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Instana Dynamic APM vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 11, 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

Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Container Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand
Our company uses the solution for one of our bank clients. We use App Connect middleware to monitor services and applications such as Docker, Kubernetes, MongoDB, and MS SQL Server. We also monitor the bottleneck for all servers.  We currently have 20 users at one of our branches. We plan to expand…
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"Splunk APM has helped us to standardize logging and monitoring procedures."
"The vibrant dashboards are valuable."
"The most valuable thing that we have seen within our group is the ability to ingest all this raw data and have it organized in a certain way so that different groups can get effective alerting from this massive amount of raw data that is out there."
"It can monitor, get the data, and then report on the data."
"The best features in Splunk Observability Cloud are the metrics; I can see any logs or anything related to the server or services we want to monitor, and the metrics are a good function."
"The Add data feature lets you gather any type of log and easily analyze it."
"The initial setup was straightforward. We didn't find it to be too complex."
"The feature I find most valuable, is the data integration."
 

Cons

"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."
"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."
"We should be able to go back to scenarios during or before the issue. There should be something like a history playback. Such a feature or functionality would be good."
"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."
"In Splunk Observability Cloud, I notice room for improvement in synthetic monitoring. It does not provide output based on server names."
"The price has room for improvement."
"There are some predefined metrics.......we may want to create customized metrics."
"We never had any issues when it comes to the type of use cases we are using it for. We did not need more advancement on it, but I know that, in general, everything can be updated. There are tiny little tweaks that can be made regardless of whether it looks better or has a different flow to it than it does right now, but it works pretty well for what we use it for."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with the automation."
"The security could be better."
"Once you see the issues related to the scalability part, you need to understand that it is a warning triangle. After seeing the warning triangle, you need to realize that you cannot trust any of the numbers you see in the chart because it is not a complete, full data set."
"The cardinality is pretty low."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"Pricing is quite competitive. Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic were all several times more expensive than Instana, both the on-prem and the SaaS versions. Price-wise they are a lot more competitive than anyone else out there."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"Its pricing isn't a big pain point. Its pricing seems to be better than some of the other competing products in the market, but they also have some of the features and functionalities that are better than Instana."
"The solution's pricing is costly."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
"The solution's pricing is competitive. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten. The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"I am not in that circle, but we are currently licensing based on our queries. That is working out for us. Previously, it was by volume of data, and now, we can store as much data as we want."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Instana Dynamic APM?
The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Instana Dynamic APM?
I rate the pricing a seven out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the product.
What needs improvement with Instana Dynamic APM?
Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring.
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Daxko Lifts Fitness Studios Through COVID Regulations with Quick Engineering PivotsAltissia Meets SLAs to Support Student DeadlinesImmocloud Unlocks Observability to Modernize Real EstateEnento Group Boosts Service Reliability with Real-Time Visibility into Application Performance Instana’s Observability for Amazon EKS Helps Yara Deliver Digital Farming Solutions
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Instana Dynamic APM vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,585 professionals have used our research since 2012.