IBM Instana vs. Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Instana
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Instana, 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 host
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
SignalFX is Real-Time Cloud Monitoring and Observability for Infrastructure, Microservices and Applications. SignalFX was acquired by Splunk in August 2019. SignalFX Infrastructure Monitoring provides real-time cloud monitoring and observability platform for infrastructure, microservices and DevOps. A new SignalFX product, SignalFx Microservices APM, was released March 2020 to detect issues, provide real-time app troubleshooting, and future-proof expectations.
$15
per month
Pricing
IBM InstanaSplunk Infrastructure Monitoring
Editions & Modules
SaaS
$75
per month per host
Self-Hosted
$93.80
per month per host
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM InstanaSplunk Infrastructure Monitoring
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM InstanaSplunk Infrastructure Monitoring
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
IBM InstanaSplunk Infrastructure Monitoring
Small Businesses
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GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.9 out of 10
IBM Instana
IBM Instana
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.9 out of 10
IBM Instana
IBM Instana
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM InstanaSplunk Infrastructure Monitoring
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(27 ratings)
8.3
(24 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM InstanaSplunk Infrastructure Monitoring
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
I would recommend IBM Instana based on its strengths in automating application performance monitoring, dynamic tracing, and its ability to handle modern, containerized environments effectively. The automatic discovery and mapping feature, along with AI-powered anomaly detection, provide valuable insights for proactive issue resolution. However, I would consider factors such as the organization's specific technology stack, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. Conducting a thorough evaluation, including a trial or proof of concept, would be essential to ensure that IBM Instana aligns with our unique needs and contributes positively to our technology and business objectives.
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Splunk
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is well suited for any complicated environment where you have apps and servers across multiple clouds and platforms and products. If you have a data centre where all your apps and servers are in one single network, you could probably get away with older solutions. But for any modern, complex, hybrid-cloud microservices environment, Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is a must-have.
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Pros
IBM
  • Collecting Kubernetes and Infra level logs and presenting in easy to understand visuals.
  • Tracing the end-to-end journey of an event and also categorizing by technology and Endpoints
  • Built-in and custom alerts help to monitor almost all of scenarios without much additional configuration.
  • Ability to create Applications to logical group important flows
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Splunk
  • SignalFX handles historical metric aggregation exceptionally well, providing a multifaceted approach to event detection based on anomalies.
  • SignalFX's cost is incredibly flexible with their pricing model of DPM (data-point per minute) vs the traditional "per host" model that most monitoring SaaS use.
  • SignalFX support is responsive and knowledgeable, very eager to help solve your immediate problems.
  • SignalFX integrations is vast and constantly growing, making adoption easy even when multiple different open-source technologies are used in your stack.
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Cons
IBM
  • I believe that the "live" option in monitoring does not truly update the status in real-time, thus I must manually update to feel comfortable.
  • The call analysis tool might be improved, third-party resources are restricted, and the pricing is slightly more than competitors in comparable categories.
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Splunk
  • Better integration with our clients (native mobile clients SDKs will be great).
  • A way to easily tag filters and move them across metrics/formula.
  • Alert system to easy false [alarm] and hard to configure.
  • Be able to have group more dimensions (and have more values on each).
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
No answers on this topic
Splunk
Good: Stable system with low error rate Easy to use for simple use cases Bad: UI is not very clear for complex usage Mobile view (when logged in from phone) is bad No library for .net
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Usability
IBM
No answers on this topic
Splunk
I find that learning the interface can take some time. We need a better show-and-tell on how the Teams pages, Dashboard Groups, Dashboards and charts delay. Advance SignalFlow is sometimes hard to build. Some better samples of advanced SignalFlow would be helpful. For example, Splunk SPL has a vast resource of examples.
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
We chose IBM Instana for several reasons, and the most important one is that we didn't have to make changes in our code for nearly all of our applications for it to work. We are happy with the decision we made to use IBM Instana.
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Splunk
They’re not for the same purpose but we’re using NewRelic and Honeycomb for monitoring purposes. NewRelic is used for HTTP client monitoring for system related throughput, error, database and external client monitoring. Honeycomb is used to monitor actual HTTP request/response values. Splunk [Infrastructure Monitoring] is used for real-time application related throughout and error monitoring.
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • System down time is shortened as our ability to troubleshoot issues goes up.
  • Potential downtime is stopped as we are able to slow down calls/ availability of calls in response to monitoring the dashboard.
  • We are able to react to issues quickly through the smart alert system rather than manual checks.
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Splunk
  • Reduced downtime.
  • Caused us to get a lot of spam when we redeployed apps and old instances stopped sending metrics. Muting alerts solves this, but people often forget to do it or do it incorrectly.
  • Helped us find historical info about instances/apps.
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ScreenShots

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring Screenshots

Screenshot of Real-time monitoring for public, private and hybrid cloud