Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
reviewer2003238 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Good elastic container service and IAM with useful flexibility
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature I have found is the elastic container service."
  • "ECS could be improved by including more tutorials for beginners to reduce the barriers to entry."

What is our primary use case?

After a security incident, we needed to find and migrate to a different cloud provider, and after evaluating different competitors and the skill set of the team, we decided to move to AWS. AWS also enables the team to have finer control over how our apps are deployed and how security and access are managed. By leveraging AWS's functionality, we have increased our application's security and sped up the deployment process. We've even been able to handle higher workloads due to AWS's auto-scaling functionality.

How has it helped my organization?

Elastic container services have improved our organization by allowing us to deploy our application. While this problem was not solved by using the elastic container service since we had a previous solution on a different provider, the ease and flexibility of deploys have greatly benefited the ops team and the overall engineering organization. It is easy to use. However, there are many out-of-the-box features like metrics and seeing task definitions that make life easier.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature I have found is the elastic container service. That is where our apps get deployed. This feature is really important to us since, without it, we would not be able to deploy our apps the way we wanted to and would have to use a different vendor. 

This service is also valuable to our team as we have a lot of familiarity with it and adapting to the services from our previous one was fairly seamless. 

Another feature that is very valuable for our team is the IAM. It allows us to control security.

What needs improvement?

ECS could be improved by including more tutorials for beginners to reduce the barriers to entry. It would help to ensure understanding and learning in terms of how to use a cloud provider. Besides this, there are not any other areas of improvement needed since the service is very straightforward and there is ample documentation.

Buyer's Guide
Datadog
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about Datadog. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
852,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for one year.

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
Lead Blockchain and Back-End Developer at Torum Technology
Real User
Good real-time user management and session analytics but needs session replays on mobile
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is very straightforward."
  • "They could have better log reporting."

What is our primary use case?

We are using the solution from a monitoring and management perspective. We use it for alerts.

What is most valuable?

The solution's real-time user management and session analytics as well as the APM, are the solution's most valuable aspects.

We could easily identify the production box, and we could handle alerts.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

It's stable. 

They have flag integrations, mail integrations, and other options as well.

What needs improvement?

We didn't do a deep analysis on this at this moment to identify the disadvantages.

We have noticed that Session Replays are unavailable on the mobile app. We'd like mobile app integrations. They could have better log reporting. That said, almost everything that we require is there. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We've only used the solution for two months. We just wanted to understand the complexities and the benefits that we might get from this product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable and reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It may be scalable. However, we haven't actually tested anything. 

We have six or seven people on the solution at any given time. They're there to handle fixes or do an analysis of logs or monitor the infrastructure.

I'm not sure if we plan to increase usage. We are not growing very rapidly. We're just preparing our environment for the upcoming year. 

How are customer service and support?

We've dealt with support. They are helpful and responsive. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We have used AWS CloudWatch and AWS inbuilt application of the features, however, we thought that it will be good to have a separate application to do all these kinds of monitoring and to have something for handling alerting mechanisms.

We are looking for the best available platforms on the market, which also would give us better flexibility while having everything come from one place. We found that Datadog is good enough for now, and we are still exploring what it can do and our options. We are not completely in with Datadog. We've been exploring it only for four or five months.

How was the initial setup?

It's an easy product to set up. The integration was very smooth and they have multiple options. It was pretty good integration-wise.

The setup itself only took a day or two. It doesn't take long. 

What about the implementation team?

We handled the setup ourselves in-house. We did not need any outside assistance. 

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

For some features, it was quite expensive. For example, APM and RAM, and Session Replays. We are using it in a very limited way and are not using it for every microservice. We are using it for a minimal budget. As we are at an exploratory phase and are doing pay-as-you-go. Once we feel confident, we will likely get a yearly license. 

What other advice do I have?

We are customers.

We're working on the latest version. I couldn't recall the version number.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten. I need to evaluate the solution further. 

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?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Datadog
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about Datadog. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
852,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
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
reviewer2004171 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Good alerts and dashboards with helpful stack traces
Pros and Cons
  • "The feature I have found most valuable is when I can reuse existing monitors and alerts for new dashboards."
  • "I've only been using Datadog for a few months, and at first, it was frankly overwhelming in terms of both the UI and the available capabilities."

What is our primary use case?

We use actual user monitoring and have set up thresholds for alerts to PagerDuty, Sentry, Slack, and so on. We also have dashboards set up for tracking latency and error rates. 

As an individual contributor, I also try to set up dashboards for the individual feature projects I work on. I'd like to learn more ways to use this, though, especially when it comes to more proactive approaches to issues. A starter pack of common-use types would be nice.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution it has improved our organization by expanding the awareness of issues and alerts beyond SRE and really empowering software engineers at a team level to make changes to monitoring and incident responses.

There could still be more training to bring this even further. A lot of the time I get into Datadog and it's already an incident and I am not in the right mindset to learn about the product or set alerts up.

What is most valuable?

The feature I have found most valuable is when I can reuse existing monitors and alerts for new dashboards. 

It is nice that things are so integrated, and any individual thing I build out can likely be re-used across the suite.

Other features I have found useful include the stack traces, especially when it links back to something specific I can look for in the code base. I also like that you can group similar alerts together to look for trends over time instead of one in isolation and see if there have been regressions.

What needs improvement?

The biggest improvement would be around educational content and helping new users get started. I've only been using Datadog for a few months, and at first, it was frankly overwhelming in terms of both the UI and the available capabilities. The workshops today have helped with this, however, more could be done.

For how long have I used the solution?

As a user, I have about six or more months of experience with the solution. As a company, I'm not sure.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I was not in charge of evaluating any other solutions.

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
reviewer1775157 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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.

    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 technical 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
    DevOps Engineer at Spark New Zealand
    Real User
    It has enhanced the performance of my team
    Pros and Cons
    • "It has enhanced the performance of my team."
    • "The product could do better with its notifications."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use it for notifications, alerting, and capturing most of the information from Amazon, such as EC2 instances.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It has enhanced the performance of my team.

    What needs improvement?

    The product could do better with its notifications. 

    I want more technical support than conferences because technical support helps with setting up the product much easier.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    So far, it has been pretty stable. After we stand up and configure it, it works well.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We have managed to get up to 350 hosts in one of the clusters, and it works fine.

    How is customer service and technical support?

    Datadog's support is pretty good.

    How was the initial setup?

    The integration and configuration of the product in our AWS environment was easy. This was one of the many things that I liked about Datadog.

    What was our ROI?

    I have not seen ROI out.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We chose Datadog over the other products that we evaluated because it had better features: notifications, alerting, and metric capture. Also, Datadog had the skill sets that we wanted at the time.

    What other advice do I have?

    Try out some of the other products in comparison. This is a good product if you are looking for notifications and custom metrics.

    We have always used the cloud version of this product.

    This product also integrates with Slack and PagerDuty.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    SystemNia893 - PeerSpot reviewer
    System Ninja at a philanthropy with 51-200 employees
    Real User
    We have a better grasp of what is occurring during the deployment cycle
    Pros and Cons
    • "We have a better grasp of what is occurring during the deployment cycle. If something fails, we have an idea what has failed, where it has failed, and how it failed to better mitigate the situation."
    • "It is a good one stop location where we keep all our data for our infrastructure, and it's also easier to navigate between different things."
    • "We want to reduce having to go to different screens to obtain all the information."
    • "At the beginning, when we started throwing logs at it, there was a bit of hiccup. However, this was during their beta period, so hiccups were expected."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use it to monitor our infrastructure, particularly our different EC2 instances, and our containers. We also use it to capture our logs.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We have a better grasp of what is occurring during the deployment cycle. If something fails, we have an idea what has failed, where it has failed, and how it failed to better mitigate the situation.

    What is most valuable?

    It is a good one stop location where we keep all our data for our infrastructure, and it's also easier to navigate between different things.

    What needs improvement?

    We want to reduce having to go to different screens to obtain all the information. However, they are moving in the right direction from what we have noticed.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Less than one year.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Stability has never been an issue. We throw all of our servers and containers at it. We have now started to throw our on-premise logs at it too.

    At the beginning, when we started throwing logs at it, there was a bit of hiccup. However, this was during their beta period, so hiccups were expected.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It pretty much vacuums up any information that we throw at it. So, stability hasn't been an issue.

    It scales depending on the time of year. Right now, we have about 25 to 50 instances, and in each instance there are probably five different containers, not including logging for all those containers.

    How is customer service and technical support?

    We used their technical support, especially during rollout. They were really good. We worked hand in hand to try to figure out how to configure everything.

    How was the initial setup?

    For the monitoring of different EC2 instances, you install them into Datadog

    We use Chef to install Datadog's package, then that calls out all the information from the instance.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We did evaluate other vendors.

    We chose Datadog because we were looking for an all-in-one package. They also do log caching and integrate with other systems well.

    What other advice do I have?

    Take advantage of Datadog's trial period, and really beat it up, then give them a call.

    We use the web service for this product.

    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: May 2025
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Datadog Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.