Datadog
Full-stack observability platform covering infrastructure monitoring, APM, log management, and real-user monitoring with a powerful dashboarding system.
Best for teams wanting a unified observability platform with infrastructure metrics, logs, and basic dashboards in one place.
Use Cases
Free Tier
5 hosts for Infrastructure Monitoring, 1-day metric retention, 5 dashboards, 1GB/day log ingestion
How to Maximize the Free Tier
Stick to Infrastructure Monitoring on the free tier — it's the most generous part. Keep log ingestion under 1GB/day and configure log exclusion rules to filter noisy debug-level logs. Limit yourself to 5 dashboards and use template variables to get more mileage from each. Avoid enabling APM or RUM on the free tier since those hit hard limits fast. Pair with a log aggregation pipeline (like Vector or Fluent Bit) to pre-filter before sending to Datadog, keeping you well under the ingestion cap.
Getting Started
Sign up at datadoghq.com → install the Datadog Agent on your hosts (one-line install script) → configure integrations for your stack (AWS, Docker, etc.) → create dashboards in the UI → set up alert monitors for critical metrics → explore the Log Explorer to search ingested logs.
Pros
- Unified platform: Infrastructure, logs, APM, and dashboards in a single product — no cobbling together multiple tools
- Integrations: 750+ pre-built integrations for databases, cloud providers, and frameworks — most work out of the box
- Dashboarding: Powerful visual dashboard builder with real-time data, annotations, and template variables
Cons
- Cost escalation: Free tier is limited to 5 hosts — beyond that, paid plans start at $15/host/month and add up fast for larger fleets
- Data retention: Only 1-day metric retention on free tier makes trend analysis and historical comparison impossible
- Agent resource usage: The Datadog Agent consumes noticeable CPU and memory on small instances, which can be significant on free-tier VMs