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Dynatrace vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
349
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (11th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (3rd)
ServiceNow Cloud Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
39th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 10.2%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a comprehensive view by integrating with other monitoring systems
There may be an issue since there are many tools like Splunk involved in network monitoring. From an IP perspective, Dynatrace is performing well. If they want to develop in network monitoring, they can, as it's part of their product line. It's not rocketry, so they can accomplish it. If I, as an SI, look at it from an enterprise perspective, considering the cost from the client, I prefer not to go with multiple systems, as they don't provide a complete 360-degree view. They need to improve on claims about being an enterprise system. The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.
Prashant-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides effective observability and offers robust alerting and monitoring capabilities
We use some SDK to integrate like tips in our code, in our Java code or whatever code, rightly, Skylight or whatever. So, the SDK that we use is not very easy to get a hold of. So, a person who is more experienced is able to write proper code so that an operation can have an operation name to set. So, SDK would be improved for developers so that the integration and code will get easier. The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement. Currently, what happens is, suppose in a stream, we have lots of spans. So if there is something I can filter, for example, in a single trace, there are ten calls with it. And if I have to filter, I have to go inside the individual trace to get the call. In future releases, I want to see if it is possible to filter them at a very high stream level. So, for example, I want to filter the calls only from service A, ten calls, and I want to filter only two calls out of ten. So, instead of doing that filter at the trace level, can I do it at a stream level.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dynatrace alerts are based off of deviations from baseline metrics, which it is constantly collecting."
"Dynatrace's documentation is great. I love the university."
"The most valuable features are the UEM (User Experience Monitoring) and the DEM (Digital Experience Management)."
"Dynatrace is a powerful tool for full stack monitoring with APM capabilities and AI root cause problem analysis. This helps our customers with their digital transformation and gaining insight into their infrastructure."
"Quick root cause analysis"
"One of the most valuable features of Dynatrace is that it offers good visibility. It's better than other APM tools. You're not required to use a different technology when you have Dynatrace because it will work whether you're hosting it on Windows or Linux."
"It is a 100 percent stable solution...Dynatrace is a highly scalable product since it is a SaaS-based application."
"Provides more visibility into applications."
"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."
"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."
"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."
"The UI is very intuitive."
 

Cons

"It's not really user friendly. You need to go through a certain type of training."
"As the product is evolving quickly and product features are added on a monthly basis, a more transparent roadmap would be more than welcome."
"With Dynatrace in our environment, the managed server required root access to run. As a government agency with tight security, this has been an audit concern for us."
"Dashboards and monitoring capabilities can be improved for monitoring applications in Azure. In Azure, it would be cool to be able to monitor network consumption as well as flow communication."
"Needs more compatibility of platforms out-of-the-box."
"We found it was quite challenging in terms of the learning curve."
"I would like to see the ability to pull more user-friendly reports."
"One thing that would help it tighter integration with DCRUM. It's somewhat difficult to drill down and see everything, but I think that's in the future versions. We just haven't seen that yet."
"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."
"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."
"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."
"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You get a really well-planned out monitoring suite for the money spent."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was a pretty straightforward process. We had no hiccups."
"While it is quite good in respect to its functionality, there are few area in regards to pricing that they can look at how to possibly change. I have heard it's costly."
"The limitations I see are more to do - and maybe it's because of the nature of the job I have - but they have to do with pricing. It's a little bit pricey. It's a very good tool. It's worth the price, to a certain degree. But it's hard to justify when it's that costly."
"The setup costs for Dynatrace are low, however licensing costs are high."
"Its licensing is complicated or not transparent."
"There are additional Professional Services costs which ensure the solution is configured with meaningful names so you're getting the most money for your investment."
"Just go with Dynatrace. Just start with Dynatrace. Do not go into AppMon. Start with Dynatrace, because AppMon is going to give you so much extra stuff that 99% of your user base will not need it, including yourself."
"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
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...
What needs improvement with LightStep?
There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.
What is your primary use case for LightStep?
I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...
 

Also Known As

No data available
LightStep
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.