https://www.netdata.cloud/tags/costs-of-monitoring/Recent content in Costs of Monitoring on NetdataHugoen-usSun, 23 Aug 2026 02:03:02 +0300https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/solarwinds-price-increases-2026/Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/solarwinds-price-increases-2026/<p>If you&rsquo;re a SolarWinds customer facing renewal, you&rsquo;ve likely noticed significant changes to pricing and licensing terms in 2024-2025. You&rsquo;re not alone. At Netdata, we&rsquo;ve been speaking with dozens of SolarWinds customers who are reassessing their monitoring strategies in light of these changes. This post provides factual information about what&rsquo;s changed, the real impact on organizations, and a practical framework for evaluating your path forward.</p> <h2 id="whats-happening-with-solarwinds-pricing">What&rsquo;s Happening with SolarWinds Pricing?</h2> <p>In February 2025, SolarWinds was acquired by private equity firm Turn/River Capital in a $4.4 billion transaction. As is common with PE-backed acquisitions, this has led to significant changes in pricing and business terms. Based on customer reports and public information, renewal prices have increased by 100-300% for many customers. One customer on the SolarWinds community forum reported their renewal more than doubled, a 225% increase from the previous year.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/comparisons/grafana-vs-datadog/Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/comparisons/grafana-vs-datadog/https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/high-cardinality-metrics-observability-scale/Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/high-cardinality-metrics-observability-scale/<p>The &ldquo;high cardinality is expensive&rdquo; sentence has become observability&rsquo;s version of &ldquo;in this economy&rdquo;: said so often that nobody questions whether it&rsquo;s true. Every vendor pricing page invokes it. Every glossary article repeats it. Every architecture diagram shows aggregation buffers placed <em>before</em> the storage layer.</p> <!--truncate--> <p>&ldquo;High cardinality is expensive&rdquo; is not a fact about the universe; it&rsquo;s a fact about one architectural choice: centralizing time-series storage and querying it through an index that scales with unique series. Once you accept that choice, everything follows. You pay per metric, you drop labels you wish you&rsquo;d kept, you pre-aggregate before storage, and you discover that the bug you were debugging only existed at the full resolution you already threw away.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/use-cases/application-performance/Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/use-cases/application-performance/Netdata revolutionizes application performance monitoring with distributed edge intelligence, zero-configuration deployment, and AI-powered troubleshooting that delivers enterprise-grade observability at a fraction of traditional APM costs.https://www.netdata.cloud/comparisons/sumologic/Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/comparisons/sumologic/Comprehensive comparison of Netdata and Sumo Logic: real-time monitoring, pricing models, deployment complexity, and use cases. Learn which platform fits your DevOps and observability needs.https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/built-for/freelancers/Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/built-for/freelancers/Real-time infrastructure monitoring built for technical freelancers managing multiple client environments. Zero configuration, AI-powered insights, and predictable costs let you focus on delivering value, not managing monitoring tools.https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/use-cases/continuous-operations/Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/use-cases/continuous-operations/Real-time observability built for continuous operations. Per-second metrics, ML anomaly detection, and AI root cause analysis keep your infrastructure running around the clock.https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/use-cases/unified-observability-architecture/Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/use-cases/unified-observability-architecture/Netdata delivers unified observability through edge-native architecture - metrics, logs, and AI-powered insights at per-second granularity without the complexity, cost explosion, or tool sprawl of traditional platforms.https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/use-cases/windows-event-logs/Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/solutions/use-cases/windows-event-logs/Netdata revolutionizes Windows Event Log monitoring by combining infrastructure metrics with native log access, ML anomaly detection, and AI troubleshooting - delivering comprehensive observability at a fraction of traditional SIEM costs.https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/monitor-everything-is-an-anti-pattern/Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/monitor-everything-is-an-anti-pattern/<p><strong>Bullshit and nonsense.</strong></p> <p>But let&rsquo;s take it from the beginning.</p> <p>The industry&rsquo;s story goes something like this:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>&ldquo;Monitor everything is universally recognized as an anti-pattern.&rdquo;</em><br/> <em>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll drown in metrics, burn out your engineers, and blow your budget.&rdquo;</em><br/> <em>&ldquo;Just focus on 3–10 signals — the Four Golden Signals, RED, USE — and ignore everything else.&rdquo;</em><br/> <em>&ldquo;Trust us, you don&rsquo;t want that much telemetry.&rdquo;</em><br/> <br/> (<a href="https://www.netdata.cloud/resources/research/monitor-everything-anti-pattern/">true, read the whole story here</a>)</p> </blockquote> <p>Then, in the same breath:</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/resources/research/monitor-everything-anti-pattern/Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/resources/research/monitor-everything-anti-pattern/<blockquote> <p><strong>Research Notice</strong>: This document was compiled through online research conducted on December 1, 2025. It serves as reference material for our blog post: <a href="https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/monitor-everything-is-an-anti-pattern/">Monitor Everything is an Anti-Pattern!</a>. Sources are cited inline and summarized at the end.</p> </blockquote> <h2 id="tldr">TL;DR</h2> <p>&ldquo;Monitor everything&rdquo; is universally recognized as an anti-pattern by SRE experts, observability leaders, and major tech companies. The core reasons are:</p> <ol> <li><strong>Metric Fatigue</strong>: Teams become overwhelmed by excessive data, unable to identify critical signals</li> <li><strong>Alert Fatigue</strong>: 63% of organizations face 1,000+ daily alerts with 72-99% false positives, costing $300,000+/hour in missed incidents</li> <li><strong>Lack of Actionability</strong>: 97% of alerts are non-actionable noise rather than signals requiring response</li> <li><strong>High Costs</strong>: Organizations spend 20-40% of cloud budgets on observability (vs. optimal 10-15%), with cardinality explosions creating exponential cost increases</li> <li><strong>Employee Burnout</strong>: Costs $4,000-$21,000 per employee annually, totaling $5M+ for 1,000-person companies</li> <li><strong>System Complexity</strong>: Monitoring systems themselves become fragile, requiring constant maintenance</li> <li><strong>Monitoring Tools Creating Problems</strong>: Monitoring agents can cause the latency outliers they&rsquo;re meant to detect</li> </ol> <p><strong>Expert Consensus</strong>: Focus on 3-10 key metrics (Google&rsquo;s Four Golden Signals, RED Method, USE Method) that indicate symptoms rather than attempting comprehensive monitoring of all possible metrics.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/gartner-iocs-2025/Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/gartner-iocs-2025/<p>The observability market is facing a paradox. As organizations spend more than ever on monitoring tools, their infrastructure complexity continues to grow, and incident resolution times often remain stubbornly high. Teams are drowning in data, struggling with tool sprawl, and facing unpredictable, budget-breaking bills.</p> <p>This challenge, how to gain better visibility without spiraling costs, is one of the most critical conversations for IT leaders today.</p> <!--truncate--> <p>That&rsquo;s why the Netdata team is heading to Las Vegas for the <strong>Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations &amp; Cloud Strategies (IOCS) Conference</strong> from December 9-11, 2025. We&rsquo;ll be there to discuss this challenge head-on and share our vision for a more efficient and intelligent future for observability.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/5-datadog-alternatives/Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/5-datadog-alternatives/<p>As businesses rely more on <a href="https://www.netdata.cloud/academy/what-is-infrastructure-monitoring-and-why-you-need-it/">infrastructure monitoring</a>, observability tools have become essential for keeping systems secure, responsive, and efficient. In this evolving monitoring landscape, Datadog is known as a leading analytics and monitoring tool, capable of collecting essential performance metrics from servers, databases, applications, and other IT infrastructures. But at what cost?</p> <h2 id="what-is-datadog-is-it-your-only-option">What Is Datadog? Is It Your Only Option?</h2> <p>Datadog is a cloud-based monitoring platform that helps organizations track the performance of their infrastructure, applications, and logs. It provides visibility across systems to ensure efficient operations and identify issues quickly.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/netdata-cost-transparency-unveiling-the-true-cost-of-monitoring/Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/netdata-cost-transparency-unveiling-the-true-cost-of-monitoring/<p>Businesses are increasingly reliant on monitoring tools to ensure the seamless performance and reliability of their systems. However, the true cost of implementing and maintaining these tools is often obscured by hidden expenses. Our previous blog delved into the concealed costs associated with various monitoring solutions, such as Prometheus &amp; Grafana (Open Source Monitoring) and commercial platforms like Datadog, Dynatrace, and NewRelic. These costs can manifest in various forms - from complex setups and maintenance to additional charges for advanced features.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/hidden-costs-of-monitoring/Fri, 07 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/hidden-costs-of-monitoring/<p>When it comes to monitoring IT infrastructure, the <a href="https://www.netdata.cloud/pricing/">costs you see on the price tag</a> of the tool are often just the tip of the iceberg. Below the waterline, a mass of hidden costs can lurk, which can significantly affect the total cost of ownership.</p> <!--truncate--> <p>In this blogpost we will cover the analysis of two traditional monitoring domains, <a href="https://www.netdata.cloud/open-source/">Open Source observability</a> and Commercial Centralized observability solutions, focusing the direct and indirect impacts when implementing these solution. In summary:</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/data-collection-strategies/Tue, 06 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/blog/data-collection-strategies/<!--truncate--> <p>Monitoring and troubleshooting; unfortunately, these terms are still used interchangeably, which can lead to misunderstandings about data collection strategies.</p> <p>In this article we aim to clarify some important definitions, processes, and common data collection strategies for monitoring solutions. We will specify the limitations of the described strategies, as well as key benefits which can potentially be also used for troubleshooting needs.</p> <p><strong>IT infrastructure monitoring</strong> is a business process of collecting and analyzing data over a period of time to improve business results.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/events/data-centre-world-london-2025/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/events/data-centre-world-london-2025/<p>Netdata exhibited at Data Centre World London 2025, March 12&ndash;13 at ExCeL London, at Booth DC476 in the co-located Tech Show London event. We ran live infrastructure monitoring demos throughout both days and held a LEGO draw that produced two winners.</p> <p>The audience here was different from a developer conference. Data centre operators and infrastructure managers care about things like power monitoring, cooling efficiency, network throughput, and server fleet health &ndash; all at scale, all in real time. The conversations at the booth centered on three recurring pain points: the cost of existing observability tools (especially per-GB ingestion pricing), the complexity of maintaining multiple monitoring systems for different parts of the stack, and the time wasted on manual troubleshooting when dashboards show 60-second averages that hide the actual problem.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/events/gartner-iocs-2025/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/events/gartner-iocs-2025/<p>Netdata exhibited at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations &amp; Cloud Strategies Conference (IOCS) 2025, December 9&ndash;11 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. We were at Booth #636 in the Solution Village: Operations section, running live demos every 30 minutes and meeting with IT leaders from enterprises and mid-market organizations.</p> <p>The highlight was Costa Tsaousis&rsquo;s talk on December 11 at 12:30 PM PST in Theater 3: &ldquo;Why 80% of Organizations Will Overspend for Observability in 2026.&rdquo; The thesis was direct. Legacy observability tools have a broken economic model &ndash; they charge by data volume, which means the more you monitor, the more you pay. That creates a perverse incentive to sample, average, and reduce data, which in turn creates blind spots. Organizations end up paying more for less visibility. Costa walked through how sampling at 15&ndash;60 second intervals masks the very spikes and anomalies that cause incidents, and how that hidden cost &ndash; longer MTTR, more outages, more manual investigation &ndash; often exceeds the monitoring bill itself.</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/events/qbits-2025/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/events/qbits-2025/<p>Netdata sponsored QBITS 2025 in Montreal, April 8&ndash;10. Shyam Sreevalsan (VP - Product &amp; Strategy) and Stuart McMurran (Enterprise Sales) represented the team at this Quadbridge event, which brings together IT leaders from across Canada and the US.</p> <p>The audience was heavily tilted toward infrastructure decision-makers &ndash; CTOs, VPs of IT, directors of operations. These are people who sign off on monitoring tool purchases and live with the consequences. Three pain points came up in nearly every conversation at the booth: cost (observability bills that scale unpredictably with data volume), complexity (too many tools, too many dashboards, too much configuration), and manual troubleshooting (spending hours correlating data across systems during an incident).</p>https://www.netdata.cloud/value/roi/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.netdata.cloud/value/roi/