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Dynatrace vs Splunk AppDynamics vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications 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 May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 10.6%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 4.7%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

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.
Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Dynamic mapping enhances workflows that are user-friendly
One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging. Additionally, the agent sometimes creates performance issues in production environments. If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems. Moving to an agentless solution, like what some competitors are doing, would be beneficial.
ToniLindberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement
I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to take each individual request and dive in to inspect what methods and calls are being made is extremely helpful."
"Capability to troubleshoot isolated customer complaints with the user session feature."
"The most valuable feature is that we can see every database call executed from Java applications."
"We were able to decrease the number of production defects ever since we started using Dynatrace in our test environment."
"We use it, in many instances, to find the root cause in production."
"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."
"Improved visibility on performance and application issues."
"We use PurePath to see exactly what the user observed from the web browser to the end of the request to the dialog box. Every step of what they do is very useful for us to diagnose a problem"
"The most valuable feature in AppDynamics is the identifying of the slow responses. Additionally, it is easy to use."
"It provides a lot of data, so it helps businesses identify their user base."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the response time from the end-to-end server."
"Users can configure business sections in their environment, and it's possible for customers to configure different sources for the name of the class, the name of the method, or the name of the web service, which is very interesting."
"AppDynamics Database Monitoring provides a single view of the problem and helps identify the guilty database query, which is unique compared to other solutions."
"In my experience, it's easy to use. There's nothing complex to learn or fear. You can quickly adapt to it without the need for extensive training."
"It is a good monitoring tool. Its stability is very good."
"From the performance management side, I like everything from business transaction work to tracking. On the database side, we can get a lot of insights from the database. On the server monitoring side, it helped us a lot to find out some of the issues on the VM side because VMs were creating a little trouble for us."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
 

Cons

"Alert triggers could be easier to setup and more granular."
"Some of the analytics that you get in, e.g., a waterfall analysis of a web page could be clearer. A lot of that is not directly attributable to Dynatrace. Sometimes a vendor will implement a tag or JavaScript plugin that's named something entirely different than what it does. This makes it difficult to track that from the waterfall list, figure out where exactly that component is, and dig more into what it's doing. Dynatrace could probably improve a bit on that waterfall layout to make it clearer as to what exactly is there. It does a wonderful job of telling you what loads and when, but it could be improved in terms of telling me what exactly it is loading."
"The heavy client is not really user-friendly and the concepts (while powerful) are unintuitive."
"Session export for offline analysis, like it was in AppMon, would be also nice."
"Pretty much every month there are new features. However, its information on those new features is scarce."
"We would like to see more external tool integration, which is critical for us."
"Custom reporting capabilities should be extended, because it now has basic charting capabilities."
"I would like to see the same features as in the New Relic Insights in the dashboard. That is the only thing I want to see improved in Dynatrace."
"AppDynamics is a solution that requires extra learning and could be more user-friendly. Additionally, automated reports would helpful similar to have they have in Google Analytics."
"If we consider the implementation of alternative solutions, such as Dynatrace, there is a notable difference in the approach to agent-based service monitoring. For instance, Dynatrace employs a single-agent solution, which can pose security concerns. When installing Dynatrace, granting the agent ld pro payload rights is a requirement. In contrast, our solution ensures a more secure approach by not requiring root and administration access. While we currently utilize an agent-based solution, there may be a shift in the next one or two years, possibly with the adoption of Open Telemetry. It's anticipated that many APM vendors, including Dynatrace, may alter their structure or strategy for implementation. However, as of now, the trend is towards an increasing number of implementations daily."
"The major concern lies with reports, specifically their configurability. It's like, if I want to combine multiple reports and generate them all at once, that's not possible. Even though there's a setup for generating 25 reports, I wanted to group them all and generate them in one go, which isn't currently feasible. I have to manually run each report and set the time for it."
"SQL statement monitoring"
"The solution’s setup is a bit complex."
"The AppDynamics installation process needs to be more straightforward. Deploying the product is also tricky."
"AppDynamics Server Monitoring lacks investment in new technologies like Kubernetes and cloud solutions."
"There are certain limitations with the agents in the solution"
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have not been able to observe more than 1% overhead, despite Dynatrace saying that it can be slightly higher in some situations."
"This is an expensive solution, but it is also worth the money."
"Setup cost is very low considering that it is an almost totally, automatic process."
"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's expensive."
"The pricing is a bit on the higher end."
"Product pricing can seem a little over complex, however this is minor and does not detract from the benefits of the solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Because it is priced per JVM, the price can increase pretty fast, into the millions. We have had challenges because we had to justify the price to our clients, as well, when we are putting in certain tools."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"It is expensive. However, our time to recover has been reduced, and this product has helped recuperate costs and provided us with ROI."
"AppDynamics Server Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"You are required to purchase licenses whether you use it or not. It is not pay-as-you-use."
"We do not have any issues with the price."
"AppDynamics Database Monitoring is expensive. I rate it a seven to eight out of ten."
"As a technical person, and as an application development team, they all understand that this is the right tool for us. But when it comes to budget and financial matters, it takes days and weeks to convince upper management to buy this tool. So they should do something more on licensing costs."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
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Comparison Review

ITspe9886 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 24, 2019
Compared to AppDynamics where we are still trying to get it into production, we had the latest version of Dynatrace in production within three days
Our primary use case for both Dynatrace and AppDynamics is for application performance monitoring (APM). The main reason for having application performance monitoring is, when we see something is running slowly, we can immediately look to see where the issue is at before our systems crash on us…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
36%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
48%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 yo...
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 sta...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems,...
APM tools for a Managed Service Provider - Dynatrace vs. AppDynamics vs. Aternity vs. Ruxit
Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your f...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified ...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
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
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.