Datadog review: A data-backed look
Explore Datadog’s adoption trends, market share, category benchmarks, and use cases to determine if it’s the right cloud monitoring platform for your business.
2103% higher
+6%
71%
29%
Datadog overview
Datadog is a unified cloud monitoring and security platform for DevOps, IT, and engineering teams. It centralizes infrastructure monitoring, application performance, log management, and security analytics into a single solution.
Datadog is well-suited for teams needing real-time observability across complex cloud environments. It is positioned as a flexible, all-in-one alternative to point monitoring tools.
How much do businesses spend on Datadog?
The chart below illustrates average spending on Datadog across different business sizes.
Mid-market and enterprise businesses demonstrate the highest spending on Datadog, with quarterly expenditure showing dramatic fluctuations, including a notable dip in the middle quarters before recovering to near-initial levels.
Small and medium-sized businesses maintain relatively stable spending with slight variations and modest growth over time. Micro businesses show steady upward growth throughout the measured period, maintaining the lowest but most consistent spending trajectory.
The data reveals that while larger organizations invest significantly more in Datadog's platform, they also exhibit more volatile spending patterns compared to the steady growth demonstrated by smaller business segments.
Who is Datadog best for?
The chart below breaks down Datadog’s user base by industry and company size.
Micro businesses represent the largest portion of Datadog's user base, making up the dominant segment of platform adoption.
Small and medium-sized companies constitute a nearly equally significant portion of users, while mid-market and enterprise businesses represent a substantial but smaller segment.
Datadog key features
Infrastructure monitoring
- What it does: Tracks servers, containers, databases, and cloud services in real time.
- Key benefit: Provides unified visibility into infrastructure health and performance.
Application performance monitoring
- What it does: Monitors end-to-end application traces and code-level performance.
- Key benefit: Identifies performance bottlenecks and optimizes user experience.
Log management
- What it does: Centralizes logs from all services and applications for search and analysis.
- Key benefit: Speeds up troubleshooting and enables rapid root cause analysis.
Security monitoring
- What it does: Detects threats, misconfigurations, and security events across the stack.
- Key benefit: Improves incident response and compliance posture.
Synthetic monitoring
- What it does: Simulates user actions and tests application uptime from multiple locations.
- Key benefit: Proactively finds issues before users are impacted.
Datadog pricing
Plan | Price | Key features | Ideal for |
|---|---|---|---|
Free | $0/mo | Core collection and visualization features, 1-day metric retention, up to 5 hosts. | Individuals, hobbyists, or very small projects |
Pro | $15-$18/mo | Centralized monitoring of systems, services, and serverless functions, 900+ integrations, out-of-the-box dashboards, 15-month metric retention. | Small to mid-sized teams needing core monitoring |
Enterprise | $23/mo | Advanced features and administrative controls, machine learning-based alerts, live processes. | Organizations needing advanced controls and scalability |
DevSecOps Pro | $22/mo | All Pro features, CSPM, KSPM, Compliance mapping, Vulnerability Management (VM) for Containers & Hosts, CIEM, Comprehensive inventory & linked risks, Case management. | Teams securing cloud resources and meeting compliance |
DevSecOps Enterprise | $34/mo | Advanced risk and threat detection, file integrity monitoring, workload protection for Linux, Windows, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS Fargate ECS/EKS, increased container allotment. | Large organizations with advanced security needs |
Datadog pros & cons
Datadog is a good fit if:
- Your team needs to monitor cloud infrastructure and applications in real time.
- Your team needs unified dashboards across logs, metrics, and traces.
- Your team needs scalable monitoring for microservices and containers.
- Your team needs proactive alerting and anomaly detection.
Consider alternatives if:
- Your team needs a lightweight or on-premise monitoring solution.
- Your team needs simple monitoring without advanced configuration.
- Your team needs a lower-cost option for high host counts.
- Your team needs a platform focused exclusively on security or logging.