Checkmk vs. IBM Instana

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Checkmk
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Checkmk is a solution for IT Monitoring of servers, applications, networks, cloud infrastructures (public, private, hybrid), containers, storage, databases and environment sensors. It can be deployed under all major Linux distributions or users can run it as Docker container or virtual appliance on other operating systems including Windows. The tool is available as a Raw Edition, which is open-source, and as an Enterprise Edition with a many additional enterprise features. The…
$0
up to 10 systems
IBM Instana
Score 8.6 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 Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Pricing
CheckmkIBM Instana
Editions & Modules
Checkmk Free Edition
$0.00
up to 10 systems
Checkmk Raw Edition
$0.00
unlimited & always free
Checkmk Enterprise Edition
starting at $600.00
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
CheckmkIBM Instana
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup Fee$600 for up to 3,000 Services / around 100 hostsNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
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CheckmkIBM Instana
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User Ratings
CheckmkIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.8
(39 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
CheckmkIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
tribe29
In our organization which is a mash up of different hardware, software it was important to use an independent tool that wasn’t linked to one manufacturer incase a piece of hardware was dropped from support for example, we also value open-source software highly in our field. It’s important to in our IT environment to be able to customize and tweak software that we run. We don’t use the cloud monitoring aspect so Cannot comment on that side of the software.
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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
tribe29
  • Device Management
  • Monitoring Network Quality
  • Device Quality of Service
  • SNMP
  • IOT Monitoring
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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
tribe29
  • Updates
  • mobile interface
  • Agent for android devices
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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
tribe29
Very helpful software and I highly recommend to have on hand as a tool for testing, troubleshooting, and monitoring.
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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
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Usability
tribe29
Overall Checkmk is a great product that is made and ran by a European company that is open source and highly customizable, great support if needed. On prem support is a must for our organization which Checkmk supports. Our organization has been using Checkmk for over 5 years now Performance of the software runs excellent on its own Linux server, for any company with a good Linux admin, you can have a lot of un tweaking and creating custom checks for every aspect of your environment.
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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.
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Support Rating
tribe29
No answers on this topic
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
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Alternatives Considered
tribe29
Checkmk free version is far superior to PRTG free version. For the paid versions PRTG was more efficient and easier to use. Checkmk provides unlimited services on their free version while PRTG is limited. We like to use the free version to avoid monthly or annual costs while still utilizing the same SNMP features.
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IBM
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 configurations needed IBM pricing is easy, whereas the other products pricing is complicated (consumption based pricing model)
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Return on Investment
tribe29
  • avoid downtime
  • Plan updates based on usage of a VM or network switch to avoid impacting users
  • User satisfaction increased due to less visible downtime or issues with our IT infrastructure.
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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
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ScreenShots