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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Blue Triangle

    Score6.2 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Synthetic Monitoring from Blue Triangle is a solution designed to ensure a site is up and running on all devices to catch issues before customers do.N/A

    Datadog

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/ADatadog 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.

    $18

    per month per host

    IBM Instana

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/AInstana, 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 Managed Virtual Server (MVS)

    Pricing
    Blue TriangleDatadogIBM Instana
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Essentials
    $20
    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
    Blue TriangleDatadogIBM Instana
    Free Trial
    YesYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual pricing. Multi-Year/Volume discounts available (500+ hosts/mo).
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Blue TriangleDatadogIBM Instana
    Considered Multiple Products
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    No answer on this topic
    Datadog
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    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, …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Instana
    We selected IBM Instana because it is more accurate than Datadog.
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Instana
    IBM Instana provides automated discovery without manual configuration. It provides granular (per sec) data collection. It's easy to set up and supports on-Premises as well as cloud environments. It can be integrated with other tools, increasing its capability for advanced …
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Would buy again
    50 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    61 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    41 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    53 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    52 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    61 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    32 Answers
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    40 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    36 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    47 Answers
    Features
    Blue TriangleDatadogIBM Instana
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Blue Triangle and Datadog and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Blue Triangle
    -
    Ratings
    Datadog
    7.9
    2 Ratings
    6% below category average
    IBM Instana
    7.6
    3 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Remote monitoring00 Ratings8.22 Ratings9.14 Ratings
    Network device monitoring00 Ratings7.72 Ratings5.54 Ratings
    Multiple Server Monitoring00 Ratings7.72 Ratings8.94 Ratings
    Multi-device monitoring00 Ratings7.72 Ratings5.54 Ratings
    Automated alerts and notifications00 Ratings8.22 Ratings9.14 Ratings
    Management Tasks
    Comparison of Management Tasks features of Blue Triangle and Datadog and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Blue Triangle
    -
    Ratings
    Datadog
    6.1
    1 Ratings
    12% below category average
    IBM Instana
    5.5
    1 Ratings
    23% below category average
    Patch Management00 Ratings7.31 Ratings00 Ratings
    Service configuration management00 Ratings6.41 Ratings00 Ratings
    Software and hardware inventory00 Ratings5.51 Ratings6.42 Ratings
    Policy-based automation00 Ratings5.51 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Reporting
    Comparison of Reporting features of Blue Triangle and Datadog and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Blue Triangle
    -
    Ratings
    Datadog
    8.2
    2 Ratings
    3% above category average
    IBM Instana
    6.5
    3 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Performance data reports00 Ratings8.22 Ratings8.34 Ratings
    Customizable reporting00 Ratings7.72 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Data visualization00 Ratings8.62 Ratings8.83 Ratings
    Risk analysis00 Ratings8.22 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Blue Triangle and Datadog and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Blue Triangle
    -
    Ratings
    Datadog
    6.7
    1 Ratings
    9% below category average
    IBM Instana
    -
    Ratings
    Data backup and recovery00 Ratings6.41 Ratings00 Ratings
    Antivirus and malware management00 Ratings7.31 Ratings00 Ratings
    Administrator access control00 Ratings6.41 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Blue TriangleDatadogIBM Instana
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Catchpoint
    Score8.5 out of 10
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Nexthink
    Score7.3 out of 10
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Blue TriangleDatadogIBM Instana
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    8.9
    (65 ratings)
    7.8
    (60 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.3
    (2 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (44 ratings)
    8.3
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (7 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Blue TriangleDatadogIBM Instana
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    Amazing help and knowledge has been assembled, but Blue Triangle Group's customer service is exceptional. Because they make us feel like the most important customer every time we speak, they have a genuine belief in our success. You can count on the support team to keep an eye on your account and offer fresh ideas to our discussions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Datadog
    Datadog may be better suited for teams that have a more out-of-the-box infrastructure, on the primary platforms Datadog supports. You may also have better results if you have a bigger team dedicated to devops and/or a bigger budget. We found that trying to adapt it to our use case (small team, .NET on AWS Fargate) wasn't feasible. We continually ran into roadblocks that required us to dig through documentation (and at times, having to figure out some documentation was wrong), go back and forth with support, and in my opinion, waste money on excessive and unintended usages due to opaque pricing models and inaccurate usage reports, as well as broken/non-functional rate sampling controls.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Well-suited for an org with a large application base, where many microservices are created and destroyed daily. IBM Instana doesn't require any manual configuration, so deploying the Instana agents takes very little time. Data capture from IBM Instana is highly granular and can detect even short spikes lasting a few seconds. Not suitable for legacy applications where there will be rarely any changes. They can use a simpler monitoring mechanism. Also, highly dense data capturing can sometimes overload the information.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    • Ease of usability.
    • Very responsive to our business requirements.
    • Increase your business revenue.
    Read full review
    Datadog
    • The thing which Datadog does really well, one of them are its broad range of services integrations and features which makes it one step observability solution for all. We can monitor all types of our application, infrastructure, hosts, databases etc with Datadog.
    • Its custom dashboard feature which helps us to visualize the data in a better way . It supports different types of charts through those charts we can create our dashboard more attractive.
    • Its AI powered alerting capability though that we can easily identify the root cause and also it has a low noise alerting capability which means it correlated the similar type of issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Can monitor application(s) and system(s) with very large throughput of transactions by the second ( it gets everything !!!)
    • Provide strong drill down for your applications and will tell you where the points of failure of an application's is ( servers , network , Databases , etc you name it )
    • Very easy to set up and have it up and running when using the SaaS solution. There's an on premise solution which works just as well but requires more effort and preparation from an infrastructure point of view for your teams to implement.
    • Continuously improve their features and their agents auto-update and keep up. All while not interfering with your applications.
    • Let's you create your own dashboards and visualizations that can be tailored for different kind of users with the data collected.
    • Create your own events and smart alerts so you can know on the spot if something is happening or is likely to happen that needs addressing on your applications / systems
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    • Since percentage change is used instead of a real-time shift in comparison charts, they are more difficult to read and evaluate quickly.
    • Unlike other website performance monitoring solutions, we are unable to compare data from different time periods.
    • The portal's interface may use some cleaning up.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Datadog
    • 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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • It's very difficult to create custom dashboards, only a handful of scenarios can be visualized to dashboards.
    • Extracting information from Instana to further analysis into excel for example is something that can be improved. Using an API to get data is very limiting.
    • Open telemetry features which allow to send application data to Instana is not working as documented.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Datadog
    Definitely will not revisit after our issues and, in my opinion, poor support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Datadog
    There are so many features that it can be hard to figure out where you need to go for your own use case. For example, RUM monitoring us buried in a "Digital Experience" sidebar setting when this is one of our key use cases that I sometimes struggle to find in the application. It appears that ECS + Fargate monitoring was recently released which is great because we had to build a lambda reporting solution for ephemeral task monitoring. But this new feature was never on my radar until I starting clicking around the application.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Datadog
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    Datadog
    Documentation was difficult to work through, rollout was catastrophic (completely outage)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    blackfire.io can be easier to analyze for the consumer, but overall get the same result.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Datadog
    Our logs are very important, and Datadog manages them exceptionally well. We frequently use Datadog services for our investigations. Use case: Monitor your apps, infrastructure, APIs, and user experience.


    Key features:


    Logs, metrics, and APM (Application Performance Monitoring)


    Real-time alerting and dashboards


    Supports Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, and other integrations


    RUM (Real User Monitoring) and Synthetics





    ✅ Best for backend, server, and distributed systems monitoring.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Instana is much more robust and modern compared to our previous product which was AppDynamics. We compared Dynatrace and Datadog and they were very similar in many aspects. The licensing simplicity with Instana and our existing relationship with IBM made it a much more enticing option and accelerated the adoption timeline
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Blue Triangle Technologies
    • The portal's ease of use, regular updates, and the feature roadmap all seem to prioritize the end user and actual use cases
    • Having a better understanding of where my site's visitors are going has led to beneficial outcomes for my business
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Datadog
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Increase up time by early failure identification and performance optimization based on findings in Instana.
    • Enhance user experience by mapping user issues with backend failures
    • Automated actions help fixing known issues without human intervention
    • increase support team efficiency by root cause analysis which decrease the incident solving time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.