Datadog vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

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

If you need a network security forensic tool, this is a great fit. Scrutinizer collects everything you have configured as a target without losing data. If you need an in-depth analysis of your network flows, as in who is doing what with what this is a good fit. Scrutinizer translates a massive about of data into readable tables and reports.

Incentivized

• 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

• Once configured, Scrutinizer gives an accurate overview of network activity.
• Scrutinizer is able to collect flows from a variety of devices, you are not limited to Cisco.
• DSCP based reporting, which is helpful when attempting to determine how good your wireless network is from a QoS perspective.

Incentivized

• 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

• The free version has some limitations that make an accurate evaluation difficult, every day at midnight the data is flushed and you start over.
• If you are purchasing the appliance, you won't have admin access to it.
• Reporting could use some polished graphics and advance filtering features.

Incentivized

Definitely will not revisit after our issues and, in my opinion, poor support.

Incentivized

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

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

Support is support, they are either there or they are not. Scrutinizer support has been there every time I've needed them. They rely a bit too much on email correspondence, sometimes I want a voice to tell me what to do, and fast

Incentivized

Documentation was difficult to work through, rollout was catastrophic (completely outage)

Incentivized

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

Scrutinizer is a faster and simpler deployment while still delivering the tools and reports needed to gain accurate view traffic and network usage. Its cheaper than most alternatives and daily use is focused on understanding data, not making config changes so you can understand data. Risk reduction and elimination is the primary focus, Scrutinizer helps you do that.

Incentivized

• 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

• Scrutinizer is a great tool, extremely easy to implement, it lets you see your NetFlow without a large outlay.
• WAN traffic monitoring gives you the ability to accurately predict the necessary bandwidth volume, you can now stop over buying.

Incentivized