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Datadog vs Riverbed NPM+ 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 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), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (4th), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
Riverbed NPM+
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
41st
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
28th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Riverbed NPM+ is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.6%
Riverbed NPM+0.5%
Other96.9%
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.
SK
Senior Technical Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Provides deep packet visibility for tracing failed transactions and helps improve enterprise-level monitoring
Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution. Additionally, within Riverbed Portal, there is an Application Map module that could be improved. It can show the application's architecture and connectivity to the network. The applications map feature needs enhancements for better customization since currently, it is quite limited. The enhancements I recommend are not for the entire Riverbed product suite, but specifically for the application map feature within the Portal of Riverbed NPM+. This Portal is one of the dashboard modules and while there is potential for improvement, it must be enhanced significantly to provide better functionality. Currently, you cannot trace by transaction number alone; knowing the source and destination IP is necessary. For instance, if I transfer money and a transaction fails, tracing that transaction ID is not captured in AppResponse. I have raised this concern, and if this feature is implemented, it would greatly benefit banking customers, especially because it is not available with their competitors either.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Datadog provides tracing and logging, whereas Dynatrace focuses on tracing, and Splunk is more of a logging tool. Datadog's advantage is that we don't need two tools."
"We have found that we're able to get in and out of troubleshooting issues much more rapidly, which in turn, of course, enables us to spend more time on our products."
"The solution is useful for monitoring logs."
"We have been able to be a more confident, knowledgeable, and capable team when everything is being ported into a centralized format."
"The product has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc."
"The best way it has helped us is by consolidating all our logs into a single place and making it easier to find errors."
"The ability to send notifications based on metadata from the monitor is helpful."
"The ability to easily drill down into log queries quickly and efficiently has helped us to resolve several critical incidents so far this year, and we heavily rely on a series of dashboards showing us various queues and load on CPU and memory for servers."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
"Alluvio Network Performance Management is good for troubleshooting."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
"Riverbed NPM+ provides a holistic view of the network and deeper insights into traffic and packet analysis."
 

Cons

"When the logs are too big, and Datadog splits them, the JSON format breaks and it is not so useful for us."
"Delta traces on the Golang profiler are extremely expensive concerning memory utilization."
"While the UI and search functionality are excellent, further improvement could be made in the querying of logs by offering more advanced templates or suggestions based on common use cases."
"We need a lot of modules since we collect all data logs from all operating systems."
"For specialized support, it feels like you're under-staffed, having to wait days/weeks for a solution is a big NO-NO."
"The user interface is okay, but sometimes cost is the issue because for logging, I had to actually trim down my logs because the cost is too much."
"The product could do better with its notifications."
"The cost is pretty high."
"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."
"Currently, you cannot trace by transaction number alone; knowing the source and destination IP is necessary."
"Alluvio Network Performance Management is good for troubleshooting."
"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."
"Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."
"This solution is budget friendly."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"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."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."
"The tool's pricing is high and I would rate it one out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Healthcare Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
No data available
 

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 Alluvio Network Performance Management?
The pricing of Riverbed NPM+ is indeed high, particularly as I work with enterprises in the banking sector primarily in India and the Middle East, and I have also interacted with clients in Europe....
What needs improvement with Alluvio Network Performance Management?
Many improvements are needed for Riverbed NPM+, particularly in NetIM, which does not perform as well as SolarWinds' single module NPM solution. Additionally, within Riverbed Portal, there is an Ap...
What is your primary use case for Alluvio Network Performance Management?
Riverbed NPM+ has many primary use cases, making this NPM solution totally different from other tools like SolarWinds. They have a solution called AppResponse, which is not an agent-based solution ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Alluvio Network Performance Management
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Riverbed NPM+ and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.