Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs Grafana comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jun 29, 2023

We performed a comparison between Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) and Grafana based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Google Cloud's operations suite has a simple setup process with clear documentation and standard API features, while Grafana's setup process can be more challenging and time-consuming depending on the user's experience and requirements.
  • Features: Google Cloud's operations suite has impressive scalability and stability, and is praised for its monitoring, logging, and tracing capabilities. The cloud logging feature is particularly noteworthy. On the other hand, Grafana is known for its flexibility, customizable graphs, and strong support.
  • Pricing: Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) has a set upfront fee, while Grafana's cost fluctuates based on the number of metrics consumed each day. Grafana may be resource-intensive, and specific plugins may necessitate the acquisition of the enterprise version. Additionally, purchasing a license is required for commercial usage of Grafana, and the pricing is determined by the infrastructure.
  • Service and Support: Google Cloud's operations suite is praised for its technical support, while some users depend on their own DevOps team. On the other hand, Grafana's customer service has a mix of positive and negative reviews, with some users finding their technical support helpful and efficient, while others turn to community forums for help.
  • ROI: Google Cloud's operations suite is deemed as having good ROI, whereas Grafana is praised for its enriched data visualization and analytics, ease of use for monitoring and alerting, and providing a clear view of applications and infrastructure.

Comparison Results: Users prefer Google Cloud's operations suite over Grafana due to its cloud logging, user-friendly interface, and ease of setup. While Grafana is customizable and flexible, it lacks in data aggregation, reporting, and machine learning capabilities. Additionally, support for Grafana varies, while Google Cloud's operations suite has highly regarded technical support. Companies have seen a positive return on investment with Google Cloud's operations suite.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana Report (Updated: September 2023).
734,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use.""I like the monitoring feature.""It's easy to use.""Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well.""We find the solution to be stable."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Pros →

"Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts.""It is a stable solution.""It is easy to change and move virtual servers.""The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good.""The best feature was the creation of graphs and trends.""It gives us the visibility we need. I like that when we add deployment markers or release markers, we know exactly when an issue arises. For instance, if there is an increased usage of CPU, we can link it directly to the deployment that might have caused the issue. It increases productivity and observability. We can now easily tell when a certain issue arises. It's way easier to debug because it can point you to certain things based on these markers, and we can debug easier.""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.""The solution can scale well."

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Cons
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana.""It could be more stable.""The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient.""It could be even more automated.""The logging functionality could be better."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Cons →

"The technical support has room for improvement.""It would be helpful if they simplified the data source.""The formatting could be better.""There is room for improvement when using multiple dashboards because they can become complicated to keep track of and use.""They should improve the functioning of its editing tool.""Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve.""The service dashboard is very hard and needs improvement.""I find issues with Grafana. For example, I am unable to open some services there. Then, we have to open ten different tabs to get it fixed. And it's annoying when there's something going on; we want to check Grafana, and it throws four different errors."

More Grafana Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
  • More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I use the open source model so it is free."
  • "My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
  • "We use the open-source version of Grafana."
  • "We are using the open-source license."
  • "I give the price an eight out of ten."
  • "You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
  • "The solution is expensive."
  • "Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
  • More Grafana Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It could be even more automated. For instance, the moment you deploy something, the monitoring can be there for everything. You will just have to launch or click the console in the morning, and then… more »
    Top Answer:Hi @Faustine Chisasa,  I will go with ELK + Grafana. Elasticsearch is highly distributed, scalable and fast. You got power of storage. Logstash is highly pluggable and rich in plugins. You can use… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable aspect is customization. There are many customizations possible, so I like that.
    Ranking
    Views
    4,350
    Comparisons
    3,921
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    274
    Rating
    7.8
    Views
    9,013
    Comparisons
    5,521
    Reviews
    30
    Average Words per Review
    395
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
    Learn More
    Grafana Labs
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    Overview

    Real-time log management and analysis

    Cloud Logging is a fully managed service that performs at scale and can ingest application and platform log data, as well as custom log data from GKE environments, VMs, and other services inside and outside of Google Cloud. Get advanced performance, troubleshooting, security, and business insights with Log Analytics, integrating the power of BigQuery into Cloud Logging.

    Built-in metrics observability at scale

    Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance, uptime, and overall health of cloud-powered applications. Collect metrics, events, and metadata from Google Cloud services, hosted uptime probes, application instrumentation, and a variety of common application components. Visualize this data on charts and dashboards and create alerts so you are notified when metrics are outside of expected ranges.

    Stand-alone managed service for running and scaling Prometheus

    Managed Service for Prometheus is a fully managed Prometheus-compatible monitoring solution, built on top of the same globally scalable data store as Cloud Monitoring. Keep your existing visualization, analysis, and alerting services, as this data can be queried with PromQL or Cloud Monitoring.

    Monitor and improve your application's performance

    Application Performance Management (APM) combines the monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities of Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring with Cloud Trace and Cloud Profiler to help you reduce latency and cost so you can run more efficient applications.

    Grafana is a powerful open-source analytics and visualization platform that allows users to monitor, analyze, and understand their data in real-time. 

    With its intuitive and user-friendly interface, Grafana enables users to create customizable dashboards, charts, and graphs to visualize data from various sources such as databases, cloud services, and IoT devices. It supports a wide range of data sources including Prometheus, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, and more. 

    Grafana also offers a vast library of plugins and extensions, allowing users to extend its functionality and integrate with other tools seamlessly. With its alerting and notification features, users can set up alerts based on predefined thresholds and receive notifications via various channels. 

    Grafana is highly scalable and can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes. Whether you are a developer, data analyst, or IT professional, Grafana provides a comprehensive solution for data visualization and monitoring.

    Offer
    Learn more about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)
    Learn more about Grafana
    Sample Customers
    Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
    PayPal, eBay, Staples, Booking.com, Intel, NS1, TED, NetApp, Vimeo, RackSpace, SquareSpace, OpenTable, MediaMath, Fermilab
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider29%
    Financial Services Firm29%
    Energy/Utilities Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    REVIEWERS
    Retailer23%
    Computer Software Company23%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Retailer6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise70%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise71%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise52%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana
    September 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
    734,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is ranked 20th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 5 reviews while Grafana is ranked 7th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 33 reviews. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is rated 7.8, while Grafana is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) writes "Good logging and tracing but does need more profiling capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Grafana writes "Agent-free with great dashboards and an active community". Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is most compared with AWS X-Ray, Datadog, Azure Monitor, Amazon CloudWatch and Splunk Enterprise Security, whereas Grafana is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, New Relic, Sentry and Elastic Observability. See our Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana report.

    See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

    We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.