Has improved alerting speed and enabled better proactive monitoring across cloud applications
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Datadog is application monitoring and alerting.
A specific example of how I use Datadog for application monitoring and alerting is monitoring for storage filling up.
I also monitor services to ensure that they're running when they should be, and then I schedule downtimes for whenever they shouldn't be.
What is most valuable?
In my experience, the best features Datadog offers are integrations with ServiceNow and PagerDuty and the large variety of other third-party integrations.
The integrations with ServiceNow and PagerDuty have helped my workflow because whenever there's an issue, we can get notified quickly, and whoever is on call, if it's after hours, can be notified that there's an issue going on.
Dashboards are nice for quick and easy access to important and useful information, and logs are a great place to review information quickly and easily without connecting to the application directly.
Datadog has positively impacted my organization by allowing for a more proactive response to issues whenever they occur.
Being more proactive has helped by reducing downtime and improving our response to resolution. It has helped us limit business impact whenever there are issues that arise.
What needs improvement?
I believe Datadog could be improved because sometimes it's not the most user-friendly, and when monitors have a new metric or a service that no longer needs to be monitored, it remains in the system. It could be user error, but it would be nice to remove a specific service or part of a monitor from continuing to be monitored if there's no data being collected anymore.
Documentation sometimes is a little misleading or confusing, and there are multiple versions available, so having more up-to-date or clearer documentation regarding which version it applies to would be good.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadog for two, two and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Datadog's scalability has been pretty scalable from what we've done in our organization.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is very good; it's easy to get support on pretty much any question that we have, including being able to chat in.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used LogicMonitor, and I was not involved in the discussions on why we switched.
How was the initial setup?
It's a pretty steep learning curve to start using Datadog; it takes time to really configure everything.
What was our ROI?
I would say we have seen a return on investment, but I don't have any relevant metrics.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it was good; I wasn't too involved with it, but as far as I know, it was smooth.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Datadog, we did evaluate other options, but I'm not sure what those options were.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale of 1-10, I rate Datadog an 8.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Cross-functional teams have gained clearer insight into funding delays through simplified data dashboards
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Datadog is to analyze data in regards to instant funding.
A specific example of how I use Datadog for instant funding data is understanding how long it takes for an application to be processed, approved, and then instantly funded, how many applications there are, and if there's any holdups on the applications as well.
We are identifying the reason behind a hold-up for instant funding and possibly why some applications do not get instantly funded. Datadog helps us identify those weak areas.
How has it helped my organization?
Datadog has significantly improved our organization’s visibility into system performance and application health. The real-time dashboards and alerting capabilities have helped our teams detect issues faster, reduce downtime, and improve response times. It’s also made collaboration between engineering and operations smoother by providing a shared view of metrics and logs in one place.
What is most valuable?
In my experience, the best features Datadog offers include the layout of the reporting, which is user-friendly, and for those who are not familiar with data, this helps the visual impact.
The layout and reporting are user-friendly because there is a dashboard that I use the most.
Datadog has positively impacted my organization by allowing cross-functional teams who do not necessarily work directly with data to understand, simplify, and take in the data points.
Those cross-functional teams are using the data now by reviewing these reports and they are able to identify weak spots as well to improve cross-functionally the application process.
What needs improvement?
Areas for improvement:
Datadog could improve in dashboard usability and data correlation across products. While it’s powerful, the interface can feel cluttered and overwhelming for new users. Streamlining navigation and offering simpler default dashboards would help teams ramp up faster.
Additional features for next release:
It would be great to see stronger AI-driven anomaly detection and predictive analytics to help identify potential issues before they impact performance. Improved cost management insights or forecasting tools would also help teams monitor usage and control expenses more effectively.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadog for roughly six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding Datadog's scalability, we have not scaled yet, but we are in the process of continuously scaling up, so we will find out in the near future.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support of Datadog is amazing.
I would rate the customer support a definite 10, as friendliness is top tier.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used a different solution, and we switched due to inconsistencies. The previous solution was also inaccurate and unreliable.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment in terms of time saved. I don't have metrics on hand for that answer, but there has been time saved due to the Datadog output.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that all were fair.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Datadog, I evaluated other options, but I don't want to identify other ones.
What other advice do I have?
I don't have anything else to mention about the features, including integrations, alerts, or ease of setup.
I am unsure what advice I would give to others looking into using Datadog.
I found this interview impressive for AI, and I do not think there is anything I would change for the future.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate Datadog a 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google
Collaboration across metrics has improved troubleshooting while high logging costs remain a concern
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Datadog is monitoring and collecting metrics. I use it to collect metrics from Kubernetes pod CPU and memory usage, and also logging, basically all our middleware platforms.
What is most valuable?
The best features Datadog offers are the ability to collaborate between different metrics such as logging, metrics, and APM, which helps me to pinpoint when I'm troubleshooting issues. The dashboard is very useful; I can use it to get a glance on how the system performs, and alerting is what I'm using right now to send notifications to either email or PagerDuty.
Datadog has positively impacted my organization by shortening our time to resolve incidents because it's a central place for getting all the data that we need for troubleshooting.
What needs improvement?
I think Datadog can be improved by adding anomaly detection, that would be nice. The user interface is okay, but sometimes cost is the issue because for logging, I had to actually trim down my logs because the cost is too much.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadog for several years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Datadog's scalability is quite good since it's a SaaS solution, and there are no scalability issues for me. I simply install an agent for whatever new component, server, or host I want to monitor, and then I'm good.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is hit and miss. Sometimes they respond fairly quickly, but it depends on the person, and it may take a couple of communications for them to actually understand what I need.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used some open-source solutions from other vendors before Datadog. The switch was made to get a better observability stack.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that the pricing is based on usage. When we adopt more, we get more, so everything is based on our desire to improve adoptability for the entire studio, then cost becomes a main issue.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Datadog, I evaluated other options, including Dynatrace, which was approximately 10 years ago.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Datadog is that if cost is not a concern, I would recommend them to use it. However, if they are sensitive or concerned about how much money they want to spend, then maybe Datadog is not the solution for them.
I would rate Datadog overall as eight out of ten, though I find it too costly.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Has improved response times and streamlined daily threat monitoring across teams
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Datadog is the security aspect of it, utilizing the SIEM and the cloud security features. I use it every day monitoring different types of logs and reports that come through, managing most of the alerts that populate from our different applications and software, and it's been a good ride.
How has it helped my organization?
Datadog has impacted my organization positively because it tracks all the logs and helps us utilize our features through security. We use Datadog in basically all of our other teams, including engineering, code, APIs, and many other features available, and my peers always say something good about it.
Datadog has helped my organization improve a lot of response time because we get alerts the minute it happens, which is our only means to reduce incident response time. I also appreciate how it provides remediation efforts, allowing us to implement different playbooks while constantly updating with new threats and vulnerabilities, keeping us safe.
What is most valuable?
One of the best features I appreciate is the Cloud SIEM, and I've used many SIEMs in my experience, but until I got to this company, I never had the chance to really see how Datadog works. With this organization, they were able to show me how easy it was, and Datadog has a really good UI that's easily navigable, helping us teach new team members quickly.
My experience with the Cloud SIEM specifically is that it works 24/7 and stands out due to the easy UI it provides, which helps onboard new members who enjoy it. They are able to pick it up quickly without any prior knowledge.
Datadog helped us out with cloud security features and alerts during situations where we get numerous account lockouts or accounts being jeopardized. Datadog was able to find the alerts and trigger to notify our team in a very prompt manner before it got worse, allowing us to promptly adjust and remediate the situation in time.
What needs improvement?
Something I would appreciate seeing from Datadog is more events focused on the networking aspect, which allows me to see what others are using. I enjoy showing up to those events and exploring new features they are releasing as well.
I think Datadog has been performing excellently with no areas that need improvement, as they've been doing great and I want them to keep striving to do better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I'm fairly new with Datadog, having used it for the past year and a half, almost two years now, and it's been going really well.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Datadog is very stable, as there hasn't been any downtime or issues since I've been here, and it's always on time. I would appreciate seeing it as an app or mobile app for quicker issue tracking.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Datadog has definitely kept up with our growth.
How are customer service and support?
I've had a couple instances where I reached out to Datadog's support team, and they have been really super helpful and very kind, even reaching back out after resolving my issues to check if everything's going well.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was not here during the time they onboarded Datadog or looked for different solutions, so I'm not aware of which solution we used before.
What was our ROI?
I cannot share any metrics regarding return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing is fairly affordable, and the setup cost has been good, while licensing has been well maintained, making it pretty great.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I'm certain they did their research and looked around at many different options, but I cannot speak on their behalf regarding which they chose or had competition with.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Datadog is to honestly give yourself a week or two to explore all the features and software application, as there are quite a lot of amazing features to learn and utilize, making it not just a software to monitor threats but also a tool to enhance your knowledge in this industry. I rate Datadog 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Has improved monitoring accuracy and enabled faster issue resolution through detailed alerting and transaction visibility
What is our primary use case?
Our main use case for Datadog is that we heavily rely on it for our infrastructure monitoring and application monitoring, including some of the browser-based application monitoring, which is RUM.
A specific example of how we use Datadog for monitoring is that we monitor our infrastructure CPU and memory utilization. Sometimes we see slowness and figure out CPU utilization was near the threshold, around 90-95%, which helped us to resolve the issue, underlying SQL problem, and that helped us to troubleshoot the issue.
In addition to our main use case, we also use RUM monitoring and synthetic monitoring, which really help us to look at our end-user sessions and proactively solve any slowness or errors spiking up.
What is most valuable?
The best feature that Datadog offers is infrastructure monitoring, where it can look at the CPU utilization, different process utilization, all the processes which are running, and alert us in advance if things are going beyond normal threshold.
I think everything about the features of Datadog is amazing. Datadog provides details up to the transactions. We can look at the transaction log too for the application, which is really helpful.
Datadog has impacted our organization positively since we were previously using AppDynamics and then we switched to Datadog. It has improved a lot in our alerting and monitoring in the infrastructure space and application space. We can monitor business transactions and take proactive action. It is really great to take actions on the issues before an end user reports it, which is a great advantage for us.
What needs improvement?
The world is moving toward artificial intelligence, so maybe we can have an inbuilt AI agent within Datadog, or maybe it exists and I have not used it.
The AI aspect would be great where we would not need to go and look at different transactions or different modules of Datadog, as AI can actually provide the data to us on Datadog UI. If we need more details, it could have a link to go to that specific module to look at more details for the application and infrastructure monitoring and alerts.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadog for three years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Datadog is stable for our organization, and we have not seen any downtime or issues so far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Datadog's scalability has been great as it has been able to grow with our needs. As per our need, we are able to utilize different modules and there was never any need where we needed to scale anything else. We have limited our transition recording to 45 days, which helps. That is what our need is. It is really helpful and nothing additional is needed.
How are customer service and support?
We reached out to Datadog only once to find out our AMI images, which we needed for our infrastructure as a code component, and it was a great experience. We got the required information and that helped us.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Datadog, we previously used OpsRamp and also AppDynamics, and both of the tools we retired and moved to Datadog due to our enterprise approach to consolidate overall monitoring to Datadog.
How was the initial setup?
I gave Datadog a nine out of ten because it is amazing. All the features and functionalities are amazing. The ease of implementation was a bit difficult for us for the database servers where we have different kinds of databases. We needed different kinds of agents to be installed, and that was a bit tricky for us. I think it is not on Datadog but it is about our complex infrastructure where we have a different set of infrastructure in place, so that created a bit of trouble during the implementation.
What was our ROI?
Since using Datadog, we have seen a return on investment with a lot of savings around infrastructure monitoring, and also on the people needed to monitor overall application and infrastructure on both sides. Previously we had thirteen contractors doing the monitoring for us, which is now reduced to only five. That is a huge saving.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other options before choosing Datadog, we went with Datadog directly.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Datadog is to keep exploring the tool and utilize the different modules and the different functionalities of features Datadog offers. There are multiple features and functionalities available with the Datadog agents which are really helpful and powerful to troubleshoot, alert, and monitor both applications and infrastructure.
So far, all the features I have used in Datadog are amazing. It captures all the logging information which I have, and I can include the links of Datadog transactions on my Splunk logs. It is integrated with Splunk and other platforms, which is great.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate Datadog a nine.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Has created intuitive dashboards and streamlined monitoring across teams
What is our primary use case?
Our main use case for Datadog is collecting metrics, specifically things such as latency metrics and error metrics for our services at Procore.
To give a specific example of how I use Datadog for those metrics in my daily work, I had to create a new service to solve a particular problem, which was an API. I used Datadog to get metrics around successful requests, failure requests, and 400 requests. I then created dashboards that showed those metrics along with some latency metrics from the API, and I also built a monitor that triggers and sends an alert whenever we're over a certain number of the failure metrics.
How has it helped my organization?
The single biggest improvement has been breaking down the silos between our teams. Before we adopted it, our developers, operations, and SRE teams all lived in separate tools. Ops had their infrastructure graphs, Devs had their log files, and no one had a complete picture.
Here’s where we’ve seen the most significant impact:
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We Find and Fix Problems Drastically Faster: The "single pane of glass" is a real thing for us. When an alert fires, our on-call engineer can see the infrastructure metric spike (like CPU), pivot directly to the application traces (APM) running on that host, and see the exact, correlated logs from the services causing the problem—all in one place. We've cut our Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) significantly because we're no longer "swivel-chairing" between three different tools trying to manually line up timestamps.
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We Are More Proactive and Less Reactive: Features like Watchdog (its anomaly detection) have been crucial. We've been alerted to a slow-building memory leak and an abnormal spike in error rates on a specific API endpoint before they breached our static thresholds and caused a user-facing outage. It's helped us move from a "firefighting" culture to one where we can catch problems before they escalate.
What is most valuable?
The best features of Datadog include a great dashboard, a super simple and easy to use Python library, and an easy monitor, which together provide a really great UI experience.
What makes the dashboard and Python library stand out for me is that they save a lot of time, getting right to the point and being super intuitive.
Datadog has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to have a link to a dashboard for most services.
We have dashboards across the company, which can easily be passed around, making it super easy for everyone to understand the metrics they are looking at.
What needs improvement?
Oh, that's a great question. We actually have a running list of things we'd love to see. Even though we get a ton of value from it, no tool is perfect. Our feedback generally falls into two categories: making the current experience less painful and adding new capabilities we think are the logical next step.
Honestly, our biggest frustrations aren't about a lack of features, but about the management of the platform itself.
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Cost Predictability and Governance: This is, without a doubt, our number one issue. It's not just that Datadog is expensive—it's that the cost is incredibly complex and hard to predict. Our bill can fluctuate wildly based on custom metrics, log ingestion, and traces from a new service. We've had to dedicate engineering time just to managing our Datadog costs, creating exclusion filters, and sampling aggressively, which feels like we're being punished for using the product more.
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How to improve it: We need a "cost calculator" inside the platform. Before I enable monitoring on a new cluster or turn on a new integration, I want Datadog to give me a concrete estimate of what it will cost. We also need better built-in tools for attributing costs back to specific teams or services before the bill arrives.
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The Steep Learning Curve and UI Density: The UI is incredibly powerful, but it's dense. For a senior SRE who lives in the tool all day, it's fine. For a new engineer or a developer who only jumps in during an incident, it's overwhelming. We've seen people "click in circles" trying to find a simple stack trace that's buried three layers deep. Building a "perfect" dashboard is still too much of an art form.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadog for about five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution.
How was the initial setup?
I did not deal with any of the pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What about the implementation team?
I do not know if we purchased Datadog through the AWS Marketplace.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Datadog is to just try using it and see how easy it is to use. I found this interview great. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Datadog a 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Has improved visibility into performance metrics and helped reduce cloud spend
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Datadog is dashboards and monitoring.
We use dashboards and monitoring with Datadog to monitor the performance of our Nexus Artifactory system and make sure the services are running.
What is most valuable?
The best features Datadog offers are the dashboarding tools as well as the monitoring tools.
What I find most valuable about the dashboarding and monitoring tools in Datadog is the ease of use and simplicity of the interface.
Datadog has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to look at things such as Cloud Spend and make sure our services are running at an optimal performance level.
We have seen specific outcomes such as cost savings by utilizing the cost utilization dashboards to identify areas where we could trim our spend.
What needs improvement?
To improve Datadog, I suggest they keep doing what they're doing.
Newer features using AI to create monitors and dashboards would be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadog for six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I am not sure about Datadog's scalability.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support with Datadog has been great when we needed it.
I rate the customer support a nine on a scale of 1 to 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not previously use a different solution.
What was our ROI?
In terms of return on investment, there is a lot of time saved from using the platform.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I was not directly involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing details.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Datadog, we evaluated other options such as Splunk and Grafana.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Datadog an eight out of ten because the expense of using it keeps it from being a nine or ten.
My advice to others looking into using Datadog is to brush up on their API programming skills.
My overall rating for Datadog is eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Having connected analytics has helped troubleshoot performance issues quickly and reduce time spent switching tools
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Datadog is performance monitoring, SLOs, and SLIs.
For performance monitoring, SLOs, and SLIs, we create objectives and indicators around user feedback and stakeholder feedback. We have weekly meetings to create backlog items to work on if things have elapsed and gone into the red based on our SLO definitions.
What is most valuable?
The best features Datadog offers are the analytics that are all associated with each other. RUM data associated with APM, trace data, and all of that, including information around inferred requests, has been super useful. Machine health data gives a complete picture of performance, which has been extremely useful for troubleshooting difficult problems.
Having all that associated analytics helps me in troubleshooting by not having to bounce around to other tools, which saves me a lot of time. I know that the quality of Datadog metrics gathered is enough to where I can rule things in and out. This basically goes for any web app; when asking why a web app is slow, first you look at the code. If the code looks good, then you look at the hardware or the database. Being able to rule all of those out with one tool with one set of requests is useful.
Datadog has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to gather complete data instead of looking all over the place at incomplete data and actually make pointed determinations for fixing issues. It has helped increase efficiency and saved time.
What needs improvement?
I don't know how Datadog can be improved as they are doing a pretty good job.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadog for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Datadog's scalability is good.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is good.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is really expensive.
What was our ROI?
I have not seen a return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is really expensive.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Datadog is that it is good and they should use it.
I don't know if my company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate Datadog a 9.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Real-time insights have uncovered issues and helped reduce unnecessary resource usage
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Datadog is application and portal monitoring.
For application or portal monitoring, we have several monitors set up that give us a heads up early when we believe there's a problem with end users getting to the applications that are available to them on the portal. Just yesterday, we were able to identify an error in code that was throwing thousands of errors a day, and it was very simple for us to actually find it using Datadog analytics on the error and the Watchdog alerts.
I don't have anything else to add about my main use case, other than the ease with which we were able to identify an issue that we previously, when we didn't have Datadog, might not even be aware of, but was consuming resources that it didn't need to.
What is most valuable?
In my opinion, the best features Datadog offers are flexibility and extensive support. It can be a little overwhelming since there are so many features that come with Datadog, and I'm just scratching the surface of that. I also appreciate the support that our representative has provided to us, coming on-prem, providing training, being available to answer questions, and the extensive knowledge base documentation that I have been referred to, which has been extremely helpful also.
The flexibility I mentioned shows up in my day-to-day work because traditionally, I was using SolarWinds to monitor infrastructure health, but the polling period is lengthier than we would like to see. Datadog specifically has real-time monitoring, and the alerts that we have configured are coming to us much quicker. We're able to address an issue sooner rather than later, and when it comes to reviewing .NET code or application configuration, I only had limited visibility, but with Datadog doing the analysis of the IIS logs and any other application logs, it's also opened up visibility to me so that I can assist a developer in identifying the area of concern or where a code could be more efficiently written.
Datadog has positively impacted my organization by helping us make our web portals more efficient. Our portals and integrations are extremely complex, and as we get the agent installed on more devices, it's really provided us visibility that we haven't had in my entire career with Ace Hardware.
I cannot provide specific numbers for the improved performance, but Datadog has identified issues that we have in our data source area. We have implemented additional indexes and have plans for breaking out complex queries that are pulling data across multiple data sources. We're in the crawl, walk, run phase, so right now we're identifying and prioritizing the things that need to be fixed. A few of the things that we've already addressed include adding additional resources to servers, and we have noticed improved performance. I know someone has the statistics; I just don't have them available to me at the moment.
What needs improvement?
At this point, I'm not sure how Datadog can be improved, but maybe some initial intense training from the vendor before setting us loose with the application is the only thing I can think of.
I think it would be helpful to have an administrative page right from the portal that gives us links to the application documentation. I have separate URLs to get to the various locations that I need to go to, but unless I'm just not seeing them, I have to go to separate URLs. I cannot get to some of the documentation and various other components from my company-specific portal.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadog for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Datadog is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Other than being restricted by cost, Datadog's scalability has been a little bit of a challenge to do the initial installation of the agent. We have upgraded all of our agents so that we can do the upgrades remotely, but the initial install is still a little time-consuming and a little clunky.
How are customer service and support?
I think the customer support is great. I love the ability to send flares directly from the machine or device that's having an issue, and my tickets are always opened promptly. I usually get links to documentation about the specific feature or function that I'm trying to implement, and when I have additional questions, the ticket is updated with actual recommendations or suggestions pointing me in the correct direction.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We continue to use SolarWinds, although I can see the infrastructure monitoring component of SolarWinds being replaced with Datadog. We also used Catchpoint to run synthetic scripts from various locations throughout the country, and we use Pingdom for our e-commerce solution. We're trying to phase out Pingdom at this time with the help of Datadog engineers, and we have ceased using Catchpoint because we have created those synthetic scripts within Datadog.
What was our ROI?
At this point, I'm leaving the return on investment metrics to my manager and director. I'm just focused on getting it up and running, installed, upgraded, and helping to train other folks to use it. I know they're trying to keep metrics on all of those questions, but I'm just not focusing on that at this time.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I was not included in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing decisions, but I have needed to gain more information about licensing and individual feature cost projections. Everybody wants the agent installed, but we only have so many dollars to spread across, so it's been difficult for me to prioritize who will benefit from Datadog at this time.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We use
Azure for our hybrid cloud setup.
What other advice do I have?
I'm excited to learn more about the application and can't wait as my knowledge expands, all the exciting things that we might be able to do with the tool.
I rate Datadog an 8 out of 10, only because I haven't had the ability to explore everything that I intend to explore, and some of the more complex monitors that I want to create I'm just not able to intuitively do. But that might be on me and not the product. The complexity and my lack of knowledge related to all the features and how I can use them keep it from being a 10 for me.
I would advise others looking into using Datadog to do more training and become much more familiar with the product before going live with it. There are so many wonderful things that can be done with it that it's a little overwhelming to only attempt to configure those or investigate them when the product's already live.
I'm excited to continue to learn and explore the tool. It's giving me some insight into systems that I have not had for the past 17 years, so it's exciting to be able to see that and put it to use almost immediately.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Great Integration and Dashboards, but Pricing Is Unpredictable
What do you like best about the product?
Easy integration, power dashboards and visualization, smart alerts
What do you dislike about the product?
expensive and hard to predict cost, data retenntion and export limitation
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
1. Lack of Unified Observability
In modern environments, teams use dozens of tools—logs, metrics, traces, synthetic monitoring, network monitors, security scanners, etc.
Datadog consolidates metrics, logs, traces, security, and real-user monitoring in one place. This helps DevOps, SRE, security, and business teams collaborate with a single source of truth.
2. Troubleshooting is Hard and Slow
Distributed systems mean a single user action might trigger dozens of services.
Datadog provides distributed tracing, log correlation, and visualizations that allow you to trace requests end-to-end and pinpoint slow or broken parts of the system fast.
3. Cloud Complexity
Cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP) change constantly—instances spin up/down, containers come and go, etc.
Datadog offers real-time monitoring and auto-discovery to keep up with these ephemeral environments.
4. Siloed Teams & Tools
Dev, Ops, Security, and Business teams often use different tools and speak different "languages".
Datadog’s platform allows shared dashboards, alerts, and insights, helping teams align on problems and priorities.
5. Proactive Monitoring Instead of Reactive Firefighting
Teams often only react after customers are impacted.