Elastic Observability vs. IBM Instana

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Elastic Observability
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Elastic Observability, from Elastic, the makers of Elasticsearch, is a solution that aims to bring logs, metrics, and APM based on the former Opbeat (acquired by Elastic in 2017) traces together at scale in a single stack so users can monitor and react to events happening anywhere in an IT environment. It's free and open to start, and adds the Logs, Metrics, APM (formerly Opbeat), and Uptime modules to the Elastic (ELK) Stack.N/A
IBM Instana
Score 8.0 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.
$18
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Pricing
Elastic ObservabilityIBM Instana
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essentials
$18
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)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Elastic ObservabilityIBM Instana
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Elastic ObservabilityIBM Instana
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Elastic ObservabilityIBM Instana
Small Businesses
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Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Sumo Logic
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.2 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Elastic ObservabilityIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Elastic ObservabilityIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
Great platform for managing application and server logs at a large scale. Elasticsearch can be integrated into 3rd-party software. For example, when combined with Kibana, beats, and logstash to build a full ELK stack it is very powerful and extremely useful for log evaluation, analysis showing detailed information, and creating a monitoring system.
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With enterprise IT assets in a multitude of ecosystems, cloud infrastructures and sometimes still left stuck in a legacy on prem architecture, IBM Instana makes it easy to get the right data to drive development and / or DevSecOps processes with tangible input from the target environment itself.
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Pros
  • Licensing model is fair compared with other vendors that charge much more
  • Ability to scale and ingest a lot of data without having to worry too much about performance issues that may crop up
  • Searches return very fast
  • GUI searching interface and filters are intuitive and suitable for new users
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  • 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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Cons
  • User Interface.
  • Dashboarding.
  • Charting issues.
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  • 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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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
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
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Usability
No answers on this topic
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.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
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
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Alternatives Considered
Elastic observability has a lot of features and good customer support. And Overall cost is good. Product functionality and performance are good but have some charting issues. But it is good. Elastic observability has a product roadmap and future vision. And it also has a good and strong user community with a lot of people engaging with good customer support for all needs.
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As a DevOps engineer, I've explored various Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools, including New Relic for real-time insights, AppDynamics for code-level visibility, Dynatrace for AI-driven monitoring, Datadog for comprehensive observability, Splunk for log management, Stackify Retrace for error tracking, and Raygun for crash reporting. Each tool offers distinct features, and the choice depends on specific use cases, technology stacks, and organizational needs. Thorough evaluations, considering factors like ease of use, integration capabilities, and scalability, help in selecting the most suitable APM solution for effective application monitoring in a DevOps environment.
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Return on Investment
  • Flexibility to store, search and aggregate any type of data, regardless of data source.
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  • Let's me monitor and pinpoint issues across multiple critical systems and applications that work in tandem, reducing drastically, the time in identifying root cause and solving the issues.
  • Let's me deep dive into issues found with a lot of detailed information about particular requests , and find proper solutions by my own research or even with Gen AI assistant using Watson.x or you could prompt your AI solution of choice as well.
  • All systems fail at some point, so IBM Instana gives stakeholders ease that large complex and critical systems that affect the very livelihood of people is being observed with pinpoint precision and that issues are addressed promptly and with compass pointing north towards the problem's root cause and solutions.
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ScreenShots