Reliable and Feature-Rich, But Pricey for Startups
What do you like best about the product?
reliable, feature complete, does everything you'd expect
What do you dislike about the product?
pricing can be expensive for early stage startup
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We're using a wide variety of feature flags when rolling out features. LaunchDarkly makes it easy for our teams to setup feature flags, keep track of them and clean-them up.
Effortless Feature Management and AB Testing
What do you like best about the product?
I love how LaunchDarkly allows me to experiment with different features by easily enabling and disabling them for internal users and specific customer subsets. This flexibility is crucial for our feature rollouts and AB testing. On a daily basis, I rely heavily on LaunchDarkly to manage these tasks efficiently. The tool’s intuitive nature made getting up to speed on its functionalities swift and straightforward, even without prior experience. I particularly appreciate the ease of creating and managing feature flags and the accessible audit logs, which provide clarity on changes made, both in production and preproduction environments. The platform makes rolling out new capabilities to internal users for testing a seamless process, facilitating effective initial testing before broader customer exposure. LaunchDarkly’s user-friendly design and capabilities significantly enhance my workflow, making it an indispensable part of my toolkit.
What do you dislike about the product?
I don't use the experiments feature in LaunchDarkly for A/B testing, which I think could make the process easier. While the capability might already exist, I am not aware of it. It would be beneficial if the feature to create experiments were more accessible or better highlighted.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use LaunchDarkly to easily conduct experiments, quickly roll out and test new features with internal users and customers, and toggle features for specific users. It simplifies AB testing and provides an audit log for tracking changes.
Simplifies Feature Rollouts
What do you like best about the product?
LaunchDarkly has become an essential part of our release process. It enables us to roll out features safely and control exposure across different user segments. The platform is intuitive, stable, and integrates effortlessly with our existing systems. It’s helped our team deploy updates with greater confidence and far less risk.
What do you dislike about the product?
No downsides so far. Everything functions as expected
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
LaunchDarkly helps us reduce the risk of new feature deployments by separating code pushes from feature releases. We can easily monitor performance, perform gradual rollouts, and toggle features off instantly when needed. This flexibility has improved our release speed and made experimentation much safer.
Effortless Feature Management with LaunchDarkly
What do you like best about the product?
I have been using LaunchDarkly for about seven months, primarily for feature flagging new or risky changes, and I've found it to be incredibly straightforward and not difficult to set up. LaunchDarkly effectively solves the problem of deploying new and risky changes, significantly benefiting the team by enabling us to reduce the feedback loop between development and production. I experienced first-hand the efficiency of LaunchDarkly when I was shadow testing a feature change in production and quickly toggling the feature flag helped mitigate issues immediately. The feature I find most useful is the progressive rollout, which, coupled with the ease of use, makes my work seamless. Also, the simplicity and ease-of-use are compelling reasons for me to choose LaunchDarkly again. Using it alongside Python and React has further streamlined our development processes, reflecting in the overall productivity and efficiency of my team's workflow.
What do you dislike about the product?
I would like LaunchDarkly to make it even easier to set up feature flags.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use LaunchDarkly to deploy new and risky changes, reducing feedback loops between development and production, and quickly mitigate issues with feature flags.
Very Useful and easy to use
What do you like best about the product?
Very useful, reliable, and has good tooling. being able to see history of changes, evaluations, and code references especially is very helpful.
What do you dislike about the product?
"ready for code removal" flag is confusing and not accurate.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Feature flagging a new feature while testing.
Powerful Feature Control, But UI Could Be More Intuitive
What do you like best about the product?
I really like the features that LaunchDarkly provides. It is extremely helpful when releasing a feature and we need complete control over the roll-out/ rollback.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes the UI is not the most intuitive and it feels like I need to look for certain features that previously seemed easier to find. Also, targeting users can oftentimes be difficult.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The most helpful thing is the A/B testing as it allows us to be data-driven in our approach to releasing features.
Has increased developer confidence by enabling safe production releases using targeted feature toggles
What is our primary use case?
Currently, my main use case for LaunchDarkly is as a consumer. The application that I'm using uses LaunchDarkly as feature toggles. We toggle our flags on and off depending on what environment they're in, and depending on what state of the application's development lifecycle is.
I can give a specific example of how I use LaunchDarkly for feature toggles in my application. We've got a set of features that we're keeping hidden behind a set of feature toggles, specifically based on how we're allowing users to log into our application. When the feature toggle is on, the functionality allows the user to access the new identity provider that we're using. When the feature toggle is off, it's using our old, previous functionality for our identity provider.
What is most valuable?
LaunchDarkly offers several outstanding features. There's the main functionality of LaunchDarkly, which is providing feature toggle functionality. They also provide a relay proxy, which allows us to increase performance, as well as provide functionality for our feature toggles in the event that connections to LaunchDarkly go down. Some of the more impressive and useful functionality are the targeted feature toggling, as well as different segments that allow very specific targeting of users and context, with the ability to get very granular and complex with feature toggling rules. Additional functionalities include the ability to see how feature toggles are being utilized, how often they're being evaluated, as well as a scanner that helps users determine which flags can be retired and which flags still need to be used.
These features in my current project have helped my team because they allow us to specifically target users to start turning on functionality. We can monitor the behavior and make sure that it's behaving as expected when the feature toggle is turned on, and then we can increase the usage. In previous projects, we've also used the targeting and the segments in a similar fashion, and we could target it towards both internal and external customers based on the context being passed to LaunchDarkly as it's evaluating the flags.
What needs improvement?
I wish we were using more targeting in our feature toggles and I wish we were using more feature toggles as well as feature toggle dependencies. Making one feature toggle or one set of feature toggles dependent on another one would allow us to turn them all on or turn them all off at one time.
For improvements in LaunchDarkly, managing team members and access to those team members was challenging. We could add team members through Terraform and do it programmatically, and then modify it through the user interface. However, once we started modifying things through the interface, we weren't able to go back to using any configuration programmatically for the team members. It made it challenging to orchestrate team member management. The other aspect I wasn't particularly fond of was when they started adding AI to the interface and deployment interface. It reminded me of old school wizards when installing software and simplified the interface too much, removing some of the engineering control I preferred.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using LaunchDarkly for about the last three or four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
LaunchDarkly is incredibly stable in my experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I can't say for certain about LaunchDarkly's scalability with my current organization. However, in my previous organization, it handled scaling excellently.
How are customer service and support?
I have not interacted with the customer support team at my current organization. However, at my previous organization, I interacted with them quite frequently, and they were absolutely great. They were stellar, super polite, super fast, and usually really knowledgeable.
I would rate the customer support a nine because there were a couple of times where we got handed off to junior support techs who didn't fully understand what I was asking.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not use a previous solution at either of these organizations. At my previous organization, there was a homegrown solution and by the time I left that organization, we were in the process of transitioning them from the homegrown solution to LaunchDarkly. The reason they wanted to get off of the homegrown solution was because it had become too large and too complex and too difficult to maintain.
What was our ROI?
For my current organization, I can't say one way or the other about return on investment. I've never had a challenge getting access except for team member configuration. At my previous organization, we were having issues due to licensing costs and agreements. We were eventually able to get it to a point where a very small team could administer access to LaunchDarkly for thousands of employees. The pain point of configuring the basic configuration using Terraform came into play, allowing us to hand off the management of LaunchDarkly teams to the development teams so they could handle permissions as long as we set out a set of permissions they could choose from. That made things easier. However, that's where we started experiencing the pain point of once things started getting modified through the dashboard, we couldn't get them back via Terraform.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
At my current organization, I have no experience with licensing and setup cost. However, at my previous organization, I wasn't making any decisions but got some visibility into the pricing and usage. That organization was incredibly large, and we had an incredibly high usage rate, so we were getting some custom pricing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing LaunchDarkly at my current organizations, I was not involved in those processes. For some of the smaller organizations and startups I've been working with, we have been looking at other possible solutions. Unleashed is one of them, and I think that's the one I'm leaning towards. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about their functionalities. However, they tend to come at the right price point that I need.
What other advice do I have?
If you can afford it, go for LaunchDarkly. It's a great tool. I really enjoy using it. I wish there was a lower tier for startups and small companies. On a scale of 1-10, I rate LaunchDarkly an 8.
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?
Effortless Feature Management, Strong Analytics
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate how LaunchDarkly has become an essential part of our software delivery process, allowing us to manage feature flags and perform progressive rollouts confidently. The setup process was very straightforward, with clear documentation and easy integration of SDKs. Using LaunchDarkly significantly enhances our release management and risk reduction strategies while facilitating cross-team collaboration. One of the standout benefits is the ability to roll out features gradually, test changes, and roll back instantly if needed without disrupting our customers or requiring a redeploy. I find the feature complete nature of the service for managing feature flags, along with its impressive analytics capabilities, extremely valuable. These features bolster our decision-making process, enabling us to make smarter decisions around feature availability and customer segmentation. Additionally, I find the ease of use of the platform compelling, and it significantly contributes to why I would consider buying LaunchDarkly again.
What do you dislike about the product?
I would add more capabilities to flag organization - having more filters available to keep flags organized across segments.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
LaunchDarkly helps manage releases, reduces risk, and improves collaboration. It allows gradual rollouts, instant rollbacks, and offers control over live features, enhancing decision-making with its analytics.
Effortless Setup, Exceptional Feature Flag Control
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate how LaunchDarkly provides exceptional observability around feature flags, which addresses my primary concerns by clearly showing usage metrics across various environments. This feature allows me to see the occurrence and timing of each feature flag use, offering comprehensive insights and metrics. The setup was smooth with no issues; the process involved routine tasks like whitelisting, and both the documentation and support were particularly helpful in facilitating this. The ability to set up a list of rules, such as quotas per team, adds a layer of control that I find extremely beneficial. The robust observability stack and holistic control over feature flags make LaunchDarkly a standout choice, and everything just works seamlessly, leaving no room for issues or necessary changes.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use LaunchDarkly for managing feature flags, solving observability issues and providing metrics, which streamline flag usage monitoring and team quotas setup.
Effortless Feature Flag Management, Excellent Visibility
What do you like best about the product?
I find LaunchDarkly's setup to be quite intuitive, with minimal learning curve, which made the initial experience smooth and uncomplicated. I particularly appreciate the visibility and observability features that it offers around managing feature flags. This feature is crucial as it provides insights that would otherwise require considerable effort if done directly via databases. The capability to efficiently manage feature flags stands out for me as the most valuable aspect, providing significant benefits in terms of metrics visibility and operational transparency. This aspect of observability is so impactful that it would be a deciding factor in choosing LaunchDarkly again. The overall user experience has been positive enough that I would highly recommend LaunchDarkly, rating it a 9 out of 10.
What do you dislike about the product?
None
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I find LaunchDarkly enhances our feature flag management, offering better visibility into metrics and observability.
