CA App Synthetic Monitor vs Datadog comparison

Broadcom and Datadog are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Broadcom is ranked #69, while Datadog is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Broadcom holds a 0.6% mindshare in APM, compared to Datadog’s 4.6% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Datadog users who would recommend it.

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Read 3 CA App Synthetic Monitor reviews

1,330 Views
1,317 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

Datadog

Read 211 Datadog reviews

36,582 Views
17,559 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Datadog

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Datadog and CA App Synthetic Monitor are products in the IT monitoring space. Data comparisons suggest Datadog has the upper hand with its feature set and support, while CA App Synthetic Monitor excels in synthetic monitoring capabilities.

Features: Datadog provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities, real-time analytics, and flexible integration options. CA App Synthetic Monitor offers specialized synthetic transaction monitoring, ideal for performance tracking and uptime measurement, focusing on synthetic monitoring needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Datadog enables straightforward cloud integration with extensive customer support. CA App Synthetic Monitor allows easy setup with limited management for complex environments, providing straightforward albeit somewhat limited deployment options.

Pricing and ROI: Datadog offers a flexible pricing model with moderate setup costs, suitable for businesses seeking comprehensive monitoring. CA App Synthetic Monitor, with higher initial costs, provides notable ROI for synthetic monitoring-focused organizations. Datadog delivers broader value across functionalities, and CA App Synthetic Monitor justifies its price with dedicated capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Datadog Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Datadog

June 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

69th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Datadog

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

211

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of CA App Synthetic Monitor is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 4.6%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Datadog	4.6%
CA App Synthetic Monitor	0.6%
Other	94.8%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

reviewer2286675

System Administrator at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

A reliable solution for SSL offloading and to encrypt outside traffic

If you are responsible for monitoring the logs in F5, it isn't very easy. The format is complicated compared to different vendors. For example, Fortinet and Cisco have feasible formats for sending and fetching logs. Suppose I'm monitoring the logs and everything, and when I am retrieving logs from F5, I want to know whether it is regular traffic or any abnormality is happening. The logs itself is not user-friendly. It may not give you a clear way of what's happening. You have to go through different websites and work on it. You have to waste so much time on it.

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Dhroov Patel

Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger

Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling

Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"From our experience, it really helps managers in measuring application SLAs and viewing historical performance data."

"Each had strengths in one area or another, but CA covered the majority of our needs end-to-end."

"The greatest value is integrated monitoring as it is able to quickly detect issues and improve our time to market."

"The most useful feature is the APM."

"Datadog's ability to group and visualize the servers and the data makes it relatively easy for the root cause analysis."

"Give it a try. It is a good tool for creating statistics and analytics with data."

"Datadog has positively impacted my organization by allowing for a more proactive response to issues whenever they occur."

"The biggest thing I liked was the combination of all the things - monitoring, log aggregation, and profiling."

"When I reflect on the ways we used to track down issues, I can't imagine how we ever managed before Datadog."

"Datadog has positively impacted my organization by making finding and resolving issues a lot easier and efficient."

More Datadog pros

Cons

"Pricing makes little sense. We had examples where it would be cheaper to have two basic accounts than one intermediate."

"The RBMS component is limited as you can only record using Internet Explorer."

"We have recently had a number of issues with stability and delays on logging, monitoring, metric evaluation, and alerts."

"One area where Datadog can be improved is around alert quality. In the beginning, it tends to generate many alerts, and without proper tuning, many of them are not actionable."

"Graph filters for logs need to be set manually which works well for JSON but not for unstructured logs."

"The incident management beta looks promising, but it is still missing the ability to automatically create incidents based on certain alerts."

"It would be nice to be able to graph metrics by excluding certain tags (like you can do in monitors)."

"Billing should be more transparent."

"Datadog probably didn't save me a ton of time because there are so many replay videos that I had to sort through in order to find the particular sales reps that I'm looking for for our beta test group."

"I'd rate Datadog support four out of 10. It was primarily an issue with support in the Asia-Pacific region."

More Datadog cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."

"Pricing seems reasonable. It depends on the size of your organization, the size of your infrastructure, and what portion of your overall business costs go toward infrastructure."

"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."

"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."

"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."

"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."

"Pricing and licensing are reasonable for what they give you. You get the first five hosts free, which is fun to play around with. Then it's about four dollars a month per host, which is very affordable for what you get out of it. We have a lot of hosts that we put a lot of custom metrics into, and every host gives you an allowance for the number of custom metrics."

"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."

More Datadog pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	82
Midsize Enterprise	49
Large Enterprise	100

Questions from the Community

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Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...

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Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Datadog

Compared 2% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Datadog

Compared 2% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Datadog

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

May 2026

Download CA App Synthetic Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Datadog

June 2026

Download Datadog product report

Also Known As

CA ASM

No data available

Overview

CA App Synthetic Monitor provides proactive monitoring of web applications and services to ensure performance and availability. It allows businesses to identify and resolve problems before they impact users.

By simulating user interactions and analyzing application performance, CA App Synthetic Monitor enables businesses to maintain optimal service levels. This cloud-based solution offers a comprehensive view of application health through real-time monitoring and alerts, facilitating quick identification of performance bottlenecks and outages. It helps IT teams enhance user experience by predicting potential issues and optimizing resource allocation. Its flexibility and scalability cater to a range of business needs.

What are key features of CA App Synthetic Monitor?

Real-Time Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of web applications to detect issues quickly.
Global Reach: Simulate user transactions from multiple locations worldwide.
Custom Alerts: Set up customized alerts for specific performance thresholds.
Detailed Reporting: Access in-depth analysis of application performance metrics.
Scalability: Easily scalable to match growing business demands.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Improved User Experience: By identifying issues early, end-users encounter fewer disruptions.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces downtime-related costs through early detection and resolution.
Enhanced Reliability: Ensures application reliability and reduces service outages.
Time Saving: Automates performance checks to save time for IT teams.

Industries such as e-commerce, finance, and IT services implement CA App Synthetic Monitor to ensure their software systems remain performant under various conditions. For e-commerce, it assures checkout processes run smoothly. Financial sectors use it to guarantee secure and reliable transaction handling. IT services leverage its capabilities to maintain service level agreements, ensuring customer satisfaction in digital interactions.

Broadcom

Datadog integrates extensive monitoring solutions with features like customizable dashboards and real-time alerting, supporting efficient system management. Its seamless integration capabilities with tools like AWS and Slack make it a critical part of cloud infrastructure monitoring.

Datadog offers centralized logging and monitoring, making troubleshooting fast and efficient. It facilitates performance tracking in cloud environments such as AWS and Azure, utilizing tools like EC2 and APM for service management. Custom metrics and alerts improve the ability to respond to issues swiftly, while real-time tools enhance system responsiveness. However, users express the need for improved query performance, a more intuitive UI, and increased integration capabilities. Concerns about the pricing model's complexity have led to calls for greater transparency and control, and additional advanced customization options are sought. Datadog's implementation requires attention to these aspects, with enhanced documentation and onboarding recommended to reduce the learning curve.

What are Datadog's Key Features?

Sharable Dashboards: Facilitate collaboration with customizable, intuitive dashboards.
Extensive Integrations: Seamlessly connects with tools like Slack and AWS to support workflows.
APM and RUM: Provides deep insights into application performance and user interactions.
Real-Time Tools: Enables agile responses to system issues with real-time monitoring.
Unified Tagging and Visualization: Eases management of complex systems with simplified visualization.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Look For?

Efficient Troubleshooting: Centralized logging speeds up the identification and resolution of issues.
Streamlined Workflows: Integrations with popular tools enhance operational efficiency.
Improved Observability: Comprehensive monitoring improves system reliability and performance.
Resource Optimization: Efficient microservices and container management leads to better cloud resource utilization.
Responsive Alerts: Customizable alerts ensure timely identification of critical issues.

In industries like finance and technology, Datadog is implemented for its monitoring capabilities across cloud architectures. Its ability to aggregate logs and provide a unified view enhances reliability in environments demanding high performance. By leveraging real-time insights and integration with platforms like AWS and Azure, organizations in these sectors efficiently manage their cloud infrastructures, ensuring optimal performance and proactive issue resolution.

Datadog

Sample Customers

Lexmark

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's

Buyer's Guide

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Datadog

June 2026

Free Report: CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Datadog

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