Information Technology Manager at Peponi Schools
Real User
Top 10
Easy to maintain, but it needs to improve the ability to generate customized reports
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is easy to maintain."
  • "The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required."

What is our primary use case?

In Prometheus, the graphs and everything are too complicated. With Prometheus, you need to sit down and study it properly. Though the product offers a pretty interface, if you don't know what you are doing, then the tool doesn't provide you with customized reports. The product sends its users email reports, which they need to look into.

What needs improvement?

The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required.

The ability to generate customized reports should be made available in the product.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Once the product is properly configured and installed, it works perfectly.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution.

Around 600 people in my company use the product.

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

I have experience with Sophos. There are some problems with the GUI of Prometheus. The GUI of Sophos is simple and easy to use.

I would recommend others to choose Zabbix over Prometheus.

I rate Zabbix a nine out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase is not easy as one needs to know the Unix language.

Considering that there is a need to update and upgrade the Linux part, the solution can be deployed in an hour. It may take a day for someone who does not know the product's installation phase.

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

Prometheus is available as an open-source product.

What other advice do I have?

Prometheus for monitoring our company's infrastructure and applications is useful, as it serves as a network monitoring tool that helps you understand the bandwidth capabilities while also ensuring that you get to know who is accessing what at what time of the day. The tool provides details on where the company's network bandwidth is used.

Speaking about how Prometheus has helped in our company's system observability and alerting processes, I think it's just an added tool in our environment because we don't use it as a primary solution. Primarily, my company is dependent on Sophos. The other solutions probably don't give you the results you want, but it all depends on how well you have done your policies. The aforementioned reason may prompt a user to use Prometheus.

Features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring stem from the ability that the product provides to track bandwidth.

It is a task to deal with Prometheus' query language because it is not as clear as you would expect it to be, which poses a challenge.

The integration of Prometheus with Zabbix can be a nightmare, and it can be quite challenging. There are also chances that you may get errors when trying to integrate Prometheus with Zabbix. You have to wait for the next release of Prometheus and Zabbix to be able to install them together.

The product is easy to maintain.

The product works fine in terms of its abilities related to incident detection and resolution, but the product has to do something with the GUI part, which is not appealing enough as someone would not want to sit in front of it and look at graphs.

Those planning to use Prometheus should be aware of the syntax part in programming before using it.

I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Jigneshkumar Gadhavi - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. DevOps Engineer at Seaflux
Real User
Top 5
Has an easy setup process and efficient alerting functionality
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics."
  • "The primary area where Prometheus could be improved is in terms of pricing, particularly when used with managed services."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Prometheus are its ability to collect metrics and its integration with Grafana.

What needs improvement?

The primary area where Prometheus could be improved is in terms of pricing, particularly when used with managed services like AWS. Many clients have found the pricing for managed services steep, prompting them to switch to the open-source version. This switch has led to the adoption of Prometheus with Amazon EKS. Still, it has also resulted in high data transfer costs due to the multitude of microservices and the associated cluster logs. As a result, clients are facing higher bills, primarily driven by increased data transfer rates and bandwidth usage.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Prometheus for two and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable platform.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy if you have good knowledge of Helm. It requires setting two to three commands. Without using Helm, you have to create custom file deployments. Overall, it is a simple process.

What other advice do I have?

The alerting functionality provided by Prometheus has significantly improved our incident response time. It enables us to gather data from various instances or ports within our environment, such as ETS.

I advise others to gain essential knowledge of query optimization and Grafana. It is an expensive product if utilized with managed services. It would be beneficial to use the open-source version.

I rate it a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Jorge Florez - PeerSpot reviewer
Head SRE Latam at PayU
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
A great many integrations; industry standard for metrics
Pros and Cons
  • "The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics."
  • "If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for Prometheus is collecting metrics.

What is most valuable?

The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics.

What needs improvement?

If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus.

In the next release, I'd like to see a more user-friendly interface where you can have more options on the graphical interface and more integrations that can help with the scalability.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for about five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability of Prometheus a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate the scalability of this solution a five, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

In case you want to make it more scalable, you can add other open-source projects like Thanos that can integrate with Prometheus.

How are customer service and support?

I have not contacted technical support because there is none. The community is the technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Prometheus was easy.

The deployment time mostly depends on the desired use case for Prometheus.
For example, monitoring a couple of servers would take about one hour to deploy. On the other hand, if you are planning to deploy several clusters or Kubernetes and other managed services, that adds complexity, and then deployment takes days or even weeks.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The reason we didn't go with, for example, AWS X-ray, Azure Monitor, or AppDynamics is that we didn't want to be tied to a specific provider.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others that before buying this solution they make a good design and think about their use case because the metrics can scale rapidly as can the amount of data you ingest. Without a good design, that might not be possible.

Overall, I would rate the Prometheus solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. The reason for this is because it's open source, so there are no fees. There are no licenses to pay for and it has a great community. 

Prometheus became the standard of the industry for metrics as you can find a lot of documentation, forums, and many answers to any questions online. Also, Prometheus has constant updates to improve applications and to fix either the box or the issues. The ability to integrate with a wide range of other applications makes this solution even better.

We have Prometheus deployed in both the public cloud and on-premises.

There are about 100 users of Prometheus in our company.

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

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
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Richmond Edoukou - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Buyer at BNP Paribas Partners for Innovation
Real User
Top 5
A powerful open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit that excels at collecting, querying, and visualizing metrics
Pros and Cons
  • "It is highly valuable as it serves as the foundation for our infrastructure monitoring tools."
  • "The interface is not particularly user-friendly and that could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for monitoring our infrastructure metrics.

How has it helped my organization?

It is highly valuable as it serves as the foundation for our infrastructure monitoring tools.

What is most valuable?

The installation process proved to be exceptionally straightforward.

What needs improvement?

The interface is not particularly user-friendly and that could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using it for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate its stability abilities eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate its scalability capabilities eight out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward, thanks to our utilization of the Kubernetes operator.

What was our ROI?

In terms of ROI, you can potentially save a few weeks, or perhaps two to three days, depending on the use case.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Elastic and Kibana.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend it because it's an incredibly useful tool, and its installation and usage are very straightforward. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Ayodeji Bayo-Makinde - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Support Engineer at Tek Experts
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Great for collecting, monitoring and analyzing logs in the cloud environment, but the setup is not user-friendly
Pros and Cons
  • "The dashboard is very valuable."
  • "The setup process could be more straightforward."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for this solution is collecting, monitoring and analyzing logs in the cloud environment. We use this solution in an Azure environment and Cloud space.

What is most valuable?

The dashboard is very valuable because it provides the ability to collect and compare logs from various resources.

What needs improvement?

The setup process could be more straightforward and user-friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for 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 solution is scalable.

What other advice do I have?

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by creating a more straightforward setup process. I advise people considering this solution to spend some time reading the documentation to ensure they understand the type of features available.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Mohammed Abuaisha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Backend Engineer at HelloFresh
Real User
Top 5
Good and robust solution that integrates with any language, with excellent stability
Pros and Cons
  • "It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language."
  • "The simplicity of the query language could be improved. The current query language is not easy to work with."

What is our primary use case?

We use all of the metrics of Prometheus as an indicator if something goes wrong with our own applications as part of our on-call service. We represent the data on Grafana because Grafana is tightly integrated with Prometheus.

What is most valuable?

It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language, including Python, Perl, PHP, Java, and Kotlin. You can easily plug and play integrating Prometheus with many operators. The official operators can be run on top of Kubernetes. It is a widely known and good solution for monitoring. 

What needs improvement?

The simplicity of the query language could be improved. The current query language is not easy to work with.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for the past year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prometheus is definitely stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I do not handle scalability because it is managed by other teams.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend that you use it with simple applications, by running a Docker inside the Docker. It is a good and robust solution, and it is widely known by many companies across the software domain. I would rate Prometheus 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.
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Chief Executive Officer at a security firm with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
Free to use, highly scalable, and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "The scalability of Prometheus is very good."
  • "Prometheus has a learning curve when setting it up. It definitely requires a little bit more hands-on than other solutions. It is an open source solution which means you do need to go through and read the literature that they have online for setting it up. The setup could be made easier."

What is our primary use case?

Prometheus can be deployed on-premise and in the cloud.

Prometheus is an open-source network monitoring solution.

How has it helped my organization?

Prometheus is very flexible. We use it for network monitoring and we can always add new servers, equipment, or whatever that we want to monitor with it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for approximately two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prometheus is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Prometheus is very good.

We have the solution rolled out across multiple small businesses. We have hundreds of users collectively using the solutions.

How are customer service and support?

I have not used the technical support from Prometheus.

How was the initial setup?

Prometheus has a learning curve when setting it up. It definitely requires a little bit more hands-on than other solutions. It is an open source solution which means you do need to go through and read the literature that they have online for setting it up. The setup could be made easier.

What about the implementation team?

I am the one who manages Prometheus and does the maintenance.

What was our ROI?

Prometheus is free. We use the solution for monitoring and it has worked well.

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

The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Prometheus can directly compete against other solutions, such as Zabbix or any other network monitoring solution.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to others is to read all the documentation before usage.

I rate Prometheus an eight out of ten.

I rated it an eight because it is easy to use but the installation can be difficult.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
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Principal Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
A stable solution that has lightweight configuration functions
Pros and Cons
  • "I like its lightweight configuration functions."
  • "There isn’t much clarity regarding the issues that happen at the server end. It is a push model and from the client’s point of view, it needs to look better and solve remote issues."

What is our primary use case?

We mainly use it for server monitoring and exposing the metrics format.

What is most valuable?

I like its lightweight configuration functions.

What needs improvement?

There are multiple solutions that we use alongside Prometheus while working. These include AM Solutions and Grafana. These are different systems that are logged into and have different technologies and spaces. However, it is difficult to navigate through them at times, so a single dashboard will be something that will be appreciated.

Moreover, there isn’t much clarity regarding the issues that happen at the server end. It is a push model and from the client’s point of view, it needs to look better and solve remote issues.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for more than an year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is alright and I don’t see any issues. I will give it a seven out of ten as there are some remote issues.

How are customer service and support?

We have a technical department and an internal platform team who contact them on our behalf.

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

Comparing AppDynamics with Prometheus, AppDynamics has a full suite of solutions, whereas Prometheus is mainly used for monitoring purposes.

What about the implementation team?

We have the solution deployed by a Grafana vendor who made it a cloud version.

What other advice do I have?

It is a good solution overall, so I can rate it a seven 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.
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Updated: April 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Prometheus Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.