying to use it."
"The solution's ability to assess the severity of anomalies based on the actual impact to users and business KPIs is great. In my opinion, it could be extended even more. I would like it to be more configurable for the end-user. It would be nice to have more business rules applicable to the severity. It's already very good as it is now. It is based on the impact on your front-end users. But it would be nice if we could configure it a bit more."
"I'd like to see the UI a bit more polished. For example, I saw a demo of the dashboards here at the Perform 2018 conference. There was a table of these widgets, but they're not sorted alphabetically and there's, like, 50 of them. So if you want to find your widgets, you're of scrolling up and down. So small features, being able to search for widgets, that things are more categorized; just a bit more focused on the user experience."
"I think scalability is what we're struggling with. I would say it's okay, but there's a little bit of room for improvement."
"It's not very scalable, we cannot add another server onto it."
"Make sure older frameworks, like PHP 5.3, are supported."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our monthly cost for DX SaaS is approximately $5 per user, which I considered affordable."
"Dynatrace is usually paid on a yearly basis."
"We found a tool that can be utilized by testing, DevOps, marketing, software engineering, and monitoring. Before, we always had everybody doing their own thing. Now, everybody's utilizing one tool, which is huge. That is a huge savings."
"There was also some complexity in the adoption rate of it because of how costly the licensing is."
"Getting the first agents installed, getting information, and coverage in a initial set of systems can be done in hours and with a low cost entry point."
"We license it for two environments, typically all of production and all of one lower environment, usually our staging environment. If there is a downside to Dynatrace, the only thing I can think of would be the cost. If it were cheaper, I'd have it in all my environments. I don't think they're charging more than it's worth, by any means. It's just that good software costs money."
"Product pricing can seem a little over complex, however this is minor and does not detract from the benefits of the solution."
"It's expensive."
"Pricing can be high, especially for Portuguese standards. But as one says, you get what you pay for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Real Estate/Law Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
29%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
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...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

CA DXI, CA Digital Experience Insights
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CNN
Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Find out what your peers are saying about DX SaaS vs. Dynatrace and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.