Software Engineering Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Real User
Overall effective features, good reporting, and log centralization
Pros and Cons
  • "I have found error reporting and log centralization the most valuable features. Overall, Datadog provides a full package solution."

    What is our primary use case?

    I am using Datadog for error reporting.

    What is most valuable?

    I have found error reporting and log centralization the most valuable features. Overall, Datadog provides a full package solution.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using this solution for approximately three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The solution is stable.

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    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I used to process a million requests easily with Datadog, I never had any scalability issue.

    How are customer service and support?

    I have not needed to contact support.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is easy.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs.

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate Datadog a nine out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer1493811 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Sr. Architect - SaaS Ops at CommVault
    Real User
    Improves infrastructure visibility, integrates well, and fine-tuning the monitors is easy to do
    Pros and Cons
    • "The ability to send notifications based on metadata from the monitor is helpful."
    • "Once agents are connected to the Datadog portal, we should be able to upgrade them quickly."

    What is our primary use case?

    We primarily use DataDog for performance and log monitoring of cloud environments, which include VMs and Azure Services like Azure compute, storage, network, firewall, and app services via event hubs.  

    Alerting based on monitors via teams and PagerDuty

    Logs collection for Azure services like Azure database, Azure Application Gateway, Azure AKS, and other Azure services.

    Custom metrics using a Python script to collect metrics for components not natively supported by Datadog.

    Synthetic testing to ensure uptime and browser tests via CI/CD pipeline.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Datadog has improved our visibility into infrastructure topology and performance. It provided a simplified view and ability to drill down to system performance, process usage, and logs.

    We were able to set up monitors for infrastructure and applications, as the metrics were readily available in the platform. Fine-tuning monitors is very easy and the ability to configure monitor alerts with details on how to resolve the alert is a key value add. 

    Integration with PagerDuty, teams ensure timely alerting. PagerDuty integration bring tags from Datadog to PagerDuty, which is very useful in routing incidents to the right service

    What is most valuable?

    The Host Map, Live Process provides performance metrics of our application. The support team likes using Datadog for identifying resources affected and obtaining the logs. 

    Monitors are easy and quick to setup. Metrics are easily accessible and quick to use. The ability to send notifications based on metadata from the monitor is helpful. The setup for monitors is one time and it works for all workloads, whether it is Azure or any other cloud.

    Logs rehydration helps us archive and rehydrate logs as we need. We don't need logs to be indexed at all times. Logs are required only for escalations and rehydrating does the job and provides cost savings.

    What needs improvement?

    We need the ability to create a service dependency map like Splunk ITSI. We have to build this in PagerDuty and it's not the best user experience. The ability to create custom inventory objects based on logs ingested would be a value add. It would be better if Datadog makes this a simple click and enable.

    It would be helpful to have the ability to upgrade agents via the Datadog portal. Once agents are connected to the Datadog portal, we should be able to upgrade them quickly.

    Security monitoring for Azure and Operating System (Windows and Linux) are features that need to be addressed.

    Dashboards for Azure Active Directory metrics and events should be improved.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We have been using Datadog for more than six months.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Stability-wise, it has been good.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability is good so far. 

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Support team has been very responsive. Only complain is on issues they don't understand, they should have a quick call and unblock the customer.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We didn't have a solution in place. The only thing we had were logs.

    How was the initial setup?

    Setup is hassle-free and pretty straightforward. 

    What about the implementation team?

    I deployed it myself.

    What was our ROI?

    No returns yet. We are in growth mode. If this becomes expensive we may have to look at alternative options.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big.

    Datadog needs to provide better pricing for large customers.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Prior to implementing Datadog, we evaluated Splunk.

    What other advice do I have?

    Overall, the Datadog product is really good.

    It doesn't need a sales team and yet, the sales team has screwed up on some occasions. It's a great product and the customer success needs to put an extra effort to help customers with best practices rather than passing them off to support.

    Customer success doesn't evangelize product features and the customer doesn't know what new is coming unless they ask about it.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Microsoft Azure
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Datadog
    April 2024
    Learn what your peers think about Datadog. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
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    Software Engineer at Lovepop
    Real User
    It lets us react more quickly to things going wrong, then we can get back up and running faster for our customers
    Pros and Cons
    • "It has scaled great. I haven't run into any problems anywhere that I've used it. They have handled everything that we have needed them to."
    • "It lets us react more quickly to things going wrong. Whereas before, it might have been 30 minutes to an hour before we noticed something going on, we will know within a minute or two if something is off, which will let us essentially get something back up and running faster for our customers, which is revenue."
    • "I would love to see support for front-end and mobile applications. Right now, it is mostly all back-end stuff. Being able to do some integration with our front-end products would be awesome."

    What is our primary use case?

    The primary use case is application monitoring. We also use it set custom metrics and watch our AWS metrics, as well as data.

    At my current job, I have only use it a couple months. However, I used it for a few years at a previous company.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It lets us react more quickly to things going wrong. Whereas before, it might have been 30 minutes to an hour before we noticed something going on, we will know within a minute or two if something is off, which will let us essentially get something back up and running faster for our customers, which is revenue.

    What is most valuable?

    Its most valuable feature is the monitoring, such as all the custom metrics that Datadog imports from AWS. In addition, the specific monitoring where you can set up an alert to a bunch of different services. 

    What needs improvement?

    Some of their newer solutions are interesting, like their logging, but they are not fleshed out. They could use more metrics or synthetics, which would be really helpful.

    I would love to see support for front-end and mobile applications. Right now, it is mostly all back-end stuff. Being able to do some integration with our front-end products would be awesome.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is very stable. Both times that I have worked with Datadog, we haven't had any issues with them going down. Or, if they did, we didn't know, which is good.

    At the previous company that I worked at, we threw a lot at them all at once.

    Because this is a newer integration, we are putting less stress on the tool. We are still working on integrating it into our platform.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It has scaled great. I haven't run into any problems anywhere that I've used it. They have handled everything that we have needed them to.

    We are a 100 person company with 20 engineers.

    How is customer service and technical support?

    The technical support is great. They respond quickly. They know what they are talking about and dig right in. If they don't know the answer, they can get it to us very quickly.

    How was the initial setup?

    The integration and configuration through AWS was pretty smooth. It was easy to set up and start using. The documentation was clear. So, it worked really well.

    What about the implementation team?

    We did the integration and configuration through AWS ourselves.

    What was our ROI?

    We haven't seen ROI at my current company. The solution is too new. 

    At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items. So, if they would scale the pricing appropriately as they add more stuff to it, that would makes sense. The pricing should reflect the abilities of the features.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We looked into self-hosting something, like Prometheus. We also evaluated New Relic.

    We chose Datadog for its ease of use in getting set up and what they offered us.

    What other advice do I have?

    Take the time to explore it and see all the metrics which are available. The metrics make the reporting better. Spend the time and learn the metrics. The things that they can send and give you are good. Learn how to aggregate them and how to write more complex queries, which they do a good job of showing how to do, but I found that newer people don't do this. They just try to use the baseline set of features. Doing the more complex stuff adds significant value.

    We have PagerDuty integrated with it, as well as all of AWS. Those are the big ones we have running through it. It integrates well. It essentially replaces CloudWatch, so we can just use Datadog, which is nice. The biggest thing that they provide is putting everything in one spot.

    I have just used the AWS version.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user147573 - PeerSpot reviewer
    CTO with 51-200 employees
    Vendor
    We can build dashboards as fast we roll out new systems, which can be fast.
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable features have been: Sharable dashboards, TimeBoards, dogstatsd API, Slack Integration, Event logging API. CloudTrail Events, Tags, alerts, and anomaly detection. EBS Volume Snapshot Age, which they added upon request."
    • "More granular control over dashboard sharing. Timeboard sharing."

    How has it helped my organization?

    We can build dashboards as fast we roll out new systems, which can be fast.

    We use standard and custom metrics for every new system we roll out for 360 degree visibility into our systems.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable features have been: Sharable dashboards, TimeBoards, dogstatsd API, Slack Integration, Event logging API. CloudTrail Events, Tags, alerts, and anomaly detection. EBS Volume Snapshot Age, which they added upon request. We used PagerDuty integration for a while as well.

    What needs improvement?

    More granular control over dashboard sharing. Timeboard sharing.


    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    There are infrequent hiccups, which have been decreasing over the time we have used it.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    No.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service:

    Never seen better. Questions answered usually almost immediately, even on weekends. An in-stream with your event stream.

    Technical Support:

    High.

    Overall they have always had an amazing team, and quality has been maintained as the company has grown.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Complementary to other tools we used.

    How was the initial setup?

    Setup is generally easy. They provide an large number of integrations, some are more complex than others, which is to be expected.

    What about the implementation team?

    In house implementation.

    What was our ROI?

    We didn’t calculate explicitly, but as we used the product to track down underutilized instances, it more than paid for itself in the first month.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Pricing overall in this segment has standardized in the last several years.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    A few, including Zabbix and Icinga.

    What other advice do I have?

    One of the fastest and most flexible tools we have used in this area..

    Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
    PeerSpot user
    Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
    Real User
    Great UI and documentation but needs to offer K8s deployment monitoring in real-time
    Pros and Cons
    • "The installation step is pretty straightforward."
    • "I'm not sure if Datadog can monitor K8s deployments in real-time. For instance, being able to see a deployment step by step visually. This would be helpful if there were any incidents during the deployment."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use Datadog to monitor our Kubernetes clusters. 

    We have 3 different clusters for different parts of the SDLC. We run the Datadog agent DaemonSet as well as the Datadog cluster agent. Our services have the APM installed by default. 

    To create monitors, we use Terraform. This is provided out-of-the-box for our service owner. 

    We run EKS on top of K8s, therefore, we also make use of some of the AWS monitoring capabilities that can be integrated into Datadog. 

    We are hugely reliant on Datadog for all aspects of our system.

    How has it helped my organization?

    With Datadog, we were able to gain observability in our system. 

    The installation step is pretty straightforward. 

    It's easy to use by non-DevOps users. For instance, our engineers do not interact with K8s often; therefore, it is hard for them to debug. However, with Datadog, they are able to view their containers and deployments with a single click. 

    We also heavily use the tags to help us identify who the service owners are. This is super useful when we need to track owners for patching or pick up new features we implemented.

    What is most valuable?

    The APM and K8s monitoring are the most valuable aspects of the solution. The K8s monitoring allows all customers to view their infra, even if they do not use K8s daily. They can just click on a few tabs to get all of the information they need. 

    It is also very easy to install on our system. APM has helped debug applications on our system as well. We were able to view why a service has suddenly shut down.

    We also use Datadog for SLOs/SLAs as well. We check the live endpoint of services to ensure they are still up and running.

    What needs improvement?

    There is not much that needs to be improved. 

    The UI is super user-friendly. The deployment process is easy. We enjoy using the integrations with Slack and PagerDuty. 

    Customer support is awesome from our experience. There is a lot of documentation for us to be able to use if we need to. 

    I'm not sure if Datadog can monitor K8s deployments in real-time. For instance, being able to see a deployment step by step visually. This would be helpful if there were any incidents during the deployment. 

    In general, Datadog is a great solution.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've used Datadog since I joined my company about a year ago.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    We haven't had issues with the stability.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability is really great.

    How are customer service and support?

    We've had no issues with the product or support. 

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is super simple, and the documentation was helpful.

    What about the implementation team?

    We managed the initial setup process in-house.

    What was our ROI?

    We've witnessed ROI in our DevOps.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Private Cloud

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
    Real User
    Good performance, simple implementation, and reliable
    Pros and Cons
    • "The performance of Datadog is good."
    • "Datadog has a lot of features kind of cramped into one dashboard. It's quite hard to get around what feature does exactly what. There was a steep learning curve, trying to navigate through menus."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use Datadog to monitor our product on the cloud.

    What is most valuable?

    The performance of Datadog is good.

    What needs improvement?

    Datadog has a lot of features kind of cramped into one dashboard. It's quite hard to get around what feature does exactly what. There was a steep learning curve, trying to navigate through menus.

    The menu navigation could improve. If there was a more straightforward way of adding new functions or features to where each menu is placed that would be an improvement.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Datadog for approximately six months.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The solution is stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability of Datadog is pretty good. However, we haven't arrived at the level that we need to test out the scalability.

    We have five people using the solution.

    How are customer service and support?

    I have not used the support from Datadog.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We have not used other solutions previously.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is straightforward, and the process took approximately three days.

    What about the implementation team?

    We have approximately six people that implement and support the solution.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features.  Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience.

    There are not any additional costs for the use of this solution.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would recommend this solution to others.

    My advice to others is to use a few features of the solution before going full scale.

    I rate Datadog an eight out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Public Cloud
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Associate Founder at KerBBo Consulting
    Real User
    User friendly interface and integrations make it best in class
    Pros and Cons
    • "The interface and the integrations make it so easy to connect to the cloud or to the on-premise environment."
    • "Datadog does not have the feature where you can monitor external websites or check the SSL secure for websites."

    What is most valuable?

    I like Datadog because it is so easy use, I can easily connect to public clouds, and I have a view of observability. In my opinion it's the best tool in the market.

    I like the interface so much. The interface and the integrations make it so easy to connect to the cloud or to the on-premise environment. It has so many monitors for alerting. I like all the versions and especially the APM model, on which I did a lot more testing with my applications. I have made applications for testing the tool that is in the resource. The APM is the goal for me in the Datadog.

    What needs improvement?

    In terms of what could be improved, Datadog does not have the feature where you can monitor external websites or check the SSL secure for websites.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Datadog for the last 14 days.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    In terms of stability, I don't have any problem with its stability or the website data. They have a solid infrastructure. I don't have any problems with that.

    How was the initial setup?

    It was simple to configure and to set up this tool.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    I have less experience with Zabbix than I have with Datadog, but I don't see Zabbix as a great tool for cloud specific monitoring because I cannot connect so easily to public clouds to gain all the information that I can in Datadog, which I can easily set up.

    I have used Zabbix for 20 days for my personal tests and I really don't like it.

    There is something that I liked with Zabbix, though. Zabbix is better for monitoring virtual machines. That's a feature that I liked. But everything else is awful. I can't have dashboards. I do not have integrations with some ITSM systems, like Jira or OTRS. It's awful because I need to have those integrations.

    I would rate Zabbix a nine from one to ten for on premises environments. For cloud platforms, I rate this tool as a five, because of the complexity required to integrate it in other platforms.

    What other advice do I have?

    On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Datadog a nine, just because of the missing feature of checking websites.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Tech Lead & Solutions Architect at DXC
    Real User
    Customizable, attractive panel design, and gives broad insight
    Pros and Cons
    • "I have found some of the most valuable features to be the way things all come together that gives us a point of view that is useful. The panel is very beautiful and customizable."
    • "The installation is easy for me. However, if you are new to this solution it might not be so easy."

    What is our primary use case?

    I implement this solution for clients.

    What is most valuable?

    I have found some of the most valuable features to be the way things all come together that gives us a point of view that is useful. The panel is very beautiful and customizable. The configuration file was really helpful, we were able to configure the solution in the way we needed. The portability of this solution is more flexible than other competitors, allowing us to change cloud services when we want. We are not locked into a particular one.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The solution is scalable.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We have used CloudWatch previously and this solution is better at meeting all our needs.

    How was the initial setup?

    The installation is easy for me. However, if you are new to this solution it might not be so easy.

    What about the implementation team?

    I am an implementor, I did the implantation of the solution.

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate Datadog a nine out of ten.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Datadog Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: April 2024
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    Download our free Datadog Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.