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Splunk AppDynamics vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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

Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
278
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
13th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 5.0%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk AppDynamics5.0%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.3%
Other93.7%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

YA
Sr. Solution Architect, Project Manager at The National Commercial Bank
Root cause analysis has become possible but complex setup and agent issues still slow investigations
The limitations I notice include the instability of the agent, which crashes, and the application itself consuming memory under heavy loads. Additionally, the customizations are not easy to build, especially for new parsers and functionalities that are just supported out-of-the-box. Splunk AppDynamics needs to be more user-friendly so that even someone who does not know what is happening should be able to easily find the root cause of issues, as the tool is specifically designed for application developers, not from a user perspective for problem identification. My experience with the application performance monitoring capabilities of Splunk AppDynamics indicates that it is complex. The correlation from the front end to the back end is not working properly. In an application using the EUM feature and having the app agent, the app agent gives me the transaction data, but the EUM data does not correlate to the backend transactions, and I do not know why. It can be very complex to find the root cause in those scenarios, as there is a disparity in metrics, making it challenging. Even though Splunk AppDynamics is trying, my very large environment presents hurdles that medium-scale organizations might not experience. After spending around three to four years trying to get value from it, I still feel a lack of satisfaction. To get closer to a rating of 10 in the future, I would like to see whatever features are being provided made to work, particularly in large environments. Splunk AppDynamics claims it can do 100 things, but if those things are not functioning cohesively, it is ineffective. Instead of offering 100 features that do not work together, it would be better to focus on a smaller set of features that operate effectively. Changes happen daily with new applications and technologies, and Splunk AppDynamics needs to adapt more swiftly to keep up. The feature that helps detect and protect against vulnerabilities does raise concerns. I experience vulnerabilities in Splunk AppDynamics that I communicate to support for fixes, and they often respond by indicating that some fixes are available in new versions. This creates a continuous cycle of raising issues and waiting for resolutions through version updates.
AS
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the product for enterprise-level monitoring, everything from application to database monitoring, and it will tell you everything, showing you at the code level where the issue is and even analyzing a database to show which CPUs are taking more time to execute and exactly where the issue is."
"The business transaction that stands between multiple applications is proving to be most valuable."
"A solution like AppDynamics is a definite advantage because it can pinpoint the areas that the person(s) reviewing the issue need to focus on, making the technicians a lot faster in remediating issues that an application is presenting."
"It definitely helps us speed up our troubleshooting."
"Once you get past installation, AppDynamics is highly stable and we get good results."
"The tool presents basic JVM utilization, memory heaps, and all those metrics."
"AppDynamics allows users a complete application monitoring solution for making better products and applications."
"This solution has helped us to reduce the number of incidents in our Production environment and improve the performance of applications."
"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."
"We haven't had any issues with stability."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"Wavefront gives us the complexity we need, instead of spending time coming up with a nice dashboard from some other means, or just creating and coding our own app."
"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 solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement in AppDynamics Server Monitoring is integration; in particular, it needs a better way to integrate with custom applications such as Siebel CRM. Right now, it's challenging to integrate AppDynamics Server Monitoring with Siebel CRM because it sometimes gives an error and cannot integrate properly."
"The product's drawback is the licensing pricing. It could be better."
"The resolution time takes longer than expected."
"To improve Splunk AppDynamics, it should migrate seamlessly into observability Splunk, which is called Splunk Observability Cloud."
"It would help to maybe have a more graphical interface and more user-friendly graphics."
"Sadly, I did not see return on investment with Splunk AppDynamics."
"I would think Splunk AppDynamics could do a better job in creating out-of-box dashboards for Kubernetes-based cloud applications."
"At first, I thought it had a high learning curve. However, it's not so much. It's just different. It's different from all the other tools and it's just not as intuitive as it could be."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"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."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"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."
"So far, the solution's learning curve has been pretty high."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One of the main downsides to the solution is its cost."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable for what features you receive."
"We find its pricing reasonable and competitive. After it was acquired by Cisco, we found it acceptable."
"AppDynamics is an expensive solution."
"The pricing for AppDynamics is expensive, but it is possible to negotiate special pricing through bids."
"The pricing needs to come down."
"Pricing is based on the size of the deployment."
"The solution is highly expensive"
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"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."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise208
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
What needs improvement with AppDynamics Server Monitoring?
There is room for improvement in auto-discovery and mapping. While it is very good, sometimes we need customization to match our application or business needs, but currently it is satisfactory. If ...
What is your primary use case for AppDynamics Server Monitoring?
I use Splunk AppDynamics data collection features with agents. It is on-premises, particularly in hybrid and on-premises environments. I have used Splunk AppDynamics for business transaction monito...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk AppDynamics vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.