8 Dynatrace Alternatives to Consider in 2021

Everywhere you look, you see something to do with software and applications. But for all this software to work well, the people behind them have to know how they work.

For a software developer, this comes as no surprise. They need to know how their code is working when deployed. Before the software deploys, they want to iron out errors, so they don’t become problematic and frustrate customers. While software developers can spend time manually going over the code they have written, a better option would be to employ the help of an Application Performance Management (APM) tool. 

The insights an APM provides into the software’s performance highlight what the end-users experience is and how they respond. Thus, businesses should have such a tool in their arsenal. 

This article discusses Dynatrace and the alternative APM tools so that you can have an overview of the solutions available to help you decide which is best for your needs. Let’s first get familiar with Dynatrace. 

What is Dynatrace?

Dynatrace is an APM tool provider. The platform is an all-in-one software intelligence tool so that an organization can improve performance. 

They support software companies to maneuver through complex cloud solutions. It visualizes the data so that Dynatrace users can work out where the issues are, where potential issues can arise, and what to fix. 

What is Dynatrace used for?

Dynatrace’s Software Intelligence Platform employs artificial intelligence to help developers monitor their applications’ performances. Three concepts support the way it works:

Why Switch from Dynatrace?

Despite all the great things, there are still areas for improvement for Dynatrace. You should be aware enough of why it could be disadvantageous to use this tool. Before we delve into alternatives, here are some of the reasons why you would either choose to switch from Dynatrace or not choose it to begin with:

Dynatrace Competitors: Comparing Features 

While Dynatrace provides a lot of features that support development teams, there are options that businesses should explore before committing to a tool that they would be committing to. Here are eight popular alternatives to Dynatrace that you can consider.

Scout APM

A developer’s best friend, Scout APM is all about providing a user-friendly platform for developers. It helps developers troubleshoot issues and fix issues proactively. It also identifies issues automatically and shows real-time regressions. It prioritizes problems so developers get all the relevant information they need and none of the data they don’t. Scout APM usually is used by small to medium-sized DevOps teams.  

Features

Scout APM features are as follows: 

AppDynamics

Cisco’s APM, AppDynamics, is a proactive performance monitoring platform that ensures success for its users, primarily businesses. They focus on observability of the software and application. AppDynamics uses AI-powered insights and focuses on visibility to support application improvement and business performance for their applications. 

Features

Features of AppDynamics are as follows:

Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic is an APM platform that promises faster troubleshooting with integrated logs, metrics, and traces. It focuses on cloud operations and providing analytics to support developers. It has multi-cloud support with over 150 apps that you can integrate with your work. It promises security, scalability, reliability, and performance by ensuring that data is unlimited for your company. 

Features

Features of Sumo Logic include: 

DataDog

DataDog is an APM service that helps monitor cloud-scale applications. The platform is used by developers of various IT and DevOps teams. With the help of DataDog, users can view servers, clouds, metrics, apps, and teams as well as view, manage and keep track of all databases. 

Features

DataDog has the following features:

New Relic

To build better software, New Relic supports many developers and companies. It is flexible and dynamic so that everything is in one place. It ensures that its users can respond faster, optimize better and build better software. The whole point is to support developers by providing all kinds of information that they will need.  

Features

There are three major features for New Relic:

SolarWinds AppOptics

Development teams can rely on SolarWinds to provide many tools to support them. AppOptics is one of the services and tools, which is an APM tool. It is SaaS-based and focused on hybrid and cloud-native IT environments. 

Features

Features of SolarWinds AppOptics are as follows:

Splunk

Splunk provides a platform which it self describes as Data-to-Everything. With the one platform to rule them all, this service offers a scalable and reliable data platform to understand your data and help you act on the data. Its modern data platform helps IT, Security, and DevOps professionals ingest data from any source available so that you can monitor, investigate and analyze it. 

Features

LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor is a massive proponent of hybrid IT. It is extensible and secure infrastructure monitoring on a single platform. With over 2,000 integrations available, it is a powerful package with many features that support configuration monitoring and AIOps early warning systems. 

Features

Features available for LogicMonitor:

What to Look for in an APM Solution

An APM solution is an excellent support infrastructure for developers and software companies. The biggest reason for that is that it helps them focus more on creating code and informing them of any issues. This will help them make sure that they can produce software or an application that is not only focused on user experience but will also be free of foreseeable issues. The more relevant and clear information and data collection the APM tool does the better prepared the team will be.

All stages of the development life cycle use APMs, to help rid as many errors as possible before the product is released, ensuring high project quality. Once released, if any other issues arise, development teams can quickly work on the issue through its alerts before the customers notice. One key way of maintaining customers is to make sure that they enjoy using the app and get what they expected. 

In this article, you’ve seen the different types of APM tools available in the market. Each of them provides similar services, but each with its own unique spin and features. If you want to know how to choose an APM tool, here is a list of things you should keep an eye out for. 

  1. Supported Languages: Know what languages the APM supports. Although many APMs support popular languages, it is still essential to see if the APM you are signing up for will benefit you or not. 
  2. Cloud or Server Support: Know whether the solution offers cloud or on-location server support. 
  3. Reporting and Data Collection: What kind of reporting does the APM provide? By default, many APM tools provide generic reports for almost everything, so you want to look for a tool that allows you to organize and filter extraneous data. You also want to know how much detail the reports provide. 
  4. Automation: How automated is the APM tool? Automation should help you reduce your development to deployment time significantly. It should also immediately alert you when it finds an issue in your code or when there is a need for maintenance. 
  5. Security and Support: Since this is all about creating a product for your development team, you want to ensure that it is secure so that no ill-intended third party can affect your work. You also want to know how supportive the APM tool developers are in case there are issues. Many of the tools will offer better security and better support for higher payment tiers (except for Scout APM, which offers the same top-tier level of support for all its users), so this is something you want to consider as well. 

At the end of the day, when selecting your APM tool, you want to be assured it will help you. After all, you are making an investment and banking on it to support you. You want the tool to help make developing an application or software as easy as possible. A good idea is to try the free trial version and contact the APM tool providers to understand their features and services better. Some of the providers also provide training to make things easy for your organization. So before you make your decision and commit, make sure you have your grounds covered. 

Final Words

APM tools are a developing team’s best friend. To help you decide which APM you should use, we spoke about Dynatrace alternatives, like Scout APM, to provide you with a more exhaustive knowledge of the kind of tools available in the market.