InfluxDB vs Kentik comparison

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InfluxDB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

InfluxDB and Kentik compete in the data management and network analytics space. InfluxDB has the upper hand for efficient time-series data handling, while Kentik stands out with its comprehensive network performance monitoring capabilities.

Features: InfluxDB offers high-performance time-series data management, scalability, and an efficient analytics and monitoring solution. Kentik provides advanced network visibility, in-depth performance analytics, and specialized tools for complex network requirements.

Room for Improvement: InfluxDB could enhance its network-centric features, broaden its analytics capabilities, and improve integration with non-time-series data. Kentik could simplify its deployment process, optimize costs for users with basic needs, and improve data-centric features to broaden its appeal.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: InfluxDB supports straightforward deployment with flexible cloud options, and it offers reliable support for a smooth experience. Kentik's deployment process can be more complex due to its network-specific features, but it compensates with a robust customer service model that aids users through the setup.

Pricing and ROI: InfluxDB typically incurs lower setup costs and offers a favorable ROI for businesses focusing on time-series data. Its pricing is appealing for those prioritizing cost efficiency. Kentik has higher setup costs reflecting its extensive features, yet provides justified ROI for businesses needing comprehensive network management solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed InfluxDB vs. Kentik Report (Updated: April 2025).

InfluxDB vs. Kentik

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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

InfluxDB

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

52nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Non-Relational Databases (3rd), Open Source Databases (12th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (45th), NoSQL Databases (5th)

Kentik

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

32nd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of InfluxDB is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

PedroCampos

Senior DevOps at Light And Wonder

A powerful, lightweight time series database with a simple query language and easy setup

Influx has TICK Stack, which contains multiple services and multiple products that work together. InfluxDB is just a time series database, and it works really well. I haven't yet had the time to look into the new stack based on Influx 2.0, but currently, as a time series database, InfluxDB is working the way it is supposed to work. In terms of features that I would like to see or have, in the community version, some features are not available. I would like to have clustering and authentication in the community version. I would also like to have high availability features, such as replication, active-active, etc. If they can put an extra plugin or service on top of it, it would be something interesting. I am not sure if they have high availability to make it data center-aware for clustering. For example, I am not sure whether you can have it at different locations with big clusters that are location-aware. Even in their documentation or presentation, they talk too little about high availability and extended clusters with different locations. They might already have it in the newer versions. We have Influx 1.8 in our production in the stage and internal workloads environments. The other products in their ecosystem, such as Chronograf, can be improved. Chronograf is a dashboarding or visualization layer product, and that, for sure, can be improved.

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ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup

The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.

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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

"InfluxDB's best feature is that it's a cloud offering. Other good features include its time-series DB, fast time-bulk queries, and window operations."

"The most valuable features are aggregating the data and integration with Graphana for monitoring."

"InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data from servers. It must be installed on Windows or Linux servers. During installation, ensure that the configuration file is correct to prevent issues. Once data is collected, it can be sent to InfluxDB. For visualization, you can use open-source tools like Grafana."

"The user interface is well-designed and easy to use. It provides a clear overview of the data, making it simple to understand the information at hand."

"The solution is very powerful."

"The platform operates very quickly. It is easy to configure, connect, and query and integrates seamlessly with Grafana."

"While I would rate InfluxDB a ten on a scale of one to ten, users should be thoughtful about matching the engine to their specific needs."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is we can use InfluxDB to integrate with and plug into any other tools."

More InfluxDB pros

"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."

"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."

"We're pretty happy with the API functionality. It's web, and it's very simple to set up queries. It has served us well and you don't need to be an expert on the API or the product to set these things up."

"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."

"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."

"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."

"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."

"Kentik excels in telemetry within data centers and works well in multi-vendor environments."

More Kentik pros

Cons

"I've tried both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, and each has its limitations."

"InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times."

"The solution's UI can be more user-friendly."

"In terms of features that I would like to see or have, in the community version, some features are not available. I would like to have clustering and authentication in the community version."

"The solution doesn't have much of a user interface."

"InfluxDB can improve by including new metrics on other technologies. They had some changes recently to pool data from endpoints but the functionality is not good enough in the industry."

"InfluxDB cannot be used for high-cardinality data. It's also difficult and time-consuming to write queries, and there are some issues with bulk API."

"One area for improvement is the querying language. InfluxDB deprecated FluxQL, which was intuitive since developers are already familiar with standard querying."

More InfluxDB cons

"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."

"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."

"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."

"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."

"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."

"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."

"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."

"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."

More Kentik cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"InfluxDB is open-source, but there are additional costs for scaling."

"We are using the open-source version of InfluxDB."

"InfluxDB recently increased its price. It is very expensive now."

"The tool is an open-source product."

"The tool is cheaply priced."

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about InfluxDB?

InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data ...

What needs improvement with InfluxDB?

InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data coll...

What is your primary use case for InfluxDB?

I use the solution to store and manage data from various sensors in a production environment. I have developed a system where data from these sensors is communicated through an OPC UA receiver and ...

What do you like most about Kentik?

It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.

What needs improvement with Kentik?

The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect.

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Cassandra vs InfluxDB

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

InfluxDB

Download InfluxDB product report

Download Kentik product report

Overview

InfluxDB is open-source software that helps developers and enterprises alike to collect, store, process, and visualize time series data and to build next-generation applications. InfluxDB provides monitoring and insight on IoT, application, system, container, and infrastructure quickly and easily without complexities or compromises in scale, speed, or productivity.

InfluxDB has become a popular insight system for unified metrics and events enabling the most demanding SLAs. InfluxDB is used in just about every type of industry across a wide range of use cases, including network monitoring, IoT monitoring, industrial IoT, and infrastructure and application monitoring.

InfluxDB offers its users:

Infrastructure and application monitoring: Collect, process, and analyze real-time data from edge devices to help optimize distributed infrastructure.

IoT monitoring and analytics: InfluxDB is designed to store large volumes of time series data and quickly perform real-time analysis on that data. Gain insights from all the sensor data and use the collected data to create and perform automated tasks.

Network monitoring: Manage responsive and high-performing networks with widely distributed resources.

InfluxDB Benefits

There are several benefits to using InfluxDB . Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

APIs and ready toolset: InfluxDB can be accessed via a set of powerful tools enabling users to get started quickly, with less programming required. This includes a REST API, extensive client libraries, a wide variety of open-source integrations, and Flux - a functional data scripting language for querying, analysis, and events. The InfluxDB API can be used to write data from edge devices to the InfluxDB instance

Time series engine: Get any data - events, logs, traces - from any edge device - systems, sensors, queues, databases, and networks. This data is stored in a powerful and high-performing engine capable of ingesting millions of data points per second.

Community: InfluxDB has a large community of cloud and open-source developers ready to assist users.

Ready-made templates: Use InfluxDB Templates, a set of tools with a packager and other ready monitoring solutions. These tools allow users to share their monitoring expertise with coworkers and other community members around the world. The Templates gallery offers available templates for some of the most popular tools and applications.

Enhanced UI: InfluxDB’s UI includes an explorer, dashboarding tools, and a script editor. Use it to easily browse the collected metric and event data and apply common transformations. The dashboarding tool comes with a variety of visualization options that help users view insights from the data. The script editor assists users to quickly master Flux with easily accessible examples, auto-completion, and real-time syntax checking.

Reviews from Real Users

InfluxDB stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its flexible integration options and its data aggregation feature.

Shalauddin Ahamad S., a software engineer at a tech services company, notes, “The most valuable features are aggregating the data and the integration with Grafana for monitoring.”

InfluxData

Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.

With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.

Sample Customers

ebay, AXA, Mozilla, DiDi, LeTV, Siminars, Cognito, ProcessOut, Recommend, CATS, Smarsh, Row 44, Clustree, Bleemeo

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.

InfluxDB vs. Kentik