Datadog vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Datadog
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Datadog is a monitoring service for IT, Dev and Ops teams who write and run applications at scale, and want to turn the massive amounts of data produced by their apps, tools and services into actionable insight.
$1.27
per month (billed annually) per host
Splunk Observability Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Splunk Observability Cloud aims to enable operational agility and better customer experience through real-time AI-driven streaming analytics allowing accurate alerts in seconds. It is designed to shorten MTTD and MTTR by providing real-time visibility into cloud infrastructure and services.
$15
per month (billed annually) per host
Pricing
DatadogSplunk Observability Cloud
Editions & Modules
Log Management
$1.27
per month (billed annually) per host
Infrastructure
$15.00
per month (billed annually) per host
Standard
$18
per month per host
Enterprise
$27
per month per host
DevSecOps Pro
$27
per month per host
APM
$31.00
per month (billed annually) per host
DevSecOps Enterprise
$41
per month per host
Infrastructure
$15
per month (billed annually) per host
App & Infra
$60
per month (billed annually) per host
End-to-End
$75
per month (billed annually) per host
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DatadogSplunk Observability Cloud
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual pricing. Multi-Year/Volume discounts available (500+ hosts/mo).
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DatadogSplunk Observability Cloud
Considered Both Products
Datadog
Chose Datadog
In terms of usability, I’ve found Datadog significantly more approachable and powerful compared to Elasticsearch, especially for day-to-day operational monitoring. Datadog offers a much more cohesive, user-friendly interface out of the box, with built-in support for metrics, …
Chose Datadog
Datadog is an all in one solution. It has everything in one place so you don't have to go from application to application and try to figure out what exactly happened. No more stitching database errors from one third party to backend errors in another to front end errors in …
Chose Datadog
the search query is very easy to search the logs
Chose Datadog
Datadog crushed the competition on price and offering more solutions in one product cutting down on implementation time and effort while ensuring that the "integration" between one of their offerings was completely compatible with any of the others. I'm sure it's not the case …
Chose Datadog
We've completely replaced New Relic with Datadog and find it easier to use and more comprehensive. Our AWS and Sentry usage will continue for now. But Datadog gives us a much broader coverage - we can monitor our AWS services and many other services that interact with them. …
Chose Datadog
Dynatrace was cheaper but, in my opinion, its setup, features, and overall user experience do not come close to what Datadog can offer, making it more of a pain to use and not worth the cheaper cost over Datadog (especially if migrating away from Datadog to dynatrace).

Chose Datadog
Better performance and visibility than what I was able to obtain out of AppDynamics

Their OnCall offering is very fresh still, but is already almost at parity with Splunk On Call (VictorOps)
Chose Datadog
The first reason for selecting Datadog was of course it's pricing which is quite better in terms of competitor like Appdynamics and splunk. Second thing is versatile services which they are offering on one platform which means entire end to end services can be monitor at one …
Chose Datadog
It's a one-stop solution for all our needs whereas in other open-source tools, we have an operational overhead to keep and manage the uptime of these tools as well and also manage their versioning, upgrade, and patching cycle. Also if there are any bugs then we have to raise an …
Chose Datadog
One of the most important reason is single agent configuration for all kinds of monitoring. It also proved an auto upgrade feature of agents that reduces the overhead. It also provides range of options when it comes to data visualization and dashboards. It also provide tagging …
Chose Datadog
Kubernetes with Prometheus and other open-source options. It is prone to more toil to set up but the stack can be largely replicated in open source technologies.
Chose Datadog
OEM and Vertica Management console are limited to their own databases whereas Datadog has the ability to monitor multiple types of databases.
Chose Datadog
New Relic was a good tool but had really pushy salespeople. They also released a product called infrastructure recently, and it was worse than their previous product (servers). The previous product was also free! Needless to say, we will not be going back to New Relic any time …
Chose Datadog
Easier to set up and integrate with other auxiliary tools. The cost was also a benefit along with self-service capabilities. We could set up Data Dog by ourselves, versus needing to bring additional consulting efforts to setup Dynatrace. Reliability of results (less false …
Chose Datadog
Ultimately, Datadog had the most already-built bridges into our existing infrastructure -- third parties that we're using for certain services are far more likely to work with Datadog than other systems. This means that, while expensive, Datadog has done a tremendous amount of …
Chose Datadog
Datadog has been harder to setup out-of-the-box compared to its alternatives, although it's graphs and dashboards have been more useful. Other tools handle individual tasks better. For example, Splunk has been the best logging tool I've used, and New Relic is great for CPU and …
Chose Datadog
It has been easier to work with Datadog for all our business needs and get things on their roadmap if we found it lacking. Currently we use a mix of various tools as they were existing prior to Datadog came. We are evaluating new offering like Datadog's latest log management to …
Chose Datadog
I am listing how Datadog is better than below chosen
NotSensu - Datadog has more integrations and easy to use UI.
Prometheus - Datadog Integration are more in number than, simple installation process
Chose Datadog
We are still trying other products, but people still like Datadog. After setting up a dashboard, it's great for monitoring instances on Datadog. Also, the DevOps team had a good time setting up Datadog. It means Datadog was way easier to set up compared to those others.
Chose Datadog
The pricing, the customer service and it most importantly it does the job we expect.
Chose Datadog
Geckoboard has nice dashboard options, however their third party system support isn't as strong as Datadog. Geckoboard did not support all the various server and development systems we use, whereas Datadog did. Also, Datadog has better alerting and monitoring options than …
Chose Datadog
Datadog empowers us to create dashboards and visualize the state of our infrastructure in real time. It gives us control over what we want to view and how. The graphs provide deep insight into trends and anamoly detectives. These features are lacking in some of the other …
Splunk Observability Cloud
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
To be honest, Datadog is very similar to Splunk and LogScale to a lesser degree, but it is just as good if you don't need too complex observability. Grafana is still growing and might reach the same level soon.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Tenable Cloud Security and SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
It's able to quickly detect and resolve issues across the entire spectrum of deployments including on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and multicloud
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
The above applications have their own use cases. Thousand Eyes or Sitescope is used for URL monitoring and Splunk is used for application monitoring. Appdynamics is also used for application monitoring and can monitor the server very well but it lacks when searching in logs …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
It has edge because of our existing logging solutions is Splunk
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk is superior in many ways to these solutions when I'm comes to ingesting, storing, manipulating, and using data, but dynatraces automatic agents do make it much easier to use out of the box. Nagios seems much cheaper but does not provide as much functionality as Splunk. …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Because it's very easy to use & detailed and I love the graphics you feel everything under control any issue you can track it immediately
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
New Relic has more deep into the application using agents.
We try to use them in parallel to find errors in the infrastructure.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
I had not considered other products because Splunk Log Observer was in use in my company before I started working there.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
We believe that it's less vulnerable to security aspects as compared to others.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk requires less work for data in gestion and parsing. Splunk has more efficient data display features.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk Log Observer provides easy setup and ease of admin features and direction of product was better compared to Lightstep
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk is easy to customize and ingest our data. It is far more understandable and secure than other applications.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
SQL is a great tool for smaller quick checks. When trying to monitor several different environments, applications, APIs, several thousand devices, connections, and technology, it just doesn't stand up to what you need. Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring has really stood out …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
We are having other monitoring tools like AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Datadog and already using their end-user monitoring capability. Most of our customers are looking for agent-free monitoring where they don't want to instrument any agent on their client-side (as it might …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring provides far superior options for anybody using a complex hybrid multi-cloud environment and allows both your SOC and NOC to work together on the same data while driving their own insights.

We found other products are still in the old world view …
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
The tool was deployed over most of the major applications on the client-side.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
The use of a single integration and definition of custom metrics, and tags is a great advantage. The ability to use SignalFlow to observe metrics in addition to the vast number of out-of-the-box dashboards is also excellent.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is the only product of its kind that I've used and I've been very happy with it.
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
government is hesitant of choosing a solarwinds product for security purposes
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Much more powerful
Chose Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) has a much better artificial intelligence engine. It also has a much better and more intuitive user interface. Splunk RUM also allows end-to-end visibility into the front and the backend. Technical support and customer service are also much …
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User Ratings
DatadogSplunk Observability Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DatadogSplunk Observability Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
A one-stop solution for everything you need. Multiple functionalities are tailored to meet specific business needs. Logs are essential for any business, and Datadog manages logs effectively. Rum sessions are something new to me and have given us a new perspective on how to reverse engineer issues that we see for our customers.
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The query language is relatively easy and flexible when looking into an application's problems. These queries can then be used for alerts, reports, and dashboards. I believe Splunk is a platform that can help a system grow into its proactive application management, using incidents to add insights as needed without trying to work out every scenario in advance.
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Pros
  • Create Dashboards as per application, environments, and Custom metrics in one panel.
  • Log aggregation, one-stop Application monitoring tools for the whole infrastructure.
  • Playbooks, SLA definition, success and error quotas, request visualizations.
  • DB monitoring, Serverless stack monitoring.
  • Alerting of Production incidents so we can quickly resolve the issues on time.
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  • The first one is its Kubernetes container monitoring.
  • I really like this features because as we know how much K8s is vast and to manually monitor each part of the Kubernetes it takes so much time but Splunk Observability Cloud makes it easier. And even once we integrate K8s with Splunk Observability Cloud it gives us some prebuilt dashboards which gives holistic view of our Cluster and its nodes, pods, etc.
  • The dashbaord feature of Splunk Observability Cloud, it gives us full flexibility to customize our dashboard with a wide range of predefined chart types.
  • Now it also supports OTEL, which is a plus point for observability. As now everyone is moving towards Otel and in current market there are only few tools who supports OTEL based integrations, Splunk Observability Cloud is one out of them.
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Cons
  • Alert windows cause lag in notifications (e.g. if the alert window is X errors in 1 hour, we won't get alerted until the end of the 1 hour range)
  • I would appreciate more supportive examples for how to filter and view metrics in the explorer
  • I would like a more clear interface for metrics that are missing in a time frame, rather than only showing tags/etc. for metrics that were collected within the currently viewed time frame
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  • An indicator for errors on the navigations pane so that we don't have to go through each tab.
  • As we go more and more cloud maybe you guys can implement a pay-as-you-use strategy so that small companies using it not frequently can also afford it.
  • That's it can't think of any and it wont let me skip to next question. Thanks
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
Good: Stable system with low error rate Easy to use for simple use cases Bad: UI is not very clear for complex usage Mobile view (when logged in from phone) is bad No library for .net
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Usability
Datadog's user interface is quite friendly and easy to navigate. With menus clearly categorized, and ability to bookmark important dashboards, one can easily find what they're looking for. For dashboards, ability to move and resize visualizations and group them, is really helpful to organize dashboards. Automatic suggestions from Datadog for important visualizations based on the metrics and logs would provide another level of ease of use.
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When there is an issue, it’s a win if one can easily identify the root cause. To do the same, it should allow the user to dig deep with multiple data points and compare the data and identify the anomaly. In this use case, it’s good to drive from Splunk 011y.
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Support Rating
The support team usually gets it right. We did have a rather complicate issue setting up monitoring on a domain controller. However, they are usually responsive and helpful over chat. The downside would be I don’t think they have any phone support. If that is important to you this might not be a good fit.
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Splunk support is very quick and efficient. Pre-sale specialists are very skilled and available.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Follow a training before starting.
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Alternatives Considered
I selected Datadog because of its features and the wide range of integration support. As I already told it supports more that 600+ integrations which helps and organization to keep everything in a single place and also its AI feature which is reducing the time for root cause analysis. Its custom dashboards features which helps us to visualize the data in a more attractive way.
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We initially chose Splunk Observability Cloud because it promised full-stack visibility and tighter integration. The other tools didn't offer this as part of the core package. Their analytics and real-time dashboards looked strong during the demo but it turned out to a lot heavier and more complex than expected. If I had to decide again, I’d probably go with something more streamlined and easier to manage.
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Return on Investment
  • Saved us (time & money) from developing our own monitoring utilities that would pale in comparison
  • Alerts allow us to remedy issues before our customers even know about them
  • Tracking resource usage over time allows us to better plan for future needs, before it becomes a pain-point.
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  • Significantly reduced the MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), which in turn has improved the end-user experience tremendously.
  • Meets compliance requirements of security policies, audit, regulation, and forensics.
  • Helps us to track/manage the resource usage on our cloud instances which has a direct implication on the recurring cost.
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ScreenShots

Datadog Screenshots

Screenshot of the out-of-the-box and customizable monitoring dashboards.Screenshot of Datadog's collaboration features, where users can discuss issues in-context with production data, annotate changes and notify their teams, see who responded to that alert before, and discover what was done to fix it.Screenshot of where Datadog unifies traces, metrics, and logs—the three pillars of observability.Screenshot of some of Datadog's 400+ built-in integrations.Screenshot of Datadog's Service Map, which decomposes an application into all its component services and draws the observed dependencies between these services in real timeScreenshot of centralized log data, pulled from any source.

Splunk Observability Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Real-time monitoring for public, private and hybrid cloud