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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Elasticsearch

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AElasticsearch is an enterprise search tool from Elastic in Mountain View, California.

    $16

    per month

    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
    ElasticsearchIBM Instana
    Editions & Modules
    Standard
    $16.00
    per month
    Gold
    $19.00
    per month
    Platinum
    $22.00
    per month
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    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
    ElasticsearchIBM Instana
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    ElasticsearchIBM Instana
    Considered Both Products
    Elastic
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    Chose IBM Instana
    We selected IBM Instana because of better support and other products that complement each other.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    82%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    61 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    53 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    17 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    61 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    13 Answers
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    40 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    47 Answers
    Features
    ElasticsearchIBM Instana
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Elasticsearch and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Elasticsearch
    -
    Ratings
    IBM Instana
    7.6
    3 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Remote monitoring00 Ratings9.14 Ratings
    Network device monitoring00 Ratings5.54 Ratings
    Multiple Server Monitoring00 Ratings8.94 Ratings
    Multi-device monitoring00 Ratings5.54 Ratings
    Automated alerts and notifications00 Ratings9.14 Ratings
    Management Tasks
    Comparison of Management Tasks features of Elasticsearch and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Elasticsearch
    -
    Ratings
    IBM Instana
    5.5
    1 Ratings
    23% below category average
    Software and hardware inventory00 Ratings6.42 Ratings
    Policy-based automation00 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Reporting
    Comparison of Reporting features of Elasticsearch and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Elasticsearch
    -
    Ratings
    IBM Instana
    6.5
    3 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Performance data reports00 Ratings8.34 Ratings
    Customizable reporting00 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Data visualization00 Ratings8.83 Ratings
    Risk analysis00 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    ElasticsearchIBM Instana
    Small Businesses
    Apache Solr
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Watson Discovery
    Score9 out of 10
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Amazon CloudSearch
    Score8.5 out of 10
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    ElasticsearchIBM Instana
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (48 ratings)
    7.8
    (60 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.3
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.8
    (9 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ElasticsearchIBM Instana
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Elastic
    Elasticsearch is a really scalable solution that can fit a lot of needs, but the bigger and/or those needs become, the more understanding & infrastructure you will need for your instance to be running correctly. Elasticsearch is not problem-free - you can get yourself in a lot of trouble if you are not following good practices and/or if are not managing the cluster correctly. Licensing is a big decision point here as Elasticsearch is a middleware component - be sure to read the licensing agreement of the version you want to try before you commit to it. Same goes for long-term support - be sure to keep yourself in the know for this aspect you may end up stuck with an unpatched version for years.
    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
    Elastic
    • As I mentioned before, Elasticsearch's flexible data model is unparalleled. You can nest fields as deeply as you want, have as many fields as you want, but whatever you want in those fields (as long as it stays the same type), and all of it will be searchable and you don't need to even declare a schema beforehand!
    • Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, is super strong financially and they have a great team of devs and product managers working on Elasticsearch. When I first started using ES 3 years ago, I was 90% impressed and knew it would be a good fit. 3 years later, I am 200% impressed and blown away by how far it has come and gotten even better. If there are features that are missing or you don't think it's fast enough right now, I bet it'll be suitable next year because the team behind it is so dang fast!
    • Elasticsearch is really, really stable. It takes a lot to bring down a cluster. It's self-balancing algorithms, leader-election system, self-healing properties are state of the art. We've never seen network failures or hard-drive corruption or CPU bugs bring down an ES cluster.
    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
    Elastic
    • Joining data requires duplicate de-normalized documents that make parent child relationships. It is hard and requires a lot of synchronizations
    • Tracking errors in the data in the logs can be hard, and sometimes recurring errors blow up the error logs
    • Schema changes require complete reindexing of an index
    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
    Elastic
    We're pretty heavily invested in ElasticSearch at this point, and there aren't any obvious negatives that would make us reconsider this decision.
    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
    Elastic
    To get started with Elasticsearch, you don't have to get very involved in configuring what really is an incredibly complex system under the hood. You simply install the package, run the service, and you're immediately able to begin using it. You don't need to learn any sort of query language to add data to Elasticsearch or perform some basic searching. If you're used to any sort of RESTful API, getting started with Elasticsearch is a breeze. If you've never interacted with a RESTful API directly, the journey may be a little more bumpy. Overall, though, it's incredibly simple to use for what it's doing under the covers.
    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
    Elastic
    We've only used it as an opensource tooling. We did not purchase any additional support to roll out the elasticsearch software. When rolling out the application on our platform we've used the documentation which was available online. During our test phases we did not experience any bugs or issues so we did not rely on support at all.
    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
    Elastic
    Do not mix data and master roles. Dedicate at least 3 nodes just for Master
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Elastic
    As far as we are concerned, Elasticsearch is the gold standard and we have barely evaluated any alternatives. You could consider it an alternative to a relational or NoSQL database, so in cases where those suffice, you don't need Elasticsearch. But if you want powerful text-based search capabilities across large data sets, Elasticsearch is the way to go.
    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
    Elastic
    • We have had great luck with implementing Elasticsearch for our search and analytics use cases.
    • While the operational burden is not minimal, operating a cluster of servers, using a custom query language, writing Elasticsearch-specific bulk insert code, the performance and the relative operational ease of Elasticsearch are unparalleled.
    • We've easily saved hundreds of thousands of dollars implementing Elasticsearch vs. RDBMS vs. other no-SQL solutions for our specific set of problems.
    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