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Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

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
7.3
Number of Reviews
350
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (2nd), AIOps (2nd)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (17th), Cloud Monitoring Software (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 8.8%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.0%, up from 0.8% 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 (%)
Dynatrace8.8%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.0%
Other90.2%
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.
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

"Quick root cause analysis"
"​The stability for the solution is pretty solid overall."
"It is nice to be able to deep dive and pull historical data."
"The most valuable feature is that we can see every database call executed from Java applications."
"Dynatrace shows the customer path, common errors on desktop and mobile, and allows us to achieve faster page loads."
"For cloud, AI has been pretty useful so far when it comes to IT's ability to scale."
"We're able to pinpoint web and mobile interface issues before they trigger a negative customer experience."
"It has helped us by reducing the number of incidents that we have had in the past."
"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."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"No issues with stability."
"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."
"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."
"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."
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
 

Cons

"Infrastructure monitoring could be improved."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"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."
"The web interface, in some cases, is a little ambiguous to use."
"Even if the engine can manage a huge amount of data, requests take time to succeed."
"They expect the customer to do the basic analysis, do all the solutions, and find the solutions themselves. If it is really a product problem, only then will they be able to identify and spend time on the customer."
"Better root cause detection and improve root cause categories. In some cases, the root cause points out only a clue of what has happened."
"As we move into using more AWS native architectures, it should support everything that we want to do. We don't want to adopt another tool."
"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."
"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."
"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."
"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."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is pricey, but it is feature-rich, which is why we probably haven't looked away from it."
"It's expensive."
"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."
"The licensing model is confusing in solutioning clients for the number of hosts needed to deploy."
"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."
"Pricing can be high, especially for Portuguese standards. But as one says, you get what you pay for."
"As compared to New Relic and other providers, it is more expensive, which is its biggest disadvantage. Its biggest advantage is its capability. It is more feature-rich."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business76
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise288
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

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
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: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.