Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dynatrace vs HeadSpin comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 13, 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

Dynatrace
Ranking in Mobile APM
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
346
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (2nd), Log Management (5th), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd)
HeadSpin
Ranking in Mobile APM
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (30th), Mobile App Testing Tools (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Mobile APM category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 38.8%, down from 43.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HeadSpin is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile APM
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Abhishek-Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
An advanced platform that provides visibility into the performance in the real world and enables us to test AV content
There is definitely room for improvement in terms of marketing. Marketing is something that is not that great. If you look at some of the other companies in the space, they have a lot of published case studies and tested models. They make a lot of noise. They have got some of their best customers talking about them, which is where HeadSpin needs to work. They should automate their onboarding. A lot of things are still manual. They can create a video assistant or something like that to completely automate the entire process. There is a great scope to improve professional services. The time to deploy is quite long. They can increase and improve the scope of their professional services and set up automation through scripts. They do it at this stage, but they're very expensive. I would love to see them come up with project-based costing for companies that are startups or low on funds. Apart from these, they have been on top of the game in terms of features. I can't think of any other new set of features at this point in time because they're already on top in terms of innovation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It provides a better understanding of what is going on."
"For stability, our customers have no complaints."
"Dynatrace can look into application transactions at the packet level, which pretty much relieves us of the work of manually collecting, analyzing, summarizing, and presenting the data, as we had done in the past."
"The ability to create any dashboard that you want for different levels of reporting for technical people, managers, or even executive level. They can get a one page view of what the system health and performance looks like."
"Mean time to recover (MTTR) has reduced significantly during major outages due to specific data pinpointed by DT applications."
"We also got know many internal code bugs which could have caused memory leaks or other issues which we were not able to catch during that development phase."
"The most valuable features of Dynatrace are the ease of installation and management, as well as its extensibility."
"We're able to pinpoint web and mobile interface issues before they trigger a negative customer experience."
"The initial setup of HeadSpin was very easy and user-friendly. It was easy to configure and write a script."
"It has an interesting feature called AV box testing. A lot of companies that are in the OTT segment don't really understand what their streaming is like. They can't test for streaming quality. There are restrictions where you cannot simulate live streaming. For example, on Netflix, you can't simulate how a movie is being streamed on a remote device. That's why HeadSpin has got this AV box testing feature. It is a patented feature. They send an AV box to your location, and you can test live streaming, which is something that no other company does."
"The most valuable feature is that this is the first connected intelligence all-in-one platform."
"The most valuable features of the product are the performance parameters it gives us."
"The technical support is really helpful because we can set up direct calls with them if we want to. We can use Zoom or Google Meet to interact with them directly, and if there is an issue in our system, they will help us by reproducing the issue in their machines and trying to figure out a solution. The support is really smooth, and we like that they're very supportive."
"The most valuable feature of HeadSpin it's the integration with other solutions. It is great. I can search for an element or do a quick debugging on the application right on HeadSpin. It's very useful."
 

Cons

"The dashboarding process and creating measures and metrics, it needs to be made a little bit easier and more simplified. ​"
"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."
"On the one hand we have Dynatrace, on the other hand, we have AppMon. We know Dynatrace is more powerful, with a lot of functions, but there are some core functions AppMon has that Dynatrace needs. Our main use is AppMon and we have not gone to Dynatrace because we don't have those specific functions that we need."
"It could be more affordable and therefore, more widely used by including more features like DEM as part of licensing cost rather than an additional expense."
"Make it easier to define applications. E.g., provide an API for applications defined by REST services."
"I would like to see the ability to pull more user-friendly reports."
"If Dynatrace is capturing everything in your application, it has to "sense" that information, and that sensing needs sensors which we have to include in our applications. The more you apply sensors - the more details you want - the more you have to increase the level of sensing. If I increase the level of sensing, my application's performance goes down, because something is there that is, again and again, checking each and every thing in the application. So that load on the applications increases. So, many times my applications used to crash because Dynatrace was working on them. We had to remove some sensing; either we had to reduce the sensing or we had to remove Dynatrace immediately."
"An area for improvement would be security. In the next release, I'd like to see more network-centric capabilities - Dynatrace is good at the network level, but I have to leverage other network solutions and integrate with them, but a holistic approach including the network as a one-stop-shop would be great."
"HeadSpin needs to improve the hardware. With the mobile, the battery life reduces and must be continuously charged."
"If you want to do some testing or check the devices manually or check the application in a particular device manually, it is really laggy. That's a disappointment because sometimes we would like to do manual testing when our local devices are not available."
"HeadSpin could improve on the user interface because it is very poor. The checks that are done on the iOS devices are very difficult, but for Android, it runs great. For all iOS devices, the user interface and how it interacts with the device are very poor."
"Sometimes, devices go offline and some features are not functioning on some devices, specifically on iOS."
"Support and pricing could be improved."
"They should automate their onboarding. A lot of things are still manual. They can create a video assistant or something like that to completely automate the entire process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is still too expensive."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace is excellent."
"The solution has saved us money through the consolidation of tools. With a hybrid landscape, we had multiple tools. When we consolidated, we removed four or five other monitoring tools with one. For the last ROI calculation that I did, Dynatrace was saving us up to $500,000 per year."
"The only limitation with scaling to cloud-native environments is licensing. It all depends on how many DEM units you're willing to license. The more of DEM units that you purchase, the more user data you can collect."
"Consider volume because that is where you will get the most benefit. Doing a point solution is not cost-effective."
"The pricing and licensing are very expensive."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was a pretty straightforward process. We had no hiccups."
"There is time savings. People's times have been cut in half using this solution because we were previously doing a lot of that manual work. Now, it's a lot more automated, and the data is just there."
"It has a yearly license. There is no other option. It is expensive. There are a lot of other cheaper players in the market, but it is like a Mercedes. You pay an extra premium for it, but you get the benefits. I would love to see them come up with project-based costing. Companies that are low on funds or new-age can do with pricing that is easily digestible. They can give them a pricing model for three months. They can provide a startup package."
"I believe the licensing cost is cheap because it's a total solution, hardware, license and software."
"It's not cheap, but there are a few different packages and different prices for enterprises with different product versions."
"We have a yearly license for 16 devices."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Mobile APM solutions are best for your needs.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
36%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Zynga, Tinder, Pinterest, Akamai, Microsoft, Airbnb, Jam City, TMobile, Mozilla, CNN, Cognizant, Yahoo!, ebay, Quora, Walmart, Kohls, Telstra
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. HeadSpin and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.