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Elastic Observability vs Zenoss Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
15th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
5th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (11th), Log Management (15th)
Zenoss Cloud
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
54th
Ranking in Container Monitoring
8th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
42nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (21st), Event Monitoring (13th), Network Monitoring Software (70th), Server Monitoring (26th), AIOps (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 1.4%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Observability1.4%
Zenoss Cloud1.1%
Other97.5%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities
In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.
ClaudiaChen - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect - Senior Technology Architect at Telstra
Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features
As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"The product has connectors to many services."
"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."
"It has always been a stable solution."
"I found Elk to be excellent for log analytics, security analytics, application code-level analytics, collaboration with DevOps teams, CI/CD, microservices, and Kubernetes, specifically cloud-native or cloud-specific tasks."
"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."
"The most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities."
"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."
"It's easy to use."
"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."
"Overall, it's a great solution, and I consider it to be one of the best."
"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past."
"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."
"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."
 

Cons

"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."
"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."
"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."
"I would have preferred built-in tools to manage the indexes on deployment for better visual representation, as the initial feedback regarding system performance and data storage was fairly primitive and lacking."
"The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language."
"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. The administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex."
"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"
"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."
"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"The product is not that cheap."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"It depends on the customer, what he wants."
"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."
"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Transportation Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...
What is your primary use case for Elastic Observability?
My use case for Elastic Observability is observability, as we upload our customers' data, including logs, and when there is an issue, we can analyze what went wrong.
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a large-scale company is Zenoss, due to its ability to monitor completely hybrid and a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Zenoss Cloud and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.