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Datadog vs Icinga comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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

Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
26th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
30th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
24th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.6%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.5%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.6%
Icinga1.5%
Other95.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Net Consulting
A stable, scalable and cost-effective solution that helps with inbuilt scripts for easy modification
I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has turned into an operational dashboard. If you felt something is going wrong, you can immediately open up Datadog. It has been our go to application because we know the answer will be there."
"Overall, the Data UI and the usability of customer features continue to improve."
"We like the distributed tracing and flame graphs for debugging. This has been invaluable for us during periods of high traffic or red alert conditions."
"The real-time data helps us make informed decisions and optimize our operations, ultimately enhancing our overall efficiency and performance."
"The integration into AWS is key as well as our software is currently bound to AWS."
"Since using Datadog, it has positively impacted our organization by giving us a one-stop shop for multiple applications and services that we can analyze in one spot."
"We can handle debugging and find out why things are breaking in our applications."
"Thanks to frequent concurrent deployments, the DataDog alerts monitors allow us quickly detect issues if anything occurs."
"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated."
"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
 

Cons

"The correlation between the logs and the metrics needs improvement as most cases, we might use another logging tool (that is cheaper in cost) which we then have to link together."
"More helpful log search keywords/tips would be helpful in improving Datadog's log dashboard."
"Network device and performance monitoring could be improved, as we've faced some limitations in this area."
"Sometimes it’s difficult to customize certain queries to find specific things, specifically with the logging solution."
"The pricing model can be quite complex and might benefit from more flexible options tailored to different organizational needs."
"The ability to find what you are looking for when starting out could be improved."
"The cost does add up quickly, so it can be some effort to justify the necessary outlay to those paying the bills."
"Presently, the billing CSV reports provide insights into billing-related information yet are somewhat limited in functionality, typically offering reports with only three columns."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."
"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."
"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 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."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"​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 free to use."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"The solution is cheap."
"It's an open-source solution."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?
It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...
What needs improvement with Icinga?
There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...
What is your primary use case for Icinga?
We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Icinga Cloud Monitoring
 

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
Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Icinga and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.