Datadog vs Zabbix

by Gralio Mar 12, 2025

Datadog and Zabbix offer distinct approaches to infrastructure and application monitoring. Datadog provides a comprehensive cloud-based solution with a wide array of integrations and advanced analytics, while Zabbix offers a more cost-effective and customizable open-source alternative. The best choice depends on your budget, technical expertise, and specific monitoring needs.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 1066 reviews and 60 websites, saving 6 hours, 25 minutes of reading.

About

Datadog is a cloud-based software platform that gives you a complete view of your company's technology systems, from websites and apps to servers and databases. It helps you monitor performance, analyze data, and improve security, all in one place. Datadog is designed for companies of all sizes and is used by various teams, including IT, development, and security. It helps businesses ensure their technology runs smoothly, efficiently, and securely.
Zabbix is a software tool that helps you keep an eye on your company's computers, servers, and other IT equipment. It's like a central dashboard showing you if everything is working correctly. Zabbix can alert you if something goes wrong or if performance drops, helping prevent problems and downtime. It's used by companies of all sizes and is known for being scalable, meaning it can grow with your business. Zabbix offers both cloud-based and on-premise solutions, giving you flexibility in how you manage your IT infrastructure monitoring.

Summary

Main difference
Datadog is a comprehensive, cloud-based observability platform ideal for businesses prioritizing seamless integrations, real-time monitoring, and advanced analytics. Zabbix is an open-source monitoring solution offering cost-effectiveness and flexibility for businesses comfortable with self-hosting and custom configurations.

Relative strengths of Datadog (compared to Zabbix)

  • Superior Integrations: Datadog offers extensive pre-built integrations with popular cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and various other tools, simplifying setup and data correlation.

  • Real-time Monitoring and Alerting: Datadog excels in providing real-time insights and customizable alerts, enabling faster issue identification and resolution. Zabbix, while offering real-time monitoring, may require more manual configuration for complex alerting.

  • Advanced Analytics and Dashboards: Datadog's dashboards and analytics capabilities are more robust and user-friendly than Zabbix, allowing for deeper performance analysis and custom visualization.

Relative weaknesses of Datadog (compared to Zabbix)

  • Higher Cost: Datadog's pricing can be complex and potentially expensive, especially with extensive log ingestion and custom metrics. Zabbix's open-source nature makes it significantly more cost-effective.

  • Steeper Learning Curve: While user-friendly, Datadog's extensive features and integrations can present a steeper learning curve compared to Zabbix's more focused approach.

  • Less Control over Data: As a cloud-based solution, Datadog offers less direct control over data compared to self-hosted Zabbix installations.

What companies are using Datadog and Zabbix?

Who should use Datadog VS. Zabbix

Datadog offers a unified platform for comprehensive technology system monitoring. Users praise its intuitive dashboards and seamless cloud integrations but note concerns about unpredictable costs and customer support. It's ideal for companies seeking enhanced observability and real-time issue resolution.

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring solution ideal for IT professionals and businesses of all sizes seeking a scalable and customizable platform. Users appreciate its comprehensive monitoring capabilities and alerting features, enabling them to monitor everything from server resources to web server certificates. However, some users find the initial setup complex and the documentation lacking. It's best for the IT and Telecommunications industry but can be adapted for others.

  • Ideal for technology-driven companies of all sizes needing real-time insights into application and infrastructure performance.

  • Strong fit for Software, IT & Telecommunications; suitable for various other industries including Healthcare, Finance, and E-commerce.

  • Ideal for small to large businesses.

  • Best fit for IT and Telecommunications.

Datadog and Zabbix features

Supported
Partially supported
Not supported
Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need
  • Observability
    Supported

    Datadog monitors infrastructure health and performance providing end-to-end visibility.

    Supported

    Zabbix monitors infrastructure health and performance, providing end-to-end visibility.

  • Digital Experience Monitoring
    Supported

    Datadog supports digital experience monitoring with features like RUM and synthetic monitoring.

    Partially supported

    Zabbix does not directly support digital experience monitoring but offers synthetic monitoring for simulating user interactions.

  • Comprehensive Monitoring
    Partially supported

    Datadog monitors networks, cloud, websites, APIs, services and applications. IoT support is not explicitly mentioned.

    Supported

    Zabbix monitors networks, cloud, websites, servers and offers a single pane of glass view. IoT support might require custom configurations.

  • Real-time monitoring
    Supported

    Datadog supports real-time server and application performance monitoring with features like custom dashboards and alerts.

    Supported

    Zabbix supports real-time monitoring of servers and applications.

  • Cloud environment support
    Supported

    Datadog supports monitoring applications in cloud environments, including multi-cloud setups.

    Supported

    Zabbix supports monitoring applications in AWS, Azure, and GCP.

  • Dashboard templates
    Supported

    Datadog offers pre-built dashboard templates for common use cases and allows creating custom dashboards.

    Not supported

    Zabbix supports creating custom dashboard templates, but pre-built templates for common use cases are not readily available.

Qualities

  • Value and Pricing Transparency
    -0.95
    Strongly negative sentiment
    +1
    Strongly positive sentiment
  • Customer Service
    +0.05
    Neutral sentiment
    No data
  • Ease of Use
    +0.7
    Strongly positive sentiment
    +0.27
    Neutral sentiment
  • Reliability and Performance
    +0.93
    Strongly positive sentiment
    +0.8
    Strongly positive sentiment
  • Ease of Implementation
    +0.26
    Neutral sentiment
    -1
    Strongly negative sentiment
  • Scalability
    +1
    Strongly positive sentiment
    +0.75
    Strongly positive sentiment
Datadog and Zabbix Pricing
Datadog offers various pricing plans based on the specific product and features needed. Contact sales for custom quotes on LLM Observability and App Builder.
Plans

User sentiment

Strongly negative
-0.95

See full Pricing page

No data

User sentiment

Strongly positive
+1
We couldn't find a pricing page for Zabbix.

Datadog and Zabbix review insights

1053 reviews analysed from and

Users love

  • Datadog’s intuitive dashboards make it easy to monitor systems.
  • Seamless integration with AWS and other cloud providers.
  • The vast number of integrations allows for extensive customization.
  • Real-time alerts help quickly identify and resolve issues.
  • Zabbix is an open-source advanced monitoring and alerting solution.
  • It produces meaningful graphs and has triggers for each alert.
  • It can monitor almost anything - from server resource consumption to web server certificate expiration date or database table data.
  • Easy to install and use.
  • Its capacity to monitor anything from servers and network devices to cloud services means that no component of our ecosystem is left uncontrolled.

Users dislike

  • Unpredictable costs make it difficult to budget for.
  • Log ingestion is very expensive.
  • Customer support can be slow and unresponsive.
  • Documentation can be out of date or difficult to find.
  • Zabbix agents does not work in all applications like network Nas and conflict with other agents for backup solutions.
  • The initial setup can be quite complex and may require a steep learning curve for new users.
  • Some of the errors are non-descriptive.
  • It would be nice if it were agentless...
  • The documentation offered by Zabbix is not much; it is not complete and it is messy between versions

Datadog and Zabbix Ratings

  • Glassdoor
    3.9/5
    (1186)
  • Glassdoor
    4.0/5
    (6)

Company health

Employee growth

36% increase in the last year
17% increase in the last year

Web traffic

10% decrease in the last quarter
No change in the last quarter

Financing

February 2020 - $148M
No data

How do Datadog's cloud integrations compare to Zabbix's broader IT focus?

Datadog strongly emphasizes cloud integrations, offering pre-built support for major cloud providers and services. While Zabbix can monitor cloud environments, its focus is broader, encompassing various IT infrastructure components like networks, servers, and applications, regardless of their location (cloud or on-premise). This makes Datadog a more natural fit for cloud-native organizations, while Zabbix offers a more versatile approach for hybrid or on-premise focused IT environments.

Which product offers better ease of setup for a small IT team, Datadog or Zabbix?

Datadog is generally considered easier to set up and configure, especially for cloud-based environments, making it potentially better suited for a small IT team. While Zabbix is open-source and offers flexibility, its initial setup is known to be more complex and requires a steeper learning curve, potentially challenging a smaller team with limited resources.

What are the advantages of Datadog?

Datadog offers broader observability coverage, including infrastructure, application performance, and digital experience monitoring. It also boasts extensive pre-built integrations with various cloud providers and other technologies, simplifying setup and expanding monitoring capabilities. While potentially more expensive, Datadog's real-time monitoring and alerting features allow for proactive issue identification and resolution.

What are the disadvantages of Datadog?

Datadog's main disadvantages are its unpredictable and potentially high costs, especially for log ingestion. Users also report slow and sometimes unresponsive customer support, along with documentation that can be difficult to navigate or outdated.

Alternatives to Datadog and Zabbix

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Page co-authored by
MK
Michal Kaczor
CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

TT
Tymon Terlikiewicz
CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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