AppDynamics vs. IBM Instana

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AppDynamics
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
AppDynamics is an APM and Mobile APM program, with application mapping and predictive capabilities. These capacities enable automated remediation and code-level diagnostics in real time. It can be deployed on-premise or as a SaaS.N/A
IBM Instana
Score 9.0 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.
$75
per month per host
Pricing
AppDynamicsIBM Instana
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
SaaS
$75
per month per host
Self-Hosted
$93.80
per month per host
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AppDynamicsIBM Instana
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AppDynamicsIBM Instana
Considered Both Products
AppDynamics
Chose AppDynamics
AppDynamics is more a graphical representation of data, where as other tools like Splunk shows data in a table format using Query structure. AppDynamics helps is in analyzing system performance, but other tools just help to log the data and send alerts upon manual setting. …
IBM Instana
Chose IBM Instana
Datadog provides a more comprehensive platform, including APM, infrastructure monitoring, and log management.
AppDynamics like IBM Instana offers end-to-end visibility, APM and business performance monitoring.
IBM Instana competitive advantage might lie in its automatic …
Chose IBM Instana
Better value for the money. Easiest license model. Automatic features included to help installation of agents, continuos discovery of services, dependencies and components, update of agents, smart alerts, tracing without sampling and a low step learning curve
Chose IBM Instana
Instana is better at call tracing than the previous ones and is cost effective as well. But AppD can do a better job at constructing customised metrics, alert profiles and alert conditions as well, but it misses a lot of important details while tracing a call. At the same time, …
Chose IBM Instana
In terms of flexibility Instana wins by providing the auto-discovery functions that are very precious to my company since they allow monitoring and tracing of the application services even after big infrastructural changes. In this regars, competitors still require to hardwire …
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
AppDynamicsIBM Instana
Application Performance Management
Comparison of Application Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
AppDynamics
8.4
59 Ratings
10% above category average
IBM Instana
-
Ratings
Application monitoring9.359 Ratings00 Ratings
Database monitoring7.758 Ratings00 Ratings
Threshold alerts9.058 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive capabilities7.757 Ratings00 Ratings
Application performance management console8.857 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration tools7.947 Ratings00 Ratings
Server availability and performance monitoring8.430 Ratings00 Ratings
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting8.729 Ratings00 Ratings
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User Ratings
AppDynamicsIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(59 ratings)
9.0
(25 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AppDynamicsIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Platforms for software as a service (SaaS) frequently cater to a large number of users with a variety of needs and usage patterns. Because AppDynamics offers multi-tenant monitoring capabilities to track performance across various customer environments, it is a good choice for SaaS platform monitoring. SaaS providers can maximize resource utilization, proactively detect and resolve performance issues, and provide a dependable and consistent user experience for their clients with AppDynamics.
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IBM
I would recommend IBM Instana based on its strengths in automating application performance monitoring, dynamic tracing, and its ability to handle modern, containerized environments effectively. The automatic discovery and mapping feature, along with AI-powered anomaly detection, provide valuable insights for proactive issue resolution. However, I would consider factors such as the organization's specific technology stack, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. Conducting a thorough evaluation, including a trial or proof of concept, would be essential to ensure that IBM Instana aligns with our unique needs and contributes positively to our technology and business objectives.
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Pros
Cisco
  • AppDynamics delves deeply into traceability and profiling at the code level. By identifying and refactoring any hidden performance hogs in our code, we can directly observe the performance improvements.
  • AppDynamics provides real-time dashboards and in-depth insights into each layer of the application stack, lifting the curtain on performance.
  • AppDynamics gives us the ability to proactively detect and resolve performance issues. We are able to keep things running smoothly for our users and stop outages.
  • We can monitor stability and performance prior to, during, and following releases with AppDynamics, which helps to minimize regression risks and facilitate smooth rollouts.
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IBM
  • 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
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Cons
Cisco
  • Improving the clarity and comprehensiveness of the documentation could benefit users. Clearer documentation ensures that users can make the most of all the functionalities
  • Leverages AI and machine learning for intelligent insights, aiding in issue identification and prediction.
  • Competitive, with AI-driven features becoming increasingly common in APM solutions.
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IBM
  • 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
Cisco
its working for us, we are familiar and comfortable with the tool and its proven valuable/indispensable in helping evaluate our code.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
AppDynamics has its own community site that includes forums and a knowledge base. On the forums, you can converse with other members of the community and ask technical questions as you have them. Though this forum isn’t filled with people there are active members for you to gain some valuable insights.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
It is distinguished from these programs because the platform provides visualizations of application processes, showing the interplay between various parts and services. Understanding the architecture of complicated apps and finding their weak spots is greatly aided by this.
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IBM
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.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • AppDynamics has played a pivotal role in optimizing our applications for a seamless user experience. The proactive monitoring and quick issue resolution have translated into improved user satisfaction and increased retention rates.
  • The initial cost and effort associated with implementing AppDynamics might be considered a negative impact, particularly for organizations with budget constraints. However, the long-term benefits have justified this initial investment.
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IBM
  • System down time is shortened as our ability to troubleshoot issues goes up.
  • Potential downtime is stopped as we are able to slow down calls/ availability of calls in response to monitoring the dashboard.
  • We are able to react to issues quickly through the smart alert system rather than manual checks.
Read full review
ScreenShots