No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
271
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (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 Splunk AppDynamics is 4.3%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk AppDynamics4.3%
CA App Synthetic Monitor0.6%
Other95.1%
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.
PK
Project Manager at AGRICULTURE SKILL COUNCIL OF INDIA (ASCI)
Unified monitoring has transformed agriculture training data into secure, actionable insights
The foundational pillars of Splunk AppDynamics are very strong, and we do not have any issues. However, there are standardization challenges with limited visibility on some parameters when the system is integrated with multiple platforms because of differing technology stacks. Many applications function on different technologies, making fetching data difficult. We have discussed this with the business team, and they have said that they will offer a standardized application architecture through which APIs can be made more stable and accommodating. We have also requested a centralized monitoring framework and network, as many clients operate out of India and have requested centralized systems for real-time performance monitoring with just one click. Improvements and enhancements are happening weekly, and there are requests for regular training and orientation. I believe those things can be incorporated, but otherwise, everything is fantastic. For the agriculture ecosystem, there are many areas in remote or rural areas where connectivity constraints are huge. Limited internet bandwidth makes real-time monitoring difficult. We have requested the team to develop a hybrid model for real-time monitoring on lower bandwidth as well. Deploying offline-first or low-bandwidth solutions would strengthen synchronization. Additionally, mobile applications for rural environments would be beneficial. In data quality and governance, sometimes the system gives duplicate records, and there is inconsistency when checking data fields. It is not frequent, but we believe a complete solution can be developed here.

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."
"In AppDynamics, everywhere I go, there's some sort of grouping and aggregation function, or there's some sort of timeline that lets me zero in more quickly on the traces that I need. They go to more pains to aggregate and bubble the important ones to the top. That removes a lot of manual work."
"The business transactions feature has helped us stay current with the trends in traffic, and we were able to separate successful transactions from non-successful transactions, such as transactions with 200 error codes and 500 error codes, which has been very beneficial to us."
"Overall, it is a very strong product, with most of the features that we need, and other than some usability improvements, I think it is a very great product."
"The most valuable feature is just the sheer visibility it gives us, especially being on the performance team."
"AppDynamics is in the middle of our monitoring environment; it is connected with all other monitoring applications and helps us to check all the errors and performance issues because all our alerts related to the performance of our website or backend applications are implemented through this, so it is one of the most important monitoring applications."
"What I like most about AppDynamics Server Monitoring is that it's easy to manipulate and easy to implement."
"Transition tracing is the most valuable is pretty easy and useful, but the user experience piece is also good."
"APM gives us easier troubleshooting and notification of issues, and we can report off of that data to show application performance improvements over time."
 

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."
"It's a very complex application, and requires almost a full-time person to be in there working on it all the time."
"The solution does not offer good scalability."
"What could be improved in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is for the synthetic jobs or synthetic agents, in particular, you can't do a lot of tests with just one agent. You have to install a lot of agents if you want to do more tests, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is that you're only able to see basic metrics in the absence of server or database visibility. For the SaaS version of AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring, my team just downloaded then installed the extension in an application in Azure to see the application on the controller, so if this can be done in the on-premise version of the solution as well, without needing to install the agent on the machine, then it would make AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring better. Currently, the .NET agent consumes the CPU or memory and clients usually raise this issue with my team, so it would be good if the on-premises version doesn't require agent installation on the machine. Another functionality I'd like to see in the next release of AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is for it to receive updates from the file config without needing to reset IIS because right now when you do a modification in IIS, you have to restart IIS. When you add a service to the agent config, you have to restart IIS. For the product server, it's not possible to reset IIS after you make changes to the config file, so if this could be improved, then it would make AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring a better solution."
"I believe they need to increase their level of visibility in the infrastructure, particularly in the infrastructure monitoring section, which currently lacks visibility."
"AppDynamics should add more features to identify in case if there is some thread waiting for something."
"The day-to-day activities should be less complicated so that anyone can manage it."
"The main concern is the extensions and their documentation, particularly for the installation of Azure app services. It is lacking some documentation, which is why we are always with the AppDynamics team for support to get the details."
"The major concern lies with reports, specifically their configurability. It's like, if I want to combine multiple reports and generate them all at once, that's not possible. Even though there's a setup for generating 25 reports, I wanted to group them all and generate them in one go, which isn't currently feasible. I have to manually run each report and set the time for it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The license fee for Application Analytics is in the range of 2.5 million over three years, with extra fees for service contingencies."
"The licensing scheme is very complex. They need to make it easier."
"The cost is prohibitive."
"AppDynamics Server Monitoring is a very expensive product, but if you negotiate well, you get value for money...My company used to make early payments toward the licensing costs of the solution, but now my company has opted for a different licensing model."
"The product is a bit expensive compared to other tools."
"There is a license for the solution and we paid approximately $2,000. There is also an additional cost above the standard license which cost us approximately $3,000."
"I would like more flexible pricing: A pay-per-use model, rather than just a fixed-price model."
"We find its pricing reasonable and competitive. After it was acquired by Cisco, we found it acceptable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business61
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise203
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?
I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need ...
What needs improvement with AppDynamics?
The solution is available at an inflated cost.
 

Also Known As

CA ASM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark
Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
Find out what your peers are saying about CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Splunk AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.