What is Instana?
Monitor any application, service, or request with Instana Application Performance Monitoring.
Company Details
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Real user data aggregated to summarize the product performance and customer experience.
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Product scores listed below represent current data. This may be different from data contained in reports and awards, which express data as of their publication date.
83 Likeliness to Recommend
97 Plan to Renew
79 Satisfaction of Cost Relative to Value
Emotional Footprint Overview
Product scores listed below represent current data. This may be different from data contained in reports and awards, which express data as of their publication date.
+92 Net Emotional Footprint
The emotional sentiment held by end users of the software based on their experience with the vendor. Responses are captured on an eight-point scale.
How much do users love Instana?
Pros
- Saves Time
- Security Protects
- Reliable
- Fair
How to read the Emotional Footprint
The Net Emotional Footprint measures high-level user sentiment towards particular product offerings. It aggregates emotional response ratings for various dimensions of the vendor-client relationship and product effectiveness, creating a powerful indicator of overall user feeling toward the vendor and product.
While purchasing decisions shouldn't be based on emotion, it's valuable to know what kind of emotional response the vendor you're considering elicits from their users.
Footprint
Negative
Neutral
Positive
Feature Ratings
Cloud/On-Prem/Hybrid Deployment
Transaction Request Performance
Error Reporting
Server Monitoring
Application Metric Reporting
Scalability
Application Discovery
Application Request Tracing
Domain-Agnostic AI/ML
Non-Commodity Operating Systems
Enterprise Cloud Platform Support
Vendor Capability Ratings
Ease of IT Administration
Ease of Implementation
Breadth of Features
Business Value Created
Vendor Support
Usability and Intuitiveness
Ease of Customization
Quality of Features
Ease of Data Integration
Product Strategy and Rate of Improvement
Availability and Quality of Training
Instana Reviews
Rohit R.
- Role: Information Technology
- Industry: Telecommunications
- Involvement: IT Development, Integration, and Administration
Submitted Jun 2025
"Powerful APM Tool with Room for Customization
Likeliness to Recommend
What differentiates Instana from other similar products?
Instana differentiates itself from other application performance monitoring (APM) tools through its real-time, automated observability and AI-powered root cause analysis. Unlike many tools that rely heavily on manual configuration, Instana automatically discovers services, maps dependencies, and starts collecting metrics, traces, and logs with minimal setup. Its ability to provide 1-second granularity in metrics and context-rich tracing enables faster troubleshooting. Additionally, Instana鈥檚 Dynamic Graph鈥攁 continuously updated model of the application environment鈥攈elps visualize and understand complex microservice architectures in real time.
What is your favorite aspect of this product?
My favorite aspect of Instana is its real-time automatic discovery and dependency mapping. As soon as services are deployed, Instana immediately detects them, maps their relationships, and begins monitoring without the need for manual configuration. This makes it incredibly efficient for managing complex microservice architectures. Combined with its high-resolution (1-second) metrics and AI-powered root cause analysis, it significantly reduces the time needed to detect, diagnose, and resolve performance issues.
What do you dislike most about this product?
What I dislike most about Instana is its limited dashboard customization and flexibility compared to competitors like Datadog or Grafana. While the default views are informative, users have fewer options to tailor dashboards to their specific needs, such as creating highly customized visualizations or combining metrics across different services in a more intuitive way. This can make it challenging for teams with complex monitoring requirements to get the exact insights they need at a glance. Additionally, the alerting system could be more advanced, with more options for dynamic thresholds, noise reduction, and cross-service correlation.
What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?
If you're considering Instana, I recommend evaluating it based on the complexity of your architecture and the need for real-time observability. Instana excels in automated service discovery, dynamic dependency mapping, and fast root cause analysis, making it ideal for microservices, containers, and Kubernetes environments. However, be prepared for limited dashboard customization and potentially a steeper learning curve for advanced configurations. It's also wise to test how well it integrates with your existing tools and workflows. Overall, if you prioritize speed, automation, and minimal setup for full-stack observability, Instana is a stron
Pros
- Helps Innovate
- Continually Improving Product
- Reliable
- Performance Enhancing
Alexandre R.
- Role: Information Technology
- Industry: Technology
- Involvement: IT Development, Integration, and Administration
Submitted Jul 2023
YAML file configuration disappoints
Likeliness to Recommend
What differentiates Instana from other similar products?
Topology view of monitored entities; Customization of events, though the metrics are quite limited yet; Integration with problems notifications;
What is your favorite aspect of this product?
Agent installation is very simple and easy UI navigation
What do you dislike most about this product?
YAML file configuration Synthetic monitoring needs to improve Support to monitor new technologies
What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?
It is very toilsome and laborious to implement and install the agents and configure the YAML files.
Pros
- Trustworthy
- Fair
- Transparent
- Includes Product Enhancements
Cons
- Under Delivered
Ramazan A.
- Role: C-Level
- Industry: Insurance
- Involvement: Business Leader or Manager
Submitted Jul 2023
Easy to integrate and great pricing strategy
Likeliness to Recommend
What differentiates Instana from other similar products?
Pricing strategy and all in one solution
What is your favorite aspect of this product?
It is not complicated as other products. You do not have to worry about separate components and separate pricing
What do you dislike most about this product?
Creating custom alerts
What recommendations would you give to someone considering this product?
It brings simplicity and you will get great support.
Pros
- Helps Innovate
- Reliable
- Performance Enhancing
- Enables Productivity
