Apica vs. IBM Instana

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apica
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Apica is an observability cost optimization provider helping IT teams gain complete control over their telemetry data economics. Apica Ascent processes all observability data types including metrics, logs, traces, and events while optimizing observability costs.N/A
IBM Instana
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Instana, an IBM company since the December 2020 acquisition, provides APM services for SOA, microservices, containerized applications and Kubernetes, and cloud native applications, as well as discovery and monitoring for IT assets.
$18
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Pricing
ApicaIBM Instana
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essentials
$18
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Standard
$75
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Self-Hosted
$93.80
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ApicaIBM Instana
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ApicaIBM Instana
Considered Both Products
Apica
Chose Apica
Apica Synthetic is more efficient than other competitors; our main priority is gain in the effort, time, and customer satisfaction, which Apica Synthetic definitely guarantees. Real-time alerts are just perfect which is exactly what we need, I can't say the same about other …
Chose Apica
We were using different monitoring tools for different requirements (e.g.,Nagios and CheckMK for infrastructure issues) and we were in need of a tool for service and API monitoring for which we were using ThousandEye. But alerts were 60-70% valid irrespective of conditions like …
Chose Apica
We actually preferred IP HostMonitor over Apica Synthetic, as it was more stable and uses less real estate. IP HostMonitor does not support true load simulation, which we miss from the Apica Synthetic trials.
Chose Apica
I have used Microfocus Loadrunner (formerly HP Vugen/BSM), Dynatrace Synthetic, and Gomez. Apica Synthetic has a good price point for its functionality. Dynatrace and Microfocus are expensive. Dynatrace and Gomez are easier to use than Apica Synthetic.
Chose Apica
Apica Synthetic is perfect for monitoring our products that customers use since we create scenarios and API calls that reflect how the customer uses our products. However, for server monitoring and monitoring internal products, both Zabbix and Prometheus have the upper hand. …
Chose Apica
I have never used other products that would stack up to what Apica Synthetic does for our company; other software that we use might help with giving different information but would not come close to the mix of monitoring and data we get from Apica Synthetic. The closest product …
Chose Apica
Apica Synthetic is more flexible when making custom checks. The support from Apica Synthetic can help you with nearly every check you have to do.
Chose Apica
Seemed to work well, but we didn't want to do a long renewal. Other products are maturing and better integrated with our systems. It works for now, but we're looking to replace it.

Update: New Relic has caught up with Apica and seems to integrate better with the other aspects of …
IBM Instana
Chose IBM Instana
IBM Instana is great for infrastructure monitoring while AppDynamics is ahead in application monitoring
Chose IBM Instana
We chose IBM Instana for its very affordable price, the ease of use of the solution, which was perfectly suited to our needs and specifications, and the feedback from our teams, who had no trouble getting to grips with it in a very short time.The IBM Instana solution is very …
Chose IBM Instana
IBM Instana provides 60 seconds granularity whereas the other products use time series data
IBM Instana automatically detects the Service Endpoints which helps us trace all the calls pinpointed to service endpoints.
IBM Instana provides complete Auto Discovery with no …
Chose IBM Instana
Well again, it comes back to the application monitor. It does a better job than SolarWinds.
Chose IBM Instana
Automatic application discovery with one agent installation instead of manual configuration for each application and multiply agents for each technology stack.

Automatic tracing for application calls without the need to add complex configuration and application instrumentation.
Chose IBM Instana
BMC TrueSight Automation for Networks and Dynatrace
Chose IBM Instana
1- ROI is higher as the budget is much less than other
2- the way of calculating license is much better and fit us and this affect the ROI
3- the ease of implementation
Chose IBM Instana
The primary reason we choose IBM Instana was that is was compatible with nearly all of our apps without requiring any modifications to our code. We are really happy that we decided to adopt IBM Instana.
Chose IBM Instana
because of support and better agents for non containeraized workloads, virtual machines and lpars
Chose IBM Instana
IBM Instana meet LMRA requirements, as IBM Instana is more useful to deep-dive each transaction from Real-user monitoring itself when compared to other APM's in the market. Also gives more flexibility especially from the support perspective to identify bottlenecks and to …
Chose IBM Instana
As a DevOps engineer, I've explored various Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools, including New Relic for real-time insights, AppDynamics for code-level visibility, Dynatrace for AI-driven monitoring, Datadog for comprehensive observability, Splunk for log management, …
Chose IBM Instana
Splunk is also a wonderful tool for log analysis and operational troubleshooting however auto discovery and dependency flow creation makes Instana standout. We have to do a lot of preprocessing to ingest and format data in Splunk and then write complex queries for gathering the …
Chose IBM Instana
We chose IBM Instana for several reasons, and the most important one is that we didn't have to make changes in our code for nearly all of our applications for it to work. We are happy with the decision we made to use IBM Instana.
Chose IBM Instana
We have used them and for the moment we have chosen IBM Instana first of all because of the price because it is accessible and it works in terms of the results we have obtained, also the way of presenting the schemes and the performance of the systems is very good.
Chose IBM Instana
Superior value for money, simpler license approach with automated functions (installation, detection, update, and alarm). Nothing can stop IBM Instana's footprints in the international market as it progressively gains strength and grows in the market. With fair and inexpensive …
Chose IBM Instana
New Relic has it's own perks but when it comes to large infrastructure, we always face some issue at stability but IBM Instana never fails here. In my opinion, Inbuilt dashboard and inbuilt alerting feature what makes IBM Instana better than compared to other tools. I think …
Chose IBM Instana
In my experience, they both have independent strengths and shortcomings, though I have found IBM Instana to be much better for general monitoring and setting up alerts to get ahead of any problems. Contrastly, I think humio/falcon has been easier to use when it comes to …
Chose IBM Instana
We selected IBM Instana because of better support and other products that complement each other.
Chose IBM Instana
We selected IBM Instana because it is more accurate than Datadog.
Best Alternatives
ApicaIBM Instana
Small Businesses
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Score 8.8 out of 10
InfluxDB
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Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Logz.io
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Score 7.0 out of 10
Logz.io
Logz.io
Score 7.0 out of 10
Enterprises
NetBrain Technologies
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All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ApicaIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
4.5
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ApicaIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
As I use this for only my area, it is very well suited to what I need it to do. Apica Synthetic monitors two different web applications in a time interval that is easily customizable for uptime and latency. These are critical indicators for a cloud-based point-of-sale system. We need solid uptime and limited latency across the enterprise.
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With enterprise IT assets in a multitude of ecosystems, cloud infrastructures and sometimes still left stuck in a legacy on prem architecture, IBM Instana makes it easy to get the right data to drive development and / or DevSecOps processes with tangible input from the target environment itself.
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Pros
  • Auto alerts trigger if any issue is identified
  • Graphical representation of the health of applications
  • Good product support from the team
Read full review
  • Collecting Kubernetes and Infra level logs and presenting in easy to understand visuals.
  • Tracing the end-to-end journey of an event and also categorizing by technology and Endpoints
  • Built-in and custom alerts help to monitor almost all of scenarios without much additional configuration.
  • Ability to create Applications to logical group important flows
Read full review
Cons
  • It's very clunky. Infrastructure is large and very difficult to upgrade.
  • SaaS and On-premise versions are different. There is an LDAP integration but users can only be assigned to one group (i.e. department). If you are in 2 departments, you need 2 separate logins.
  • Update: they now offer federated logins
  • It filled a gap in monitoring for us, but we're looking to move on.
Read full review
  • I believe that the "live" option in monitoring does not truly update the status in real-time, thus I must manually update to feel comfortable.
  • The call analysis tool might be improved, third-party resources are restricted, and the pricing is slightly more than competitors in comparable categories.
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Likelihood to Renew
We trust the results that Apica Synthetic has achieved. Real-time alerting is critical to our clients and with limited resources, we can't handle many false positives; Apica Synthetic is the only solution that provides both of those features.
Read full review
Instana has been able to fulfill our all requirement and provide out of box solution for multiple component like AWS RDS Monitoring and real time alerting setup on basis of that. it is also easy to integrate with other open-source alerting and monitoring tools which makes it easier to incorporate into our solutions
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Usability
As per my experience while using it. Thanks!
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IBM Instana totally alters our monitoring approach since it increases the stability of the system and simplifies the process of problem solving. And since it helps to lower the degree of alert exhaustion that we experience, it is a total game changer for us.
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Support Rating
Apica Synthetic is very effective while configuring the account setup for any of the database/UserID.
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IBM instana support team is good but when we ask them for support, they keep asking same thing again and again and mostly there is no solution
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Implementation Rating
Easy for implementation in our Infrastructure, Easy for troubleshooting the issue and Easy to use as well.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Apica Synthetic is more efficient than other competitors; our main priority is gain in the effort, time, and customer satisfaction, which Apica Synthetic definitely guarantees. Real-time alerts are just perfect which is exactly what we need, I can't say the same about other tools that may be less expensive but also less efficient.
Read full review
As a DevOps engineer, I've explored various Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools, including New Relic for real-time insights, AppDynamics for code-level visibility, Dynatrace for AI-driven monitoring, Datadog for comprehensive observability, Splunk for log management, Stackify Retrace for error tracking, and Raygun for crash reporting. Each tool offers distinct features, and the choice depends on specific use cases, technology stacks, and organizational needs. Thorough evaluations, considering factors like ease of use, integration capabilities, and scalability, help in selecting the most suitable APM solution for effective application monitoring in a DevOps environment.
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Return on Investment
  • My department is not charged for Apica Synthetic so no ROI, but from a customer service perspective, we can react to an outage and repair it faster than our customers can report the outage.
  • Our vendor's own monitoring tools are not as accurate nor as timely as ours. They rely on us telling them, from Apica Synthetic, that they have an issue.
Read full review
  • Let's me monitor and pinpoint issues across multiple critical systems and applications that work in tandem, reducing drastically, the time in identifying root cause and solving the issues.
  • Let's me deep dive into issues found with a lot of detailed information about particular requests , and find proper solutions by my own research or even with Gen AI assistant using Watson.x or you could prompt your AI solution of choice as well.
  • All systems fail at some point, so IBM Instana gives stakeholders ease that large complex and critical systems that affect the very livelihood of people is being observed with pinpoint precision and that issues are addressed promptly and with compass pointing north towards the problem's root cause and solutions.
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ScreenShots