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Datadog vs IBM Application Performance Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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

Datadog
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (3rd), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
IBM Application Performance...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
51st
Average Rating
6.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 7.4%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Application Performance Management is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog7.4%
IBM Application Performance Management0.5%
Other92.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer820579 - PeerSpot reviewer
Single pane of glass, easy to share dashboards, and good for monitoring
We've had some issues where we had Datadog automatically turned on in AWS regions that we weren't using, which incurred a small but steady cost that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars spent over a few weeks. I wish there was a global setting that lets an admin restrict which regions DD is turned on in as a default setup step. Sometimes, the APM service dashboard link isn't sharable. I click something in the service catalog, and on that service's APM default view, I try to share a link to that with a teammate, and they reach a blank or error screen. I wish there was more organization and detail in the suggestions when I use the query editor. I'm never quite sure when the autofill dropdown shows up if I'm seeing some custom tag or some default property, so I have to know exactly what I'm looking for in order to build a chart. It's hard to navigate and explore using the query autofill suggestions without knowing exactly what tag to look for. It's been a bit hard to understand how data gets sampled or how many data points a particular dashboard value is using. We've had questions over the RUM metrics that we see and we had to ask for help with how values are calculated, bin sizes, etc to get confidence in our data.
Daniel Tamiru - PeerSpot reviewer
A multi-functional solution but has poor stability and performance-related issues
We are using version 4 of IBM Application Performance Management, and it is deployed on-premises. We use it for internet banking and mainly for application performance on-site. For example, if we face performance-related issues in one of our software or managed services, we use this solution to…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We find they have a very helpful alert system."
"The seamless integration between Datadog and hundreds of apps makes onboarding new products and teams a breeze."
"It has empowered all our platform engineers with a very powerful and easy to use monitoring system."
"It brings in observability, monitoring, and alerting capabilities - all of which we need to operate at scale."
"It is easy to navigate the menu and create tests."
"The ability to send notifications based on metadata from the monitor is helpful."
"This is definitely a good product and I would consider them one of the leaders within the application monitoring and cloud monitoring space."
"Datadog's seamless integration with Slack and PagerDuty helped us to receive alerts right to the most common notification methods we use (our mobile devices and Slack)."
"IBM Application Performance Management helped us increased our response time by 80% and cost 60% less."
"The initial setup was straightforward and took minimal effort."
"Because we have partnerships with other partners, I can share a bit about what I've noticed with IBM APM compared to other vendor solutions. Specifically, with IBM, the visibility into detailed process information is more tangible. On the OS level, APM displays all processes (or the top 10 processes) that are consuming CPU or resident memory. This is the most important thing that is not always available with other vendors."
"I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten."
"The transaction tracking feature from IBM is the most important feature for us. It is something that provides a terrific value for us and our clients. It has a lot of data sources and agents that are collectors. It is also stable."
"The most valuable feature is the breakdown that it provides, such as a description of the fields for a particular transaction."
"It's easy to use."
 

Cons

"The real issue with this product is cost control."
"I think better access to their engineers when we have a problem could be better."
"I would like the tooling to have better integration in Slack, specifically sending out reminders to the relevant people to take breaks, do a retrospective, and specify with emojis which messages to log."
"Delta traces on the Golang profiler are extremely expensive concerning memory utilization."
"Network device and performance monitoring could be improved, as we've faced some limitations in this area."
"In some ways, the tool has a pretty steep learning curve. Discovering the various capabilities available, then learning how to utilize them for particular use cases can be challenging."
"It would be ideal if the product offered a bit more monitoring from our dashboard."
"Once agents are connected to the Datadog portal, we should be able to upgrade them quickly."
"Its web user interface is a little bit old in comparison to other solutions, such as New Relic, and it should be improved. Its scalability and technical support should also be improved. Currently, it is scalable, but only in a vertical way. They provide good technical support, but the initial steps for a new case can be improved to fasten the resolution process."
"The stability is not great and should be better."
"It's still missing some platforms. For example, if you look to applications itself, it is missing the interface."
"With APM, we noticed that the agent can cause a lot of issues for the application, making the agent very unreliable. Many issues are happening, and we've had to discuss it with support to try and get a fix. It affects application availability, and sometimes actions fail because of the agent, degrading the performance of the application."
"The demo that was provided to us is not working very well. At times, there are errors."
"Technical support can be slow and needs improvement."
"They should focus on potentially enhancing the dashboard to make it more contemporary and adding some customization options. Furthermore, there might be room for improvement in the pricing policy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"Pricing is somewhat affordable compared to other solutions but in order to really lower the costs of other products you need to plan very carefully your resources usage, otherwise, it can get expensive real quick."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"I am not satisfied with its licensing. Its payment is based on the exported data, and there was an explosion of the data for three or four weeks. My customer was not alerted, and there was no way for them to see that there has been an explosion of data. They got a big invoice for one or two months. The pricing model of Datadog is based on the data. The customer was quite surprised about not being alerted about this explosion of data. They should provide some kind of alert when there is an increase in usage."
"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"As I previously indicated, I initiated the IBM and uncovered all its elements. Consequently, I'm not inclined towards a licensing approach."
"The licensing fees can be paid every six months or on a yearly basis."
"IBM APM is one of the cheaper products on the market, while everything necessary to get started is included in the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Retailer
13%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise82
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
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 ...
What needs improvement with IBM Application Performance Management?
They should focus on potentially enhancing the dashboard to make it more contemporary and adding some customization options. Furthermore, there might be room for improvement in the pricing policy. ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Application Performance Management?
I monitor business applications for more than four end users.
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM APM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Mibtree, EatDrinkDeals.com, IT Performance Advisor
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. IBM Application Performance Management and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
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