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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)

    Sauce Labs

    Score6.8 out of 10
    N/ASauce Labs is a cloud-based platform for automated testing of desktop and mobile applications. It is designed to be instantly scalable, since it is optimized for continuous integration workflows. (The vendor says that when tests are automated and run in parallel on multiple virtual machines across many different browser, platform and device combinations, testing time is reduced and developer time is freed up from managing infrastructure.) The Sauce Labs testing cloud is intended to be paired…

    $19

    per month

    Pricing
    IBM InstanaSauce Labs
    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)
    Live Testing
    $19.00
    per month
    Virtual Cloud
    $149.00
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM InstanaSauce Labs
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details—Free service available for Open Source projects.
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    IBM InstanaSauce Labs
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of IBM Instana and Sauce Labs
    Feature
    IBM Instana
    7.6
    3 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Sauce Labs
    -
    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 Sauce Labs
    Feature
    IBM Instana
    5.5
    1 Ratings
    24% below category average
    Sauce Labs
    -
    Ratings
    Software and hardware inventory6.42 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based automation4.52 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting
    Comparison of Reporting features of IBM Instana and Sauce Labs
    Feature
    IBM Instana
    6.5
    3 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Sauce Labs
    -
    Ratings
    Performance data reports8.34 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable reporting4.52 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data visualization8.83 Ratings00 Ratings
    Risk analysis4.52 Ratings00 Ratings
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    IBM InstanaSauce Labs
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    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.8 out of 10
    TestComplete
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    Medium-sized Companies
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    OpenText UFT One
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    SoapUI Open Source
    Score8.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM InstanaSauce Labs
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.8
    (60 ratings)
    5.6
    (158 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    9.3
    (20 ratings)
    Usability
    8.3
    (3 ratings)
    8.4
    (20 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    Support Rating
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    8.3
    (15 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (6 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM InstanaSauce Labs
    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
    Sauce Labs
    Having used some of the competitor's tools over the year I would say that SauceLabs provides a lot of value for money if you plan to run long sets of tests with high frequencies. Paying for a single slot means you can run tests whenever you want without creeping costs but it does make running tests in parallel require an extra slot. Currently, our test suite takes over three hours to run and at the moment it is cost prohibitive to purchase an extra slot. However, having access to live testing and integration with Appium is great.
    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
    Sauce Labs
    • Provides a comprehensive selection of browser and platform versions for test automation and CI/CD pipeline support
    • Provides a rich selection of browser/platform availability for customer issue reproduction
    • Provides a comprehensive set of virtual mobile device configurations for automation and availability
    • Sauce Labs' SaaS and self service tools work and perform well
    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
    Sauce Labs
    • I've had four changes in account managers over the past couple of years. They ranged from super experienced/advocate to some that seems relatively junior/a bit removed. I understand this happens but clarity on what I can expect with these partnerships would be valuable. What I've gotten in the end has varied dramatically.
    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
    Sauce Labs
    As we currently know, there's nothing on the market with a big feature set like saucelabs at their current price point. Along with the business not having to learn a whole new tool to use again and the ability to refresh our private devices and the continuously growing number of public devices available and features.
    Incentivized
    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
    Sauce Labs
    It is an incredibly easy service to use for what its primary intention is. The only reason a point is deducted is because more feature enrichment can be done around the Sauce Connect Proxy utility and the Jenkins Sauce OnDemand plugin. User Account administration also needs more work, such as the addition of user groups, rather than a simple hierarchy of users.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sauce Labs
    Yes, Sauce labs is always there, and it is easy to troubleshoot when you are having any connectivity issue, they always keep you informed when they plan to perform any type of maintenance window on their side in advance, so you can plan and will not affect your current work. I do not recall any outage.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sauce Labs
    The time where they acquired TestObject and were trying to integrate their services would probably be the most annoying time. Annoying as features were in two separate places (websites) for example. But since the introduction of their unified platform, we haven't run into any issues as of yet and we've used them for at least 5-6 years now.
    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
    Sauce Labs
    The people here are just so friendly and personable. For instance, Tristan Lombard answered every single email with a very cheery tone and not only did he diagnose my issue, he also made sure to ask how my day was going. Keep it up
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sauce Labs
    I am not sure if it's my company that makes getting Sauce Labs integrated into the team difficult or is it Sauce Labs. The process for getting Sauce Labs for a project is quite a tedious process and the information for using Sauce Labs initially is quite lacking. There is little support for getting started
    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
    Sauce Labs
    We have also tested out Browser Stack, which at the time was more geared towards manual testing. Although it appeared to support more mobile devices/browsers, we also wanted something that can plugin in easily with our existing Selenium test scripts. Sauce Labs was definitely more geared towards our goals at the moment which were to automation functional/regression testing and build it into our release pipeline.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sauce Labs
    With private devices, you have full reign over usage of them, so no complaints there. Public devices are available if no one else is using it, which is understandable. Browser VMs are based on number of open sessions and Saucelabs give you a certain number depending on what you need. If you need more, then you pay for more. It is as simple as that. You need more devices, then you can pay for more private ones too. A workaround for public devices is to pick the first available one and not be too picky, that's if you are able to of course.
    Incentivized
    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
    Sauce Labs
    • Eh... Negligible? Being on AWS West makes it quite a few hops for us, so the process times out every now and again. That is frustrating.
    • I can't really speak to the dollars, as I am not privy to the information.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Sauce Labs Screenshots

    Screenshot of Sauce Labs UI optimized for continuous integration workflows.