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Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 2025

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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Ranking in Container Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
363
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Mobile APM (3rd), AIOps (1st), AI Observability (3rd)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 4.9%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dynatrace4.9%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.3%
Other93.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Vinothkumar Sugumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Unified dashboards have provided end-to-end visibility and now streamline API latency troubleshooting
I think Dynatrace can be improved in dashboard creation, as this is the face of a product. Although Dynatrace may have many things, new users typically do not know the whole power of the product. To onboard new people, it would be beneficial to provide template dashboards or suggested dashboards. Organizations working with microservice architecture will follow some templates, so suggesting simple, hand-picked features that are really helpful could make a difference. Quick configurable and customizable templates would be very useful. Whenever they come into the product, they can use this template and feel that their product is applied to it. Immediately, they will think everything is online and can improve easily. This base can be provided in template form. Since Dynatrace has a lot of features now, the AI integration makes it simple, but the product itself is very huge. To understand and utilize it, maybe it would be good to index the essential features.
AS
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Helps us to see the troubleshooting points or what is hiccuping. This is where we go. We reboot, fix it, or do whatever it takes for it to be taken care of."
"Real-time alerts allow us to address issues as they happen."
"We use Dynatrace for application monitoring in production and we use it in Huawei testing sites for analyzing the performance."
"The main benefits have been getting to root cause on certain issues, being able to deploy applications faster because of the way that you can troubleshoot those issues, so delivering products to our business and driving revenue have improved."
"Smartscape display for ease of visibility, pinpointing a exact problem, and providing necessary details for fixing and even improving on."
"It reduces our efforts to identify services failing in production."
"The real-time monitoring, which we are getting, is amazing."
"The daily metrics which help us analyze the page composition and the corresponding performance metrics so we can quickly and easily determine when something has changed, to aid in root cause analysis."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."
"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."
 

Cons

"Better intelligence in terms of identifying business transactions would be appreciated."
"The initial setup was challenging for us. However, it was complex until you grasped the nuances of the product and the building blocks."
"I would like to see income monitoring for the servers and infrastructure monitoring."
"​The AppMon 6.5 is problematic in configuring. It is little finicky. When we configured the JVM, it did not work."
"We have had problems with our implementation. The SAP Hybris Commerce side of things has been very smooth, but not the BizTalk side."
"The UX/UI needs improvement. It is not easy to learn."
"The thread traceability is something that needs improvement."
"There are two main features that we're very interested in. Number one is, when the tool ingests data from other tools, being able to correlate those with the existing topology, so that the AI engine can draw more conclusions in case Dynatrace does not monitor those instances."
"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."
"So far, the solution's learning curve has been pretty high."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"However, it is still not a very mature product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Just go with Dynatrace. Just start with Dynatrace. Do not go into AppMon. Start with Dynatrace, because AppMon is going to give you so much extra stuff that 99% of your user base will not need it, including yourself."
"Dynatrace is usually paid on a yearly basis."
"While it is quite good in respect to its functionality, there are few area in regards to pricing that they can look at how to possibly change. I have heard it's costly."
"We are buying more licenses, because we are seeing more value."
"Dynatrace has a place for everybody. How you use it and what your budgetary limitations are will dictate what you do with it. But it's within everybody's reach. If you're a small organization and you have a large infrastructure, you may not be able to monitor the whole thing. You may have to pick and choose what you want to monitor, and you have the ability to do so. Your available funds are going to dictate that."
"Setup cost is very low considering that it is an almost totally, automatic process."
"Dynatrace is still kind of an expensive solution compared to others. But I recognize that they are ahead of the competition when we do a feature by feature comparison."
"Its license is a bit expensive. We renew it yearly."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"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."
"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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise303
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TD Bank, Zurich North America, Accenture, Macquarie, United Airlines, Raymond James, BT, Vodafone, Air France-KLM, TELUS, American Airlines, Air Canada, ADT, Virgin Money
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 Dynatrace vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.