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Datadog vs syslog-ng 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 Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
syslog-ng
Ranking in Log Management
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Datadog is 4.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 2.0%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog4.7%
syslog-ng2.0%
Other93.3%
Log Management
 

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.
OC
IT Infrastructure & Cloud Security Manager at Thux
Has ensured compliance by centralizing log data and supporting secure connections
We currently do not use that feature. We currently have just an open-source release, not a premium release. My boss has indicated that he wants to buy a premium syslog-ng version next month. I think we can use other features of this tool in the future. In syslog-ng, I think a GUI would be beneficial. I am unsure if the premium module has a GUI to administer it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its logs are most valuable."
"With Datadog, we managed to get everyone on board into a single place and a single tool, providing teams with one spot where they can check everything related to monitoring, and enabling management and leadership to have an overview of all tools working together."
"Sometimes it's more user friendly for development teams. There are some parts of Datadog that are more understandable for development teams. For example, the APM in Datadog works more manually and works like the tools in New Relic or Grafana, or Elastic. It is easier to understand for software development teams."
"Excellent autocomplete for everything in the UI."
"Real user monitoring gives us invaluable insights into actual user experiences, helping us prioritize improvements where they matter most."
"Datadog has significantly improved our organization’s visibility into system performance and application health, and the real-time dashboards and alerting capabilities have helped our teams detect issues faster, reduce downtime, and improve response times."
"The solution's SaaS model is easy to manage and works well in single- or multi-cloud environments."
"Datadog has impacted our organization positively since we were previously using AppDynamics and then we switched to Datadog, which improved a lot in our alerting and monitoring in the infrastructure space and application space, allowing us to monitor business transactions and take proactive action before an end user reports it."
"For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior."
"What I appreciate most about syslog-ng is its configuration; its C-style config is much easier to understand, read, and write than other popular solutions such as syslog or rsyslog."
"We chose syslog-ng because it is easy to install, easy to maintain, easy to update, and due to the fact that all data arrive in raw format, we can manipulate it as we want."
"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."
"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."
"Syslog-ng provides easy access to all my logs. It helps me show managers and other clients precisely where an incident occurred. I also like it because you can integrate syslog-ng with multiple solutions to allow real-time monitoring."
"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."
 

Cons

"I'm not sure if Datadog can monitor K8s deployments in real-time. For instance, being able to see a deployment step by step visually. This would be helpful if there were any incidents during the deployment."
"Lacks some flexibility in the customization."
"The sheer amount of products that are included can be overwhelming."
"I often have issues with the UI in my browser."
"I found the documentation can sometimes be confusing."
"When it comes to storing the logs with Datadog, I'm not sure why it costs so much to store gigabytes or terabytes of information when it's a fraction of the cost to do so myself."
"A tool as powerful as Datadog is, understandably, going to have a bit of a learning curve, especially for new team members who are unfamiliar with the bevy of features it offers."
"In some cases the screenshots don't match the text as updates are made."
"In syslog-ng, I think a GUI would be beneficial. I am unsure if the premium module has a GUI to administer it."
"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."
"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."
"The filtering has room for improvement."
"It's hard to find people who know how to use syslog-ng. I often find problems with configurations, and solutions aren't integrated correctly with syslog-ng. For example, there might be data with extra decimals, or the collector agents are incorrectly named. It isn't a problem with the solution; it's a lack of professionals."
"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"​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."
"At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."
"This solution is budget friendly."
"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."
"Syslog-ng is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

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 syslog-ng?
We currently do not use that feature. We currently have just an open-source release, not a premium release. My boss has indicated that he wants to buy a premium syslog-ng version next month. I thin...
What is your primary use case for syslog-ng?
In Italy, we have to be compliant with the Garante for privacy. We have to log every login, logout, or login failure made by a system administrator. We store all syslog data of the infrastructure. ...
What advice do you have for others considering syslog-ng?
When it comes to parsing, I can parse both structured and unstructured data, though our data are only structured. Currently, we collect all data we receive as raw data. Each file is stored for each...
 

Comparisons

 

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
Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. syslog-ng and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.