IBM Instana Observability vs Stackify comparison

IBM and Stackify are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. IBM is ranked #41 with an average rating of 8.0, while Stackify is ranked #61. IBM holds a 0.6% mindshare in APM, compared to Stackify’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 71% of Stackify users who would recommend it.

IBM Instana Observability

Read 3 IBM Instana Observability reviews

750 Views
750 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Stackify

Read 6 Stackify reviews

822 Views
477 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

IBM Instana Observability

Stackify

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 2025

Stackify and IBM Instana Observability compete in the application performance management sector. Stackify is attractive for its pricing and support, while IBM Instana is seen as superior for its advanced features.

Features:Stackify offers code profiling, error tracking, and developer-centric tools. IBM Instana provides automated root cause analysis, dynamic graphing capabilities, and deep insights across complex systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Stackify has a simple deployment model ideal for small to mid-sized businesses, with responsive and solution-oriented customer support. IBM Instana employs an automated deployment process that integrates well with existing systems, requiring more technical expertise but offering extensive documentation and support.

Pricing and ROI:Stackify features cost-effective pricing with high ROI and minimal upfront investment, beneficial for startups and mid-sized companies. IBM Instana involves a higher setup cost but offers a greater ROI in environments requiring advanced analytics and full-stack monitoring.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Instana Observability vs. Stackify Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Instana Observability vs. Stackify

July 2025

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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

IBM Instana Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

41st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Stackify

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

61st

Average Rating

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (59th), Log Management (61st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stackify is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Tomas Kim

Managing Director at BA Solutions

Not expensive and offers good performance

The most valuable feature of the solution is performance. A one-vendor solution serves as a good feature of the tool. In the IT industry, the IT support team has lots of vendors to contact. DB monitoring is done by one company, while WaaS monitoring is done by another and done by another company, which makes it really complicated for the IT team concerned about the security levels. The tool's main feature is that it is a one-vendor solution. The analysis done by the tool is a good feature. The tool is used as an open-source tool. The tool is growing, and new features are being added to the product.

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Kalyan Somisetty

Senior Developer at PRESIS KONSULT

Simple, easy to configure, and offers trial versions

In the next version, which I want to try, it'll show the comparison of the old responses of the APS. For example, how much time the old response and the new response with the changes. Right now, I cannot differentiate. The graphical interface should be able to capture nicely how much time it has taken and it should be very clear. Sometimes it confuses us. For example, what is this APA for? What were the average responses and how many requests have happened? It needs to give a clear picture. They should enable request and response capturing in the Stackify user interface to show what the request for the APA is. Then, it'll be very good. It should be able to capture the payload. For example, what is the request and what is the response? If it has a nice way of capturing everything then it would be easy. There is no need of using ELK again for logging. As of now, people will use Stackify or maybe Grafana for seeing the stats of the application or responses, however, it doesn't have the capabilities to show everything. People will go for any exception handling or checking the request and response in the ELK. If Stackify can do this future, then it'll be an easier single tool. It is anyway intercepting the logs, application logs. I don't think it's a big matter to capture extra data with the requested response. That requested response capturing also should be configurable since some people want the question response to be captured and for the people that don't want it, we can use that feature. It can be enabled as desired. Many people are using different monitoring tools like ELK, LogStash, and Splunk - many other tools. However, if you can make this kind of performance tool cover everything, then they will not shift to other solutions. It should be easily scalable and configurable in different instances. For example, if the same application is scaled up to differently, it should be easily integrable into Kubernetes pipelines. They should offer plugins to make it more easily integratable. For development enrollment, it should be free to use.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."

"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."

"The deployment is very fast."

"The filter feature on Stackify is one of the features I found valuable. It's awesome. When I want to get the application logs, the solution gives me many filters. For example, if I want to get logs from my test environment, the option is there for me to select the environment from Stackify, and you can also select the particular application, and you'll see the information you need there. The filter feature alone and the fact that Stackify offers a lot of different filters is what I like the most about the solution because I've used other tools with the filter feature, but the filtering was very difficult, versus Stackify that has good filtering. On Stackify, you can filter the information by the last one hour, or the last four hours, and you can also select the date range and specify the timestamp, then the solution will give you the information based on the date range you specified. Another feature I found valuable on Stackify is its rating feature because it tells you how your application is faring. For example, a rating of A means excellent, while a rating of F means very bad, or that your application is not doing well at all. The ratings are from A to F. I also like that Stackify helps you in terms of load management because the solution gives you information on overutilized resources. These are the most valuable features of the solution."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"The performance dashboard and the accurate level of details are beneficial."

Cons

"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."

"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."

"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."

"I've not used Stackify for a while, and I'm currently using a solution now that's not as good as Stackify. Among the solutions I've been using so far, Stackify has been one of the best for me, but there's always room for improvement. For example, I don't know if it's just me, but when I try to get the log from Stackify, sometimes it doesn't appear in real-time. It takes a few minutes before the logs appear. When I redeploy my solution and the application starts, I don't see the logs immediately, and it would take two to three minutes before I see the logs. I don't know if other customers have a similar experience. It's the wait time for the logs to appear that's a concern for me, could be improved, and is what the Stackify team should be looking into. In terms of any additional feature that I'd like added to the solution, I'm not sure if Stackify has a way to export logs out. I've been trying to do it. On the solution, you can click on a spiral-like icon and it shows you the entire error, and I'd prefer an export button that would let me download the error and save that into a text file, for example, so it'll be available on my local machine for me to reference it, especially because the log keeps going and as you're using the solution, the system keeps pushing messages on to Stackify, so if I'm looking at a particular error at 12:05 PM, for example, by the time I go back to my system and would like to revisit the error at 12:25 PM, on Stackify, the logs would have gone past that level and I won't see it again which makes it difficult. When you now go back to that timestamp, you don't tend to see it immediately, but if the solution had an export feature for me to save that particular error information on my local machine for reference at a later time, I won't have to go back to Stackify. I just go to that log, specifically to that particular export that I've received on my local machine. I can get it and review it, and it would be easier that way versus me going back to Stackify to find that particular error and request that particular information."

"The search feature could be improved."

"I would like to be able to see metrics about individual running containers on the host machines."

"It should be easily scalable and configurable in different instances."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to that of its competitors like Dynatrace."

"The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive."

"The price is variable. It depends on how much data we have received in that particular month. Usually, it goes up to $2,000, or, at times, $3,000 USD per month."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Hospitality Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Media Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?

The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive.

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What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?

The tool should offer more LDR AI models. The monitoring is just a status, but the next level of a monitoring solution is to prevent an accident or stop an accident status. The solution should be t...

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What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?

Before IBM, I ordered our company's engineer to have a look at the tool and test it. I think it was two years ago, the transfer to IBM happened in our company. At the beginning, IBM Instana Observa...

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Comparisons

Elastic Observability vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 27% of the time

Grafana vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 14% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Monitor vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 10% of the time

Dynatrace vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM Instana Observability Competitors

New Relic vs Stackify

Compared 46% of the time

Dynatrace vs Stackify

Compared 32% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Stackify

Compared 22% of the time

More Stackify Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

August 2025

Download IBM Instana Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Stackify

July 2025

Download Stackify product report

Overview

IBM Instana Observability offers real-time application monitoring and management, designed for automation and intelligence on modern cloud-based environments.

IBM Instana Observability provides deep visibility into application performance, empowering businesses with automated root cause analysis and intelligent alerts to optimize cloud-native applications. It captures and visualizes comprehensive health metrics to enhance operational efficiency across distributed systems, making it an invaluable tool for IT and DevOps teams seeking to improve application reliability and performance.

What are the key features of IBM Instana Observability?

Automatic Discovery: Identifies application components and dependencies without manual configuration.
Real-Time Monitoring: Delivers live data for instant visibility across application metrics.
AI-Powered Root Cause Analysis: Quickly pinpoints issues to reduce downtime and enhance user experience.
Intelligent Alerts: Provides actionable insights, minimizing false alarms.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with popular DevOps tools.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating IBM Instana Observability?

Increased Productivity: Reduces manual monitoring efforts, enhancing team efficiency.
Enhanced Performance: Improves application responsiveness and user satisfaction.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes resource allocation, leading to reduced operational costs.
Scalable Solutions: Adapts to growing business needs, ensuring long-term value.
Detailed Insights: Offers granularity in monitoring, aiding in swift decision-making.

IBM Instana Observability is widely adopted across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, addressing specific challenges in each sector. In finance, it helps manage high-volume transactions with minimal latency. Healthcare benefits from its compliance support and reliable data monitoring. Retail industries utilize it for maintaining seamless customer interactions and operational uptime, ensuring business continuity and customer satisfaction.

IBM

Stackify is an application performance management (APM) solution that combines application performance monitoring with logs, errors, and reporting. It is a SaaS solution that is developer-focused. Users can quickly scan, identify, and repair issues with applications. Stackify APM offers valuable tools, such as Prefix and Retrace, which help to make it a comprehensive and valuable APM solution. Stackify is now part of the Netreo family of IT Infrastructure Management (ITIM), which is considered one of the fastest-growing IT organizations in the marketplace today.

Stackify Prefix

Stackify Prefix helps developers write better code, faster. The tool examines, tests, and approves code as it is being written. Almost every new application is code-perfect, negating the need for exhausting troubleshooting and frustrating time-consuming code review.

Prefix is able to discover poor-performing SQL queries, ORM queries, potential bottlenecks, and concealed exceptions prior to moving the application into production.

Prefix offers Summary Dashboards, intuitive suggestions, integrated logs, and distributed tracing. Distributed tracing expands visibility to cloud-native applications, microservices, and containers and can also provide additional transparency to cache services, web services, third-party services, and more. Users are able to easily move from logs to traces and back.

This valuable tool ensures developers are able to consistently release the best code possible in the least amount of time, while improving performance, productivity, and profitability.

Prefix is a very robust and easy-to-use tool. It can be used seamlessly with Linux, macOS, and Windows. Prefix integrates well with numerous languages, such as Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, .Net, and .Net Core.

Stackify Retrace

Stackify Retrace is a user-friendly, trusted APM solution used in more than fifty countries worldwide. Users know that Retrace is able to ensure they can complete quicker, more efficient application development and consistently enhance overall application performance by suggesting important intuitive suggestions users need.

This solution is beneficial to both developers (Dev) and operations (Ops) personnel to learn to improve code and immediately finetune issues by:

Establishing effortless collaboration between Dev and Ops personnel via an easy-to-use GUI dashboard.
Delivering complete transparency of all stages of the application development process, from pre-development to production.
Utilizing performance protocols, such as error tracking, application logs, and code profiling, in real time in order to thoroughly understand how long a code will take to complete various tasks.
Improving overall efficiency and productivity by immediately discovering and repairing application issues.

Retrace Real User Monitoring (RUM) uses both front-end and back-end monitoring to give users a complete picture of what is going on with the applications. This intuitive dashboard displays performance with a complete breakdown of resource usage and integrates the server-side and client traces into one engaging, user-friendly, extensive view.

Retrace is an out-of-the-box solution that works seamlessly with Java stacks, PHP, Node.js, Ruby, Python, .Net, and .Net Core. It is also compatible with many of today’s popular frameworks, such as AWS, Azure, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Redis, and SQL Server. Additionally, Retrace will work effectively with many cloud providers, containers, and languages, and offers excellent and easy integration with today's favorite tools such as Jira, Slack, Jenkins, and more.

Stackify

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

MyRacePass, ClearSale, Newitts, Carbonite, Boston Software, Children's International, Starkwood Media Group, Fewzion

Buyer's Guide

IBM Instana Observability vs. Stackify

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Instana Observability vs. Stackify

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