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Datadog vs. Grafana Cloud vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    Grafana Cloud

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AGrafana Cloud is a fully managed Observability Platform designed to aggregate, visualize, and analyze telemetry data across distributed architectures. The platform provides a unified environment for Metrics, Logs, Traces, and Continuous Profiling, utilizing the LGTM (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir) and Pyroscope stack to provide high-cardinality analysis of system state.

    $0

    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is network diagnostics and troubleshooting technology, from Austin-based SolarWinds.N/A
    Pricing
    DatadogGrafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    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
    Grafana Cloud - Pro
    $8
    per month up to 1 active user
    Grafana Cloud - Free
    Free
    10k metrics + 50GB logs + 50GB traces up to 3 active users
    Grafana Cloud - Advanced
    Volume Discounts
    custom data usage custom active users
    Grafana - Enterprise Stack
    Custom Pricing
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    DatadogGrafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Free Trial
    YesYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup feeOptional
    Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual pricing. Multi-Year/Volume discounts available (500+ hosts/mo).——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    DatadogGrafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Considered Multiple Products
    Datadog
    Chose Datadog
    Datadog is a more complex but complete solution than any of the other Log Aggregation, monitoring, or general observabilty tools that we have trialed. I found it easier to setup following useful and up-to-date documentation provided directly by Datadog instead of scattered …
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    First think first - it's easy to use, and very easy to implement in any infrastructure. It provides a custom dashboard and monitors. I’ve used or evaluated Grafana, Prometheus, Amazon CloudWatch, and Dynatrace, and each tool has strong capabilities. Prometheus + Grafana provide …
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    All other tools dont have all the features which Datadog provides.
    Easy to use from UI where other may have complicated UI or no UI at all to create monitors. Consider like AWS Grafana, we have limitation to create monitors from UI. There is no recurring downtime for monitors. …
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    we primarily use Kubernetes, and Prometheus is great for collecting time series metrics, especially in Kubernetes. and Grafana is used for dashboards. As these are open source, we host them and manage them internally. We choose Datadog because of its logs, traces, and …
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    1. Grafana is good, but a lot of integration is required for it to work. .that not the case of Datadog
    2. Faster to set up Datadog instead of Grafana
    3. Alerting in Datadog feels much easier thanin Grafana.
    Incentivized
    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).

    Grafana/…
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    Its the Enterprise level decision, definitely usability and features perspective Datadog is much more advanced.
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    I use Datadog because it concentrates all these features into a single tool, facilitating the learning curve that my platform and development engineering team needs in order to be able to set up the monitors/alerts/SLIs/SLOs as well as to diagnose a production issue. Its easier …
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    Kibana
    Datadog
    … because within our usecase we have all the events in Kibana but sampled traces in Datadog … but if we had all the traces it would have been much more useful
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    Much more modern and advanced
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    Datadog is best for cloud-native and fast-setup. It is more mature for infrastructure and real-time observability. The UI is more user-friendly and provides wide coverage of app insights.
    Incentivized
    Chose Datadog
    ease of use and implementation, other than New Relic (which I think is terrible in every possible way), the other two support opentelemetry better, have more manageable costs and comparable basic services, but they do not have the breadt of services dd does.
    Incentivized
    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)
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Grafana Labs
    Chose Grafana Cloud
    Grafana has a direct plugin to Icinga monitoring solution and allowed for easy configuration for us. At the time of implementation, other services did not have such an integration. As we already had a very customized and heavily introduced monitoring solution in place, we …
    Incentivized
    SolarWinds
    Chose SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    For NCM, there is no other tool that I know of that can work as well as SolarWinds does. All other products that I have used are mainly used for application performance monitoring more than network configuration capture.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    51 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    42 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    33 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    37 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
    Features
    DatadogGrafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Datadog and Grafana Cloud and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Feature
    Datadog
    8.3
    3 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Grafana Cloud
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    -
    Ratings
    Remote monitoring8.53 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network device monitoring7.72 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Server Monitoring8.23 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-device monitoring8.23 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automated alerts and notifications8.93 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management Tasks
    Comparison of Management Tasks features of Datadog and Grafana Cloud and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Feature
    Datadog
    6.5
    2 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Grafana Cloud
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    -
    Ratings
    Patch Management7.31 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Service configuration management6.41 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Software and hardware inventory5.51 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based automation6.92 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting
    Comparison of Reporting features of Datadog and Grafana Cloud and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Feature
    Datadog
    8.4
    3 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Grafana Cloud
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    -
    Ratings
    Performance data reports8.13 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable reporting7.83 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data visualization8.83 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Risk analysis8.93 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Datadog and Grafana Cloud and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Feature
    Datadog
    7.2
    2 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Grafana Cloud
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    -
    Ratings
    Data backup and recovery6.41 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Antivirus and malware management7.31 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Administrator access control7.82 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    DatadogGrafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Small Businesses
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    DatadogGrafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (66 ratings)
    9.4
    (7 ratings)
    8.0
    (142 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    4.3
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (45 ratings)
    9.6
    (3 ratings)
    7.0
    (9 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.7
    (9 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    DatadogGrafana CloudSolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    Grafana Labs
    Just about any organization with more than one server and more than one cluster as it scales very well. Configuration of the application takes time and finesse to fine tune to where the balance of load time and getting data quickly meets. The plugins add load time but fine tuning for the application to meet demand needs nailed down at implementation
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Network Configuration Manager is well suited for backing up configurations of all your devices. It also has a great comparison tool for seeing only the differences in config. Another great feature is it's ability to push a script to any number of devices. This is very handy for pushing changes to one, 10 or multiple devices. There are also some great reports that you can run against the devices in inventory
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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
    Grafana Labs
    • Alerting through many different medium as Slack, Email, Webhook etc
    • Beautiful and unlimited number of dashboards to view your metrics and tweak them as you please
    • Log aggregation and powerful Logql to filter and view your logs
    • Microservices monitoring
    • Large number of plugins and data sources to collect your metrics from almost anywhere
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Integrates with Network Performance Management for Alerting and Reporting.
    • NetPath and detects issues due to Configuration Change.
    • Keeps a record of which user made the change.
    • Which devices are not being backed up, devices where backups are failing, dashboard and alerting available.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    Grafana Labs
    • There are some settings which we can't configure from UI (Web Console).
    • We've open[ed] up configuration files in command line text editors and manually do the settings e.g. LDAP/SSO configuration.
    • In terms of visualization, it's best, but it doesn't support log analysis otherwise it could destroy business of all other visualization tools.
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • For our use case, it does everything great and some of the features we underutilize but I would like to be able to set a configuration baseline when initially adding a node instead of after the configuration is pulled but it's not a particularly big deal to let it pull the configuration then set it as the baseline.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Datadog
    Definitely will not revisit after our issues and, in my opinion, poor support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Medium complexity to set up in the beginning if using any non-standard devices or configurations, else fairly easy (e.g. Cisco Nexus or IOS-based devices). Reports are fairly straightforward to set up. Updates to the platform are fairly straightforward and don't take a major effort. Easy to add or remove devices.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    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
    Grafana Labs
    It is infinitely flexible. If you can imagine it, Grafana can almost certainly do it. Usability may be in the eye of the beholder however, as there is time needed to curate the experience and get the dashboards customized to how it makes sense to you. I know one thing they are working on are more templates, based on data sources
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    The user interface is lacking. It is difficult to navigate at times and things can be done multiple ways. Quite often I am confused by how their notification structure works. It is not very intuitive. They do offer a free Academy. They also offer a community of other technical folks. I have enjoyed both.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    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
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    To be fair, I have not had to involve Support in a number of years, but when I did, I was greeted with enthusiastic engineers who wanted to understand and solve the issue. It was a fairly complex scenario and I have discovered in my most recent implementation that engineering included that option as a standard now.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Datadog
    No answers on this topic
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Solarwinds has actually produced new training since I last used it that is available on their site at any time. Their previous training was more than enough to get us started but now there is significantly more content. Since I'm comfortable with the Orion platform and the products we use I haven't checked the new training out yet but we have new staff go through portions of that training and they always come away with an understanding of the platform and ready to use it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Datadog
    Documentation was difficult to work through, rollout was catastrophic (completely outage)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    it was a fairly easy implementation and everything was pretty straightforward. only challenge we had was getting all the snmp communities updated on the networking equipment
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    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
    Grafana Labs
    Grafana blows Nagios out of the water when it comes to customization. The ability to feed almost any data source makes it very versatile and the cost is great.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    At the time SolarWinds was the biggest player in the space and their whole portfolio was very comprehensive. As time progressed and newer technologies came about (i.e. SDWAN) their products couldn't keep up with the consumer demands and changing market. Security became such a big focus that once Solarwinds got hacked we had to remove all their products from our environment
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    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
    Grafana Labs
    • Grafana has replaced many higher priced tools
    • The integrations are seemless with multiple backends
    • Combining graphs and dashboards from multiple data sources is a game changer
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Saves 100s of hours a year in man hours over manual configuration.
    • Saved easily 50k in lost revenue when a switch rebooted with months old unsaved configuration. NCM let us quickly restore a snapshot of the running config from the previous day.
    • Saves us several man hours per week of config auditing by reducing all changes to a summary email.
    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.

    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Network Automation -  manage rapid change across complex and multi-vendor networks, reduce time needed to complete repetitive tasks, and maintain standards and service levels for uninterrupted ITScreenshot of Config Backup - rest easy knowing you can locate the most current configuration and quickly apply it to a replacement spare, or to roll back a blown configuration.Screenshot of Vulnerability Scanning - Take the hassle out of vulnerability scanning using NCM's integration with the National Vulnerability Database and access to the most current CVE’s to identify vulnerabilities in your Cisco devices.Screenshot of Inventory Management - Be able to know what devices are connected to your network, their hardware and software configurations, and when they approach end-of-service and end-of-life, with NCM device configuration management tool.Screenshot of User Management - Use NCM's integrated console to lock down devices from unauthorized access, delegate who can view device details and make configuration changes, and determine when network changes can occur.Screenshot of Baselines and Diffs - IT professionals can get a more comprehensive view by leveraging baselines across multiple nodes. Diff view in NCM’s network configuration management tool is designed to highlight only those lines that changed.