Checkmk vs Elastic Observability comparison

Checkmk and Elastic are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Checkmk is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.4, while Elastic is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.1. Checkmk holds a 4.3% mindshare in IM, compared to Elastic’s 3.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Checkmk users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Elastic users who would recommend it.

Checkmk

Read 9 Checkmk reviews

3,368 Views
298 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

Read 27 Elastic Observability reviews

4,449 Views
273 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Checkmk

Elastic Observability

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Elastic Observability and Checkmk compete in the monitoring and observability space, offering solutions for businesses looking to maximize operational efficiency. Elastic Observability may have the upper hand in providing a comprehensive toolset with extensive metrics visibility and seamless integration capabilities, while Checkmk excels in cost-effectiveness and integration with resource monitoring.

Features: Elastic Observability provides a comprehensive toolset beyond typical APM functionalities with unlimited licensing per elastic search host. It also includes notable features such as machine learning, open-source support, and offers extensive metrics visibility. Checkmk is valued for its resource monitoring and auto-discovery features, alongside integration capabilities with event management systems, making it highly suitable for complex infrastructures that require easy scalability.

Room for Improvement: Elastic Observability needs enhancements in visualization metrics and process monitoring, along with AI integration. Users seek greater automation and predictive analytics. Checkmk could improve alert handling and integration capabilities with solutions like Dynatrace. Its complexity can be a hurdle, impeding adoption and highlighting the need for a smoother onboarding experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Elastic Observability offers versatility by being deployable across on-premises, public, and hybrid cloud environments. Its technical support is generally responsive and personalized. Checkmk, typically deployed on-premises or in private cloud settings, is known for reliable technical support. Users find Checkmk straightforward but acknowledge a notable learning curve that could benefit from improved support materials.

Pricing and ROI: Elastic Observability's pricing can vary based on data volume and infrastructure size, posing challenges for startups. Despite higher costs compared to alternatives, its extensive features promise successful ROI through efficient incident management. Checkmk offers affordable pricing, valued as a good choice for enterprises due to its potential for expansion without significant cost increases. Its observable ROI appeals to budget-conscious users.

To learn more, read our detailed Checkmk vs. Elastic Observability Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Checkmk vs. Elastic Observability

May 2025

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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

Checkmk

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

13th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (8th), Server Monitoring (6th)

Elastic Observability

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

10th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), Log Management (16th), Container Monitoring (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Checkmk is 4.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Observability is 3.4%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Paolo Sala

Application performance and System monitoring at Agos

A reasonably priced tool for system and application monitoring

The main room for improvement is in the solution's presentation and the integration area. In our company, we use the integration capabilities from ServiceNow. We also have another big monitoring solution in place in our company, which is Dynatrace. At the moment, there doesn't exist an out-of-the-box integration for Dynatrace. I think that the integration and the exporting of the data collected are areas where Checkmk lacks but should try to improve the most. The only implementation of Checkmk that allows high availability is the virtual appliance that has the option for the availability of a different box. Otherwise, you have to find a way to implement it manually with some custom solution, which could be an improvement.

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Adelina Craciun

Product Owner at Swisscom

Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments

The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.

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

"Overall, from one to ten, I rate Checkmk a nine."

"We can monitor multiple sites using the product."

"The initial setup of Checkmk was easy...It is a very stable solution."

"Checkmk was built on a platform that was user-friendly, and I could build my charts easily."

"The alerting system in Checkmk really works properly."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it has a lot of different pieces, and they all work together...It is a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"Checkmk helps me compare data and foresee issues."

"I really like the auto-discovery feature."

More Checkmk pros

"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."

"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."

"I recommend Elastic Observability for its completeness of vision and wide ecosystem."

"The solution has been stable in our usage."

"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."

"Its diverse set of features available on the cloud is of significant importance."

"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."

"The architecture and system's stability are simple."

More Elastic Observability pros

Cons

"If an alert is generated for a specific pattern in the log, and if Checkmk catches that log, it will stay there even after the alert is resolved."

"The main challenge for us is that we're moving from Nagios to Checkmk, and we're still getting used to the new way of working."

"Checkmk does not allow running scripts at varying intervals."

"I think that the integration and the exporting of the data collected are areas where Checkmk lacks but should try to improve the most."

"It is easy for tech-savvy people, but newcomers might find it intimidating."

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

"In Checkmk, the documentation can probably be improved a bit more."

"Sometimes we receive alerts, and it can become annoying when you acknowledge an alert. It is very clunky when you acknowledge the alert. The process is not very intuitive, and there are instances where it feels a bit cumbersome to acknowledge an alert."

More Checkmk cons

"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."

"I am familiar with Azure Monitor, which I find more user-friendly compared to Elastic, which is a very technical tool."

"There could be more low-code features included in the product."

"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."

"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."

"Elastic Observability is reactive rather than proactive. It should act as an ITSM tool and be able to create tickets and alerts on Jira."

"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."

"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."

More Elastic Observability cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is affordable."

"Checkmk is a fairly reasonably priced solution."

"The price of Checkmk is cheaper compared to other enterprise products."

"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."

"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."

"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."

"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."

"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."

"The product is not that cheap."

"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."

"We have been using the open-source version."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Checkmk?

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it has a lot of different pieces, and they all work together...It is a very scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

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What needs improvement with Checkmk?

I will get more information about Checkmk when the proof of concept is done. It's going to be before the summer. There will be a report about the tool and a recommendation to use it. So far, it loo...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Checkmk?

Checkmk ( /products/checkmk-reviews ) is a monitoring tool, so that's what I will use it for. Right now, it's not in production, but it's in a proof of concept phase. It looks good, so probably, du...

See all answers

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

The license for Elastic Observability is the same as for other uses; you pay for Elastic, and you can use it for various cases. Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

I think they are working on the AI-based features, which are currently in technical preview. The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language. Basic searching is very e...

See all answers

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Compared 13% of the time

Dynatrace vs Elastic Observability

Compared 12% of the time

Grafana vs Elastic Observability

Compared 9% of the time

Zabbix vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Checkmk

June 2025

Download Checkmk product report

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

June 2025

Download Elastic Observability product report

Overview

Checkmk is a powerful tool for monitoring IT infrastructure, providing vital insights on servers, databases, network devices, and custom applications.

Primarily used for supervising IT infrastructure, Checkmk helps organizations ensure service availability by monitoring hosts, processes, load, storage, and network appliances. With support for both Linux and Windows environments across multiple data centers, Checkmk performs compliance checks and preserves historical data for core network devices.

What are the key features of Checkmk?

Auto-discovery: Automatically identifies new hosts and applies monitoring rules.
Custom monitoring: Enhances MySQL performance tracking.
Slack integration: Provides immediate downtime alerts.
Graphical trend analysis: Offers 400 days of trend data.
Multiple site monitoring: Ensures seamless data synchronization through task automation.
Resource and infrastructure monitoring: Configures log factors to fit budget constraints.
System metric imports: Includes servers, SQL, file systems, and application monitoring.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Time-saving: Auto-discovery and task automation streamline processes.
Proactive alerts: Immediate downtime notifications optimize response times.
Historical insights: Long-term graphical trend analysis aids strategic planning.
Cost efficiency: Resource monitoring aligned with budget constraints.

Checkmk is deployed extensively in large enterprise environments for monitoring critical infrastructure. It proves particularly useful under conditions of frequent power outages or network issues, helping maintain smooth operations. While the alert acknowledgment process and interface require improvements, and the lack of an agent-less platform complicates server management, the strengths in auto-discovery, integration, and comprehensive monitoring make Checkmk a strong contender for IT infrastructure monitoring.

Checkmk

Elastic Observability is primarily used for monitoring login events, application performance, and infrastructure, supporting significant data volumes through features like log aggregation, centralized logging, and system metric analysis.

Elastic Observability employs Elastic APM for performance and latency analysis, significantly aiding business KPIs and technical stability. It is popular among users for system and server monitoring, capacity planning, cyber security, and managing data pipelines. With the integration of Kibana, it offers robust visualization, reporting, and incident response capabilities through rapid log searches while supporting machine learning and hybrid cloud environments.

What are Elastic Observability's key features?

Economic licensing: Offers cost-effective plans.
Extensive metrics tracking: Helps in comprehensive system monitoring.
Comprehensive logging: Centralizes log data efficiently.
Performance Monitoring: Provides robust APM capabilities.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other solutions.
Kibana visualization: Facilitates data visualization and reporting.
Machine learning support: Enables advanced data analysis.
Flexible deployment: Supports various deployment environments.
Rapid log searches: Enhances quick incident response.
Accessibility: Offers extensive online documentation and connector support.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in Elastic Observability reviews?

Stability: Look for consistent performance and reliability.
Compliance: Effective monitoring aids in regulation adherence.
System Security: Enhanced system monitoring and alert management.
Cost-Effectiveness: Evaluate the economic pricing models.
Scalability: Adequate scalability options for growing needs.

Companies in technology, finance, healthcare, and other industries implement Elastic Observability for tailored monitoring solutions. They find its integration with existing systems useful for maintaining operation efficiency and security, particularly valuing the visualization capabilities through Kibana to monitor KPIs and improve incident response times.

Elastic

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

Buyer's Guide

Checkmk vs. Elastic Observability

May 2025

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