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CA App Synthetic Monitor vs Dynatrace comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
359
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (3rd)
 

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 Dynatrace is 5.3%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dynatrace5.3%
CA App Synthetic Monitor0.6%
Other94.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2286675 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Each had strengths in one area or another, but CA covered the majority of our needs end-to-end."
"From our experience, it really helps managers in measuring application SLAs and viewing historical performance data."
"Dynatrace has designed its agents to capture limited stack traces for each transaction executed."
"We got to know which modules of my application are used more by the customers, as well as which modules of my application are very slow, and using this tool I got to know even before the customer told me that a particular module was not working, so when the alert came we resolved the issue proactively and the customer's satisfaction improved overall."
"Dynatrace provide us the in-depth details to know what is wrong in the application and what are performance issues, then really quickly we are able to debug any performance issues or any other performance-related issues."
"It is really comfortable and easy to use for application monitoring. We are able to see and go deep into the problem. We didn't have any issues with this product."
"It's given us a lot better insight into how our application performs."
"As compared to New Relic and other providers, it is more expensive, which is its biggest disadvantage, but its biggest advantage is its capability because it is more feature-rich."
"The best feature of the product for me is the real troubleshooting capability through the PurePath analysis."
"It saves your reputation once you have a product out there in the market and what you are doing to keep it up and running."
 

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."
"They could increase the restrictions available for user-based roles."
"Dashboards are too clumsy, so it is good to keep less on dashboards and be easier to find the sections."
"Needs a greater meta data capture."
"Generally their support is pretty good, but on occasion you can tell you get someone "new", in which you know more than they do."
"Dynatrace has been difficult to set up and use to diagnose problems in the past due to the complex nature of the tool."
"It needs education and training to ensure you get the full value of your purchase. Maybe add in a certification for Dynatrace."
"It needs more dashboards like AppMon."
"The reporting could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"As compared to New Relic and other providers, it is more expensive, which is its biggest disadvantage. Its biggest advantage is its capability. It is more feature-rich."
"Always gives good ROI and total cost of ownership."
"The limitations I see are more to do - and maybe it's because of the nature of the job I have - but they have to do with pricing. It's a little bit pricey. It's a very good tool. It's worth the price, to a certain degree. But it's hard to justify when it's that costly."
"The pricing is a little high, but still cheaper than competitors because Dynatrace at least has pay-as-you-go. Others do not. However, the pricing is confusing. I wish it was more simplified when trying to price out moving to a yearly contract."
"We asked for a three-year license, and the price was quite good."
"I think the pricing is at a fair value for what it is."
"Dynatrace is an expensive solution."
"The pricing and licensing are very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise299
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
 

Also Known As

CA ASM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark
Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Find out what your peers are saying about CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Dynatrace and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.