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reviewer1270896 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Application Performance Monitoring As A Service (MAPS & MSPM) with 11-50 employees
Reseller
While this is still a good solution for database monitoring it has fallen from its place as a leader in the field
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is stable and the technical support is good."
  • "The product lost its place as an industry leader."
  • "The setup, implementation and use are clumsy and need to be refined."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use we have for this product is application performance monitoring for mission-critical applications. We are a reseller.  

How has it helped my organization?

The old way that people would remediate when there was a problem with performance is that they would have to dig into the logs and manually find where the bottlenecks were. 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. This makes the technicians a lot faster in remediating issues that an application is presenting.  

What is most valuable?

Our customers are most interested in monitoring transactions, page loads, the infrastructure, the CPU, and memory monitoring.  

What needs improvement?

AppDynamics needs to consolidate their technology agent types into one agent that could be deployed on any host no matter what the technology is that it is running. It is really the implementation of AppDynamics that is very difficult because it is very manual. They really need to improve upon that and do more to simplify user processes. So, I would like them to have a single agent type instead of an agent-based on the technology. I think that having a single binary agent that you can put onto any host would make it a lot easier to work with.  

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May 2025
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For how long have I used the solution?

We have been partners with AppDynamics for about six years now.  

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the product is there. It is fine.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My impression of the scalability of the solution is that it is not very scalable. They are not the market leader anymore. Because they do not have the ability to monitor microservices and containers, I do not see the product having a huge future. For example and for comparison, there is Dynatrace which is a better solution and an easier solution to work with. AppDynamics has failed to lead the way.  

We usually have two engineers on staff for the deployment and maintenance for our clients.  

How are customer service and support?

I think their technical support is good. There is no problem there that I know of.  

How was the initial setup?

I think the initial setup is too complex. You have to figure out exactly what is running on the servers you are going to monitor. Many times — especially if there are older applications still operating — the clients do not even know what all the technologies are that are running on the server. It just takes a lot of time just to find that out. It is just very time consuming to have to go through the process and it should be quicker and easier.  

What about the implementation team?

We do the deployments. Deployment usually takes several weeks and the strategy is just to get in there and get it done as quickly as possible. People regularly use an integrator, a reseller or consultant for the deployment. We are a reseller.  

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

The setup cost, pricing and licensing is different for every customer depending on how big they are and how many servers they are putting the product on. So I can not give a direct answer to that question. Really cost is based on the implementation.  

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have evaluated Dynatrace and eventually it could replace AppDynamics. It is a simple comparison of the pros and cons between the two products. Dynatrace is easier to instrument and implement and Dynatrace gives the clients quicker results. Also, Dynatrace points to the root cause of an issue instead of just correlations which are a lot more vague.  

What other advice do I have?

As advice to people considering the solution, I would tell them to scope it out really well and to do a lot of research on their intended application and their business use cases. There may be another, better solution available for their needs.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a seven. I would rate them at a seven because they definitely have a better product than several other products on the market, they have good functionality, and I think they are fairly affordable. The reason I would not rate them higher is because there are other products on the market that are obviously better solutions that exist right now.  

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: reseller
PeerSpot user
Head of IT Operations at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Exception discovery has helped us to improve availability and performance
Pros and Cons
  • "We were able to correct problems, which led to an increase in availability, time savings, and performance for our solutions."
  • "Based on the user experience feedback that we have had, I think that the most important thing to improve is the availability of the SaaS, the cloud environment."

What is our primary use case?

We implemented AppDynamics to have a clear, real-time monitoring solution for our critical business systems. 

We have two tenants; one for production and the other for our quality control environment. We are using more than fifty probes, including application and database probes.

Our company is worldwide, across geography. We are using the public cloud deployment model.

How has it helped my organization?

We have gained a lot from this solution because it helps us to check what is there in terms of exceptions, and so on. We were able to correct problems, which led to an increase in availability, time savings, and performance for our solutions.

What needs improvement?

We are having a problem where one of our tenants has had issues with availability over the past two months. There is a lot of downtime for the SaaS tenant. Based on the user experience feedback that we have had, I think that the most important thing to improve is the availability of the SaaS, the cloud environment.

The mobile application needs to be improved.

We are evaluating a solution from SAP, and we are interested in is seeing the integration or the interface, and what we can get out of these new probes. We had a conference call with AppDynamics and challenged them to resolve the SAP solution monitoring so that it works side-by-side with our critical applications.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We are having availability issues with the SaaS.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In terms of scalability, this solution is good and has worked for us. With our licensing model, each time we have a need or requirement, we have our probes available for new solutions in less than forty-eight hours.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support for this solution is mixed. We are using a local outsourcing company in Portugal as our contact for AppDynamics. They keep in touch with us every week, so we don't have any problem.

The problem has to do with reaching out to our account manager. Sometimes, we simply receive no response from them. For instance, we have sent them emails related to the cloud environment stability issues two weeks ago, and we still have not received a response from AppDynamics. This is a little bit of a struggle for us.

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

We are working with an outsourcing company, and have used products from Micro Focus.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

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

In terms of pricing, I feel that when you compare the benefits that we get to the price that we paid, it is reasonable.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did a proof of concept with the AppDynamics and also with the Dynatrace. The feedback that we received from our users, and from the IT department, was that the AppDynamics interface was more user-friendly than that of Dynatrace.

What other advice do I have?

We collect user experience feedback from many countries, all over the world.

We have already recommended this product to some of our partners, and they have implemented it based on our advice.

This is a good product, but we still have issues with the cloud and stability.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten, due to stability issues and no feedback from EMEA AppDynamics.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Splunk AppDynamics
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about Splunk AppDynamics. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
PeerSpot user
Vice President - Operations & Client Support at Scicom Infrastructure Services
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
We've had experience using Dynatrace, CA & Gomez but AppDynamics excels in terms of implementation, footprint & overhead
Pros and Cons
  • "Despite dozens of deployments across hundreds of applications- we have yet to see a case where AD is negatively impacting application execution or functionality."
  • "Additional support for NextGen mobile platforms also needs to be high in the roadmap prioritizations"

What is our primary use case?

Extensive use cases, dozens of primary and secondary use cases ranging from core application monitoring at the global level to micro level performance analysis at the transaction level. AppD provides the ability to also manage total interactions at the web/mobile browser level, the database and core infrastructure including server level and L4 network.

How has it helped my organization?

We are a services organization, so we use AppDynamics with our customers. It has allowed us to expand our footprint in the application management business with virtually all of our major accounts. We were able to expand and go into other applications that we weren't in or offering previously. We have a new value proposition for our customers- enhanced visibility, enhanced stability, and we can reduce our costs to them because our cost structure is reduced by using AppDynamics. We have other examples like this as well where AppDynamics has improved the way we function and operate. As of date of this article, our company has in excess of 30,000 AppDynamics agents deployed globally and we are monitoring billions of annual page views for major customers.

Furthermore, AppDynamics is a key toolset and drives tremendous value and efficiency in our remote performance management center which supports over 10,000 retail locations on behalf of our retail customers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for more than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We didn't have any issues with stability. Highly stable with extremely light impact- negligible.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We didn't have any issues with scalability. Unbelievably scalable - we selected this solution for its ability to aggregate thousands and thousand of end point monitoring.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

AppDynamics redefines customer services, especially in post sales support- maybe one of the most responsive service desk teams in the industry.

Technical Support:

They have done a superb job of getting some obscenely bright software people with a passion for customer services and unleashed them in the market. Some of the finest technical support in the industry.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was extremely straightforward- we can have an enterprise deployment with several dozen end points being monitored in less than 3 hours.

What about the implementation team?

Our first few implementations we did ourselves and then for our first major customer implementation we got AppDynamics to assist. We currently support all of our internal and external deployments.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We're regularly looking at various options. Even before we made the decision to standardize on AppDynamics, we already had experience with BMC Appsight. We also had experience using Dynatrace, CA and Gomez at some of our customer's environments. We also heard our customers talking about their experiences with these other products.

What other advice do I have?

You can't over-speak importance of deployment, configuration and infrastructure footprint because what happens is that people get excited when they see the output of various products (such as Dynatrace or CA Wiley). They say, "wow, it's very powerful, we've never had visibility, we're going to implement at all costs." Then they buy the solution and they realize they need 5X the amount of servers, a lot of storage, experts to manage it, etc.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Sid Roy - PeerSpot reviewer
Sid RoyVice President - Operations & Client Support at Scicom Infrastructure Services
Top 5LeaderboardReal User

From a con perspective there are coverage gaps in terms of monitoring critical if not legacy architectures like mainframe type systems. Despite the slow erosion of the mainframe base- it seems that many major, major organizations are still leveraging MF technology in their stack typically due to the costs of converting - but most likely due to the fact that those machines never stop working and rarely have errors like open systems. When a customer leverages for instance Infor software in their architecture - this will be a gap from an AppDynamics monitoring perspective. I have also mentioned the lack of coverage in SAP worlds which in essence removes a big part of the critical application market. However, I have been recently informed that the lack of monitoring coverage is less about technical fit and more about SAP restrictive licensing and support policies :-0

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Indu Sri Jasti - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
Stable platform with efficient integration capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a wonderful monitoring tool that manages various aspects such as system resources (CPU, RAM), mobile performance, and infrastructure monitoring."
  • "There could log management features included in the product."

What is our primary use case?

We use the platform for infrastructure monitoring purposes.

What needs improvement?

There could log management features included in the product.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using AppDynamics for one month.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

AppDynamics is a stable product. It doesn't have a lot of bugs. We can fix the bugs at a code level whenever we encounter them with our expertise. It provides an ease of installation as well.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate the platform's scalability an eight out of ten.

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

Dynatrace works better compared to AppDynamics. While using AppDynamics, we have to install different external agents for managing, customizing, and monitoring logs. In comparison, we must install only one agent to carry out the processes while using Dynatrace.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup process is easy once learned. At the moment, I am a new AppDynamics user and am exploring more ways to make the process easier.

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

The product is more expensive than Datadog but lower than Dynatrace.

What other advice do I have?

It is a wonderful monitoring tool that manages various aspects such as system resources (CPU, RAM), mobile performance, and infrastructure monitoring. It provides ease of use, alerting capabilities, integration support, and scalability. Thus, it is already maintained. It doesn't provide log management services; we have to install different types of agents for business processes. It is not a cloud-native platform like AWS, GCP, etc. I rate AppDynamics an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Head of Architecture and DevOps at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Predictive notifications are on target but there should be better regional support
Pros and Cons
  • "The auto-discovery of the logs is the most valuable feature. It requires minimal configuration, we just need to set up on once and it automatically detects through the code."
  • "In the next release, I would like to see the configuration of the data and more support for new applications. It should support new languages."

What is our primary use case?

We use the on-premise deployment model of this solution. 

Our primary use case of this solution is for monitoring our critical applications. The automated data dynamics enables us to monitor the performance of an application and unknowns.

How has it helped my organization?

A way that it has improved my organization is from its notifications. We can get notified on our mobile app. We get notified spontaneously for mission-critical applications. It notifies us that the incident is going to happen in the near future, it's a predictive notification. The notifications have been on target for us and have improved my organization. 

What is most valuable?

The auto-discovery of the logs is the most valuable feature. It requires minimal configuration, we just need to set up on once and it automatically detects through the code. 

What needs improvement?

The solution should be coupled with its own analytic elastic search analytic model. It should push that data to other data models so the organization does not have to spend separately or to spend more on the analytics part. If a bank or any organization has its own dashboarding solution it should be able to push the data to that dashboarding solution. This is not available right now.

In the next release, I would like to see the configuration of the data and more support for new applications. It should support new languages.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using AppDynamics for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a fairly stable product and I would say that they are longer lived than new applications that have been on boarded. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Our entire command center is using this solution which is around 15 to 20 users.

How are customer service and support?

Their technical support isn't great. The geographical distance and the response time it takes to respond to emails from the technical team is very slow. 

How was the initial setup?

For the setup, you need a good understanding of the solution and how it works so I would say it's not that simple. It's not that complex either but if you have the right people in place, it should have a medium level of complexity. For banks, it can be a little more complex because it needs to comply with a lot of security guidelines. If you're not in a banking environment, it should be more straightforward.

The setup took us around two to three weeks. 

What about the implementation team?

We consulted directly with AppDynamics for the implementation. The experience was good but the geographical distance was always an issue because we don't have local support available in the area. Otherwise, when the people were on the floor it was okay but when the people were not on the floor then definitely there were some problems there. 

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen an ROI. If you have a critical application that needs to be monitored you will see your indirect ROI within two to three years and you'll have the happy customers, not usual complaints.

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

You don't have to pay. You only pay for the implementation partners if you choose to get help. 

What other advice do I have?

I would say be cautious on the licensing model. You should understand your exact needs. If your needs are in line with what this solution offers then I would genuinely recommend going for this solution, otherwise, if not, it might be too costly. 

I think from the product perspective it's fine but on the implementation descriptions there are a lot of issues. It's challenging without support. If someone is looking into it they need to look for any local organization partners in their area.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Senior Analyst at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
A good tool for application monitoring that is easy to configure, but can have stability issues
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature in this solution, for our business, is the clear way of projecting the connections between the database and the traffic inflow. This is very helpful when troubleshooting issues."
  • "This product has an issue with initial lag upon opening that we would like to see improved."

What is our primary use case?

We are using this product for application monitoring.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature in this solution, for our business, is the clear way of projecting the connections between the database and the traffic inflow. This is very helpful when troubleshooting issues.

We have also found that including additional features into this solution is straightforward and easy to do.

What needs improvement?

This product has an issue with initial lag upon opening that we would like to see improved.

We would also like the capability to open multiple sessions of this product in a browser at the same time.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been working with this solution for two to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have found the stability of this product to be an occasional issue during our time working with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have found this to be a scalable solution.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support team are quick, and respond immediately when we have raised issues. We have found them to be very knowledgeable whenever we have contacted them.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of this solution was fairly easy.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
IT Specialist​ at IT Specialist LLC
Reseller
user friendly, broad feature range, and stable
Pros and Cons
  • "AppDynamics has a very broad range of supported technologies, and it's user-friendly. It looks nice, and it's easy to sell the solution to the stakeholders when we can visualize how the website is working. For example, where we have any problems through visual analytics."
  • "The end-user experience is not really good because we can't catch all of the transactions. We only can catch the full stack of flow transactions, but I think that this is caused by the technology they use. If they will catch every transaction, it will cause a very big load on the performance of applications. The monitoring of all transactions needs improvement."

What is our primary use case?

Our main use of this AppDynamics is to monitor customer applications, such as web applications. For example, to monitor the availability of online stores, and to figure out whether we have any problems.

What is most valuable?

AppDynamics has a very broad range of supported technologies, and it's user-friendly. It looks nice, and it's easy to sell the solution to the stakeholders when we can visualize how the website is working. For example, where we have any problems through visual analytics.

What needs improvement?

The end-user experience is not really good because we can't catch all of the transactions. We only can catch the full stack of flow transactions, but I think that this is caused by the technology they use. If they will catch every transaction, it will cause a very big load on the performance of applications. The monitoring of all transactions needs improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using AppDynamics for approximately eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution has been stable in my experience. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. AppDynamics has been flexible enough for what I use it for.

How are customer service and support?

I have not contacted support. We have only used our local distributors, and they have been good.

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

I have used an older version of Dynatrace previously.

How was the initial setup?

The solution is easy to deploy if you know what you are doing. It was simple for me.

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

The price of AppDynamics could be reduced in my region.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to others that want to implement this solution is to have a test environment, and then go to production. Sometimes it requires tuning of the software and restarting services a couple of times,  it's better to make all of these changes on a test environment, and then to move to production.

I have been using AppDynamics for approximately eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: reseller
PeerSpot user
Associate QA Manager at Xcel Serv Solution
Real User
A complete solution for monitoring but setting it up is a battle
Pros and Cons
  • "Once you get past installation, AppDynamics is highly stable and we get good results."
  • "Installation and configuration can be very tough. An average user without specialized knowledge can't do this. You need to have DevOps and QA teams handle it. During installation, a lot of customers get stuck trying to track the database or the API part, and they have to contact customer support."

What is most valuable?

AppDynamics is a complete tool for server and usability monitoring.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with AppDynamics for the past two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Once you get past installation, AppDynamics is highly stable and we get good results.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

AppDynamics is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

AppDynamics technical support is good.

How was the initial setup?

AppDynamics is easy to use overall, but the installation part is a battle. Installation and configuration can be very tough. An average user without specialized knowledge can't do this. You need to have DevOps and QA teams handle it. During installation, a lot of customers get stuck trying to track the database or the API part, and they have to contact customer support.

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

AppDynamics is a bit costly for an APM tool. The cheapest is New Relic. 
AppDynamics and Dynatrace are about the same. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I also use Dynatrace with some of my customers' companies. It's a much better product than AppDynamics in terms of features and ease of installation. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate AppDynamics five out of 10. 

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Splunk AppDynamics Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Splunk AppDynamics Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.