TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    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
    Grafana CloudIBM Instana
    Editions & Modules
    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
    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
    Grafana CloudIBM Instana
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Grafana CloudIBM Instana
    Considered Both Products
    Grafana Labs
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    Chose IBM Instana
    IBM Instana was an easier setup and to manage. However, we are still using Grafana and Prometheus to monitor Kafka.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Instana
    New Relic has it's own perks but when it comes to large infrastructure, we always face some issue at stability but IBM Instana never fails here. In my opinion, Inbuilt dashboard and inbuilt alerting feature what makes IBM Instana better than compared to other tools. I think …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Instana
    The ease of use and reliability made us keep Instana and we're happy with it.
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Instana
    In terms of flexibility Instana wins by providing the auto-discovery functions that are very precious to my company since they allow monitoring and tracing of the application services even after big infrastructural changes. In this regars, competitors still require to hardwire …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    61 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    53 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    61 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    40 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    47 Answers
    Features
    Grafana CloudIBM Instana
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Grafana Cloud and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Grafana Cloud
    -
    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 Grafana Cloud and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Grafana Cloud
    -
    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 Grafana Cloud and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Grafana Cloud
    -
    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
    Grafana CloudIBM Instana
    Small Businesses
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Grafana CloudIBM Instana
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.4
    (7 ratings)
    7.8
    (60 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.6
    (3 ratings)
    8.3
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Grafana CloudIBM Instana
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    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
    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
    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
    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
    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
    Grafana Labs
    No answers on this topic
    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
    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
    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
    Grafana Labs
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    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
    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
    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
    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