Instana Dynamic APM vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Instana and VMware are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Instana is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.1, while VMware is ranked #27 with an average rating of 9.0. Instana holds a 1.0% mindshare in APM, compared to VMware’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of Instana users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Instana Dynamic APM

Read 14 Instana Dynamic APM reviews

2,459 Views
2,042 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 12 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

1,513 Views
1,356 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Instana Dynamic APM

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Instana Dynamic APM are two competitive APM solutions. Based on user reviews, Instana Dynamic APM seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and ease of use.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers robust monitoring and analytics tools, fast issue resolution, and valuable performance insights. Instana Dynamic APM provides automatic discovery, continuous monitoring, and real-time performance visualization, with users finding its features more comprehensive and user-friendly.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications needs better scalability, integration with third-party tools, and more intuitive configuration. Instana Dynamic APM could improve its documentation, troubleshooting guides, and provide more detailed control over monitoring settings.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications has a straightforward deployment process but faces initial configuration challenges, with responsive and helpful customer service. Instana Dynamic APM offers seamless deployment with minimal disruption and proactive, effective customer service.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is competitively priced, leading to a favorable ROI. Instana Dynamic APM has a higher cost, but users find its extensive features and effective performance monitoring justify the investment, resulting in satisfactory ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Instana Dynamic APM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

April 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

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

19th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

27th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (29th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (21st)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 0.8%, down from 1.0% 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

IT Consultant at Arcana Info

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…

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ToniLindberg

senior consultant at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB

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.

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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

"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."

"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."

"It is user-friendly, but we encounter issues processing input and understanding the graphics, such as seeing a flatline without knowing the cause. When these problems occur, I have to contact my support team to address and fix them. Also, monitoring processing is good."

"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."

"If a key monitored value has crossed a threshold, it sends out an alert. And the solution is able to intelligently find out if something is beyond the range that it normally resides in."

"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."

"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."

"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

"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."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."

"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"

"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."

"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."

"Maybe log monitoring could be better."

"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."

"The auto-remediation features must be improved."

"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

"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."

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."

"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."

"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"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."

"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 pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and packages from VMware.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing us to set up alerts for different components and send them via SMTP to a team d...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 47% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

IBM Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 9% of the time

Datadog vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 9% of the time

Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Prometheus Group vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM

May 2025

Download Instana Dynamic APM product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

April 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

Instana’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated Application Performance Monitoring, discovers and maps all services, infrastructure, and their inter-dependencies automatically. Instana ingests all observability metrics, traces each request, profiles every process, and updates application dependency maps in real-time to deliver the context and actionable feedback needed by Dev+Ops to optimize application performance, enable innovation, and mitigate risk to help them add value and efficiency to the pipeline. Learn more at https://instana.com.

Instana

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

VMware

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

April 2025

Free Report: Instana Dynamic APM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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