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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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)

    Portainer

    Score9.8 out of 10
    N/APortainer is a centralized container management platform for containerized apps and IoT device management. It helps accelerate container adoption and reduce time-to-value on Kubernetes, Docker, and Swarm with a management portal, allowing users to deliver and manage containerized applications from the data center to the edge. Portainer helps - Reduce the operational complexity associated with multi-cluster management Bridge the skills gap and facilitate feature…

    $0

    Pricing
    IBM InstanaPortainer
    Editions & Modules
    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)
    Portainer Business - 3 Nodes Free
    $0
    Home & Student
    $149
    per year
    Starter
    $995
    per year
    Professional
    $2995
    per year
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales for Pricing
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM InstanaPortainer
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    IBM InstanaPortainer
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of IBM Instana and Portainer
    Feature
    IBM Instana
    7.6
    3 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Portainer
    -
    Ratings
    Remote monitoring9.14 Ratings00 Ratings
    Network device monitoring5.54 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Server Monitoring8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-device monitoring5.54 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automated alerts and notifications9.14 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management Tasks
    Comparison of Management Tasks features of IBM Instana and Portainer
    Feature
    IBM Instana
    5.5
    1 Ratings
    23% below category average
    Portainer
    -
    Ratings
    Software and hardware inventory6.42 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based automation4.52 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting
    Comparison of Reporting features of IBM Instana and Portainer
    Feature
    IBM Instana
    6.5
    3 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Portainer
    -
    Ratings
    Performance data reports8.34 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable reporting4.52 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data visualization8.83 Ratings00 Ratings
    Risk analysis4.52 Ratings00 Ratings
    Container Management
    Comparison of Container Management features of IBM Instana and Portainer
    Feature
    IBM Instana
    -
    Ratings
    Portainer
    8.6
    94 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Security and Isolation00 Ratings8.790 Ratings
    Cluster Management00 Ratings8.575 Ratings
    Storage Management00 Ratings8.680 Ratings
    Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings8.183 Ratings
    Discovery Tools00 Ratings8.970 Ratings
    Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings8.690 Ratings
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    IBM InstanaPortainer
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    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.8 out of 10
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    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    SUSE Rancher
    Score9.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM InstanaPortainer
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.8
    (60 ratings)
    8.6
    (94 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    8.3
    (3 ratings)
    8.5
    (15 ratings)
    Support Rating
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM InstanaPortainer
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    Portainer
    Many developers, especially lesser experienced developers, don't have a really good background in setting up containers from the command line. Portainer is invaluable to them. Giving a UI to them gives them much more confidence and allows them to learn properties and capabilities of containers under far less stress. On the flip side of this, giving then a UI on a production system can lead to chaos...never give junior developers access to production servers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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
    Portainer
    • Separating server maintenance with application development, providing a clear user interface for developers who don't want to worry about the underlying server.
    • RBAC for container deployment linked to a SAML IDP, not something particularly easy in a native Docker instance but point and shoot in Portainer, allowing the use of Azure / Okta etc to provide user access.
    • Image management with multiple repositories is super clear and reduces incidents
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    Portainer
    • When setting up static IPs for a new container, having the used ones for a specific network at hand would be cool or something like a mini IPAM of some sort...
    • Using the developertools to see "oh, it's a 40x or 500" when something doesn't seem to load because the ui just states "Didn't work" is kinda annoying. expandable toasts or something would be nice.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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
    Portainer
    It is an excellent tool.
    Read full review
    Usability
    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
    Portainer
    Accessibility for Non-Experts: even with some people having a bit longer on-boarding it is still very simple Quick setup is insanely useful, we can get it running in 10 seconds after installing docker Portainer has once again super clean UI and is very user friendly. Deployment/monitoring and management are super easy. I can tell just from a glance if something is out of date (watching at you Watchtower not doing your job for some reason)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    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
    Portainer
    One of their staff members jumped on a video call immediately with me and led me through the problem and solution during a quick session of screen sharing. In this day and age that is above and beyond, especially when it comes to software. It took approximately 5-10 minutes to diagnose and fix, including pleasantries!
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Portainer
    It is really easy. Just follow the documentation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    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
    Portainer
    Portainer takes the cup in terms of usability and features. It is also more useful for smaller deployments, whereas Kubernetes in our opinion and experience, could probably be more suited to certain other use cases. Portainer is also a fresh feel among all the preexisting container management solutions and brings positivity and a new breeze in the industry.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    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
    Portainer
    • Increased productivity: Portainer's user-friendly interface and streamlined container management can help increase the productivity of IT teams.
    • Cost savings: By simplifying container management, Portainer can help reduce the time and resources required to manage container environments, potentially leading to cost savings.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Portainer Screenshots

    Screenshot of Portainer is a universal container management platform to help adopt and manage Docker, Kubernetes, Nomad and Edge environments.