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DX SaaS vs Grafana 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
65th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (17th)
Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of DX SaaS is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 3.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana3.6%
DX SaaS0.6%
Other95.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

JM
Technical Manager at Tech Mahindra Limited
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.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Unified dashboards have empowered teams and have democratized real-time operational insights
Grafana's snapshot and dashboard sharing features are critical for our remote incident response. During production issues, I generate a public snapshot of a dashboard at a specific point and share the URL in our Slack war room so every engineer can see exactly what the metrics looked like when the error occurred. This helps significantly during the process of finding the root cause in those scenarios. The best features Grafana offers go beyond just pretty charts; it is an integration engine. The fact that I can join data from my SQL database with metrics from Prometheus in the same table is a feature I have not found performed as well elsewhere. My team uses this feature by comparing two different tables from the databases to show one single view, which Grafana is really helping with. In a visualized way, the charts can be displayed on one dashboard, allowing end users who are not familiar with these technical aspects to extract valuable data from it. Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company. Before using Grafana, only developers could see the system health, but now our product managers and executives have their own high-level dashboards, which has improved cross-departmental transparency and alignment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"DX allows you to customize and gives you a high degree of control."
"It supports numerous platforms."
"Actionable insight is the most valuable feature."
"Grafana is a very scalable product. It's a really good product."
"Grafana integrates with some of the tools we've chosen beforehand, and while I'm not the right person to elaborate on this since I'm more focused on managing big teams, the teams working with it seem happy."
"It's easy to make changes. We can put many dashboards in one place. There's no delay in showing data - what you see on Grafana matches the server metrics."
"The most valuable aspect is customization. There are many customizations possible, so I like that."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the UI dashboard because we need to create a dashboard on Grafana to monitor our data."
"What I found most valuable in Grafana is that it has a lot of integrations and features that I need for data processing and visualization."
"I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins."
"Provides good dashboard visualization."
 

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."
"The ability to scale presents a challenge as the cost of handling vast amounts of data in the cloud must be taken into account."
"Old user interface and dashboards could be improved."
"They should improve the functioning of its editing tool."
"Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve."
"If there was an issue on one node, we couldn't drill down and see all the issues on other nodes."
"I would like the ability to download my results into any format in order to share the information with my clients."
"One area for improvement in Grafana is that depending on your version, you have to pay for the features, making the license expensive. It would be great if the licensing model could be more flexible. In the next release of Grafana, I want cluster creation to be available, which would help in Grafana deployment and scaling. Currently, the scaling process for the solution is a bit complicated."
"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."
"Grafana doesn't provide anything for reporting."
"I find that the alerting UI in Grafana can be complex for new users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our monthly cost for DX SaaS is approximately $5 per user, which I considered affordable."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"The solution is expensive."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"We are using the open-source license."
"I am using an open-source version"
"For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Legal Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about Grafana?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
The costs associated with using Grafana are somewhere in the ten thousands because we are able to control the logs in a more efficient way to reduce it. That is pretty much great for us.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
Grafana could be improved through enhancement of graphs and visualizations and providing more integrations. Grafana is going to start working with OpenTelemetry, which would be helpful to have the ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CA DXI, CA Digital Experience Insights
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CNN
Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about DX SaaS vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,036 professionals have used our research since 2012.