IBM Instana vs. Retrace

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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)
Retrace
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Retrace (formerly APM+) is a lightweight Application Performance Management solution. Retrace gives developers continuous, real-time analysis through a combination of code-level visibility with in-line log and error data. Retrace helps identify top performance offenders by analyzing top page requests, top SQL queries, and top external web services.
$99
up to 3 servers, 500,000 traces, and 1,000,000 logs
Pricing
IBM InstanaRetrace
Editions & Modules
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)
Essentials
$99
up to 3 servers, 500,000 traces, and 1,000,000 logs
Standard
249+
2,000,000+ traces and 5,000,000+ logs
Enterprise
Custom
Customer number of traces and logs
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM InstanaRetrace
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing is based on trace and log usage.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM InstanaRetrace
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All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM InstanaRetrace
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
4.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM InstanaRetrace
Likelihood to Recommend
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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If you're a Java or .net shop they will do excellent. I believe that for PHP, Ruby, Java and few others they have only the error and log management and the application and server monitoring.
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Pros
  • 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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  • Integration of performance management with log management so you get the parameters sent
  • In-line log and error data in trace
  • Integration of error and log data, so in one click you can see all the logs recorded when an error was thrown
  • Very reasonably priced
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Cons
  • 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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  • To set up the fields that APM Plus monitors, you need to map each field area on each document.
  • APM Plus could use a way to link the documents back into the finance or business software so you can find the document under the PO, Sales Order, Invoice, etc.
  • APM Plus setup is only for the professionals. There are many areas that need tweaking on setup, having a better default setup would lessen the learning curve to set it up for use.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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No answers on this topic
Usability
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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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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APM Plus does a better job of archiving documents than DocSend and makes it easier to find the documents when you need them. DocSend seemed to be more of a marketing tool than a business tool. APM Plus is all business and consistently does what you need on a daily basis. We selected APM Plus because of the great support on setup and after implementation. They are always ready to help.
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Return on Investment
  • 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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  • APM Plus has freed up users from having to manually attach documents to each place they are sending it. APM Plus will do it automatically.
  • APM Plus provides a searchable archive to re-visit sent documents with customers and vendors. Having to reprint a document you risk the potential that something has changed since it was last printed.
  • APM Plus does need IT staff for adjustments and to review sending problems. Not for an average user.
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ScreenShots

Retrace Screenshots

Screenshot of Detailed stack trace with inline error and logsScreenshot of Web Apps Dashboard:
The Apps Page gives you a high-level overview of all applications found and monitored across all servers in each environment. Click on any app to take you to the App Dashboard to view more information for a particular app.Screenshot of Apps Dashboard:
The App Dashboard is a powerful monitoring and troubleshooting perspective that gives you a view of application health across one or more environments.Screenshot of Performance (APM+) Dashboard:
The Performance section will give you a report of how well the application is performing overall, as perceived by your users.  A graph will allow you to view all requests by Satisfaction by viewing "Fast", "Sluggish", "Too Slow", or "Failed" types of requests.  Another report includes graphs of HTTP Error%, Satisfaction Score%, and Page Load Time.  Lastly, you will have the ability to sort each page request of your App by different categories: Satisfaction, Slowest page, Failed pages, pages hit, and total load time.  By clicking on an individual page a Performance Details page with further information about that specific page's health, performance, and errors will be displayed.Screenshot of Performance Traces:
One of the ways we strive to deliver relevant insights is to only collect traces around interesting requests. Some examples of these request types that are interesting would be faster than normal, slower than normal, new web requests, requests introducing new SQL, requests introducing new exceptions, or abnormal satisfaction scores. Under performing requests will be profiled more often than fast requests. As long as the app is getting steady traffic Retrace should be saving a trace every 5 to 15 minutes.Screenshot of Errors Dashboard:
From the Errors Dashboard, you can get an overview of all the exceptions of all your applications across different environments. It gives you a central location to view details about your errors.