The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is that you can easily determine the load on the application. You can find out how many users are using it, whether there are any response time issues, whether any errors are going high for your application's transactions, etc.
The solution's user interface should be improved. Since it's a GUI tool, traversing from the error to the root cause can sometimes be difficult if you are not thorough with AppDynamics. This could slow down the tool, thereby causing you trouble.
I have been using AppDynamics since 2016.
Most financial services sectors, such as banking and insurance sectors, use AppDynamics. The solution's user base is very high.
The solution's initial setup is moderately easy. Installing the tool on old applications like Unix and Linux should be much easier. However, there could be some issues installing the solution on the cloud. The regular pre-defined agents might not work, and you will have to customize and then use them.
AppDynamics was initially a startup. Later, it was sold to Cisco, which has been quite aggressive in its pricing. I would say the solution is affordable because it is widely used across financial service sectors.
Currently, the solution is on the cloud as well. You can have your cloud applications onboarded to AppDynamics without any issues. AppDynamics has its own SaaS environment and SaaS controller on which you can onboard your application. You will need to install some of the AppDynamics agents.
I used to contact the tools team, and they used to answer our queries mostly. If not, they used to take it to the support and then come back with their solution. Users need to list all the servers related to their application on which they want the AppDynamics agents installed. Depending on whether your application is cloud-based or non-cloud, you need to list all your servers. Then, a further installation process would be recommended.
To use AppDynamics, you need to understand the different flows. If an issue is currently ongoing, you need to check which GUI flow is being used. If you want previous data, it will be in the history, and that's a different flow. Working with the tool is tricky, but two to three weeks of continuous work on it should bring you up to date.
Suppose you are working in a bank. For your application, you can configure everything regarding the business transaction. For balance transfers, you can have one business transaction that will monitor balance transfers. There can be another business transaction that can monitor credit cards. You can configure different flows and transactions within the flows in terms of business transactions. Wherever there is an issue, that exact business transaction will start developing.
The integration of AppDynamics within our CI/CD pipeline has positively affected our deployment frequency and application quality. Whenever there is a deployment or release, we see some hiccups in AppDynamics. There will be some things going on on that server, which we can easily identify in AppDynamics. Only after we validate that do we give the next go.
Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.