Is DataDog Worth the Investment? My Experience So Far

Sam Richards

I’ve been exploring DataDog for a while now, and my initial excitement has somewhat waned. At first glance, DataDog seemed like the perfect all-in-one solution for observability, but after some hands-on experience, I’m left feeling a bit underwhelmed. While there are features I appreciate, I’m questioning whether the platform truly delivers value for the cost.

Here’s a brief overview of what I’ve been using on the platform:

Logging
Metrics & Monitoring
Dashboards (mainly for Kubernetes environments)

Despite these tools, something feels off. My objective was to consolidate various tools like Nagios, Munin, Graphite, and Google Logging & Monitoring into one streamlined solution. However, I’m not yet convinced that DataDog significantly outperforms my current setup.

Is anyone else experiencing similar frustrations with DataDog? Or is it just me?

jessica

Watch Your Costs!

We’re currently using Grafana, Mimir, and Loki in our setup, but we’re keeping our options open for other solutions once we get a major cardinality issue under control. Right now, if we switched to any of the big SaaS providers, the monthly costs would be through the roof due to our high metrics series and log volumes. It’s something to seriously consider if you’re in a similar situation—those costs can add up fast!

Sam Richards

jessica Absolutely, the log volume is a big challenge. It drives up costs rapidly, and the overages can be brutal.

kyle

jessica what’s your experience with Mimir so far? Do you think it’s a better choice than Prometheus at this stage?

jessica

kyle I’m a fan of it. It scales really well.

aaron

I was initially skeptical when comparing it to Prometheus and Grafana, but I have to admit, the APM, tracing, and profiling features are impressive. They really shine, especially when you integrate them with your databases. APM can even suggest database indexes by analyzing trends in expensive queries.

That said, it’s not cheap, so your experience may vary depending on your budget.