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Instana Full-Stack Observability
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Instana Application Incident Remediation
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Instana Digital Experience Monitoring
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Instana and GenAI
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Instana Cloud Native Optimization
Play with Instana is a free, hands-on sandbox environment where you can explore full observability features in a live, production-like system with no setup or installation required. Try it here https://ibm.biz/play_with_instana
Instana redefines performance monitoring for cloud-native applications, delivering speed, efficiency, and automation. It's the ideal complement to AWS, enabling agile development and real-time adaptability to evolving infrastructure and application dynamics. With Instana, auto-discover application components, trace requests, and map dependencies effortlessly, ensuring unparalleled visibility to navigate rapid changes effortlessly.
Our industry-leading 1-second granularity and comprehensive request tracing guarantee no issue escapes detection. Gain full-stack visibility across application code, Kubernetes containers (EKS/ECS), and micro-services with user-friendly dashboards and SmartAlerts™ for tailored alerts. Seamlessly integrated into AWS, Instana supports over 300 technologies, providing worry-free performance monitoring.
Highlights
- Built-in automation and AI help you deploy and start collecting insights across your full stack within minutes. Automated root cause analysis and recommendations provide faster issue resolution.
- Unlike competitors that sample traces, Instana captures 100% of all requests in real-time, ensuring complete visibility into application performance.
- Seamlessly integrate your IT landscape with AWS services and 300+ integrations with no visibility gaps across your cloud, micro-services and containerized environments.
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Dimension | Description | Cost/unit |
|---|---|---|
1 Standard Managed Virtual Server (MVS) hour | Standard: All-in-one Observability (Infrastructure, Tracing, EUM, Synthetics) | $0.12 |
1 Essentials Managed Virtual Server (MVS) hour | Essentials: Basic Observability (Infrastructure Monitoring only) | $0.03 |
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Support contact at https://ibm.biz/instana-support
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Customer reviews
Mihajlo Borisavljevic
Business monitoring has pinpointed slow code and queries and now solves recurring client issues
Reviewed on Dec 22, 2025
Review provided by PeerSpot
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for IBM Instana Observability is running agents on a host to monitor infrastructure and applications.
I have a specific example of how I use IBM Instana Observability to monitor my infrastructure. When I installed IBM Instana Observability backend, I installed some IBM Instana Observability agents on the VMs that were going to be monitored and then I followed the monitoring on the infrastructure tab on the IBM Instana Observability backend.
What is most valuable?
The best features IBM Instana Observability offers are business monitoring by far.
I can tell you more about what I appreciate about the business monitoring capabilities. It can go deeper into the application, especially because we are using a lot of IBM BAW software, and it has helped us identify what code in the application or what query is taking a long time or consuming resources incorrectly.
Custom dashboards are also a good feature because we can customize them to our needs and we can discuss them with clients to better demonstrate how IBM Instana Observability works and helps them.
IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted our organization because it has helped us solve many problems and sell some products. For example, a client had a problem recurring every Thursday, and they did not know what the problem was. When we installed IBM Instana Observability and got it running, we easily monitored and found what was causing the issue on that specific day.
What needs improvement?
I think it would be great if IBM Instana Observability stayed focused on on-premise environments because not every client has implemented cloud environments and infrastructure yet.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Instana Observability for about two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Its scalability is very good, but I am not certain what you mean by scalability.
I did not have any challenges because the IBM documentation is well explained and we can use that documentation for scalability purposes. We did not have many problems.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is good; sometimes it cannot go as deep as I expected, but overall it is good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution; IBM Instana Observability was the first one that we used.
How was the initial setup?
I did not evaluate other options because we are clients with IBM and we are premium partners, and this solution was the best for us by all means.
What about the implementation team?
I think we are some kind of premium partners with this vendor.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I think the pricing is good and I do not think it is high. The bundle when you need to buy another 10 licenses for host agents and for VMware agents is good because we can monitor and see IBM Instana Observability functionality. You can see IBM Instana Observability backend functionalities immediately because when you have 10 licenses, you for sure have 10 VMs where you can monitor or you can set up the agent.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using IBM Instana Observability is to use it. Do not worry or take second guesses; it is a good platform. I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.
Abednego Petrus
End-to-end monitoring has improved performance insights and supports faster issue resolution
Reviewed on Dec 18, 2025
Review provided by PeerSpot
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for IBM Instana Observability is for end-to-end monitoring from the application side, and also from the infrastructure and log monitoring.
For end-to-end monitoring in my work, I use IBM Instana Observability to monitor the transaction of application services and know the performance of the request latency and error rate. And for the infrastructure, I also monitor the utilization of CPU, memory, disk, and network.
What is most valuable?
The best features IBM Instana Observability offers right now include application monitoring and APM because they are very insightful for monitoring the performance of application services.
The application monitoring feature of IBM Instana Observability stands out for me because the analysis of the metrics and telemetry provides a lot of data, making it very helpful for the operational side.
IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted my organization because basically our company is in IT consulting, and our customers have a use case for monitoring, which creates a lot of demand for monitoring tools.
What needs improvement?
IBM Instana Observability can be improved by simplifying the installation process, reducing the number of manual steps and dependencies, especially for hybrid, on-premise environments.
I think the Instana team can improve the recommendation feature so that the tool is not only for identifying issues but can also give recommendations.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Instana Observability for around one year, maybe six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability demonstrates scalability, especially in dynamic, distributed environments such as microservices and Kubernetes and can handle growth, service, and workload efficiently with minimal performance impact.
How are customer service and support?
I think the customer support for IBM Instana Observability is good.
My experience with IBM Instana Observability's customer support has been very helpful and responsive because they have a minimum SLA to support us if we have a problem with IBM Instana Observability.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used DataDog and Dynatrace , not switching but using three observability tools.
What was our ROI?
If we are using IBM Instana Observability, we can save money because first, the pricing is very affordable. Second, if we have a monitoring tool, we can save our transactions and see the performance of the application using MTTR and MTTD. We can also use metrics such as request latency and error to know the performance of our application transactions.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I think the cost of IBM Instana Observability is cheaper.
I find the cost of IBM Instana Observability to be very affordable compared to competitors because the pricing mechanism is based on the host that we monitor, unlike other competitors such as DataDog and Dynatrace , whose pricing is based on other factors. IBM Instana Observability offers an all-in-one package that allows us to calculate with just one host for the hosts we want to monitor, including infrastructure, application, real-user monitoring, and logs.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM Instana Observability, I evaluated Dynatrace as an option.
What other advice do I have?
I think maybe our customers need IBM Instana Observability for monitoring the IBM platform, such as from AS/400 IBM.
I think for the error rate on the application side, using IBM Instana Observability helps our customers to know the root cause that triggers a failed request or transaction.
For others looking into using IBM Instana Observability, I would recommend that they consider adding a recommendation feature to IBM Instana Observability.
My additional thought about IBM Instana Observability is that my concern for the future is only that IBM Instana Observability can add a feature for correlation and recommendations.
The interview was very good and there's nothing I would change for the future. I would rate this review an 8.
Anslem Anayo
Real-time observability has improved performance monitoring and simplifies finding root causes
Reviewed on Dec 13, 2025
Review from a verified AWS customer
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for IBM Instana Observability is to help with application performance monitoring. It helps me build understanding of my infrastructure use cases by showing which service belongs to which application and which services are dependent on which applications. It helps me get real-time monitoring of my infrastructure. I have used it to monitor IBM Power systems, VMware vSphere environments, and HMC. I have also used it to monitor the AWS cloud platform. It shows me a roadmap and indicates which services depend on other services.
What is most valuable?
The best features IBM Instana Observability offers include one-second granularity in that it goes down to specific services. For example, when my application is speaking to my database, it helps show me the particular services of the application and the specific services of the database that it is actually speaking to. It helps me build an observability map to show how traffic is flowing from the application down to the database and shows me each service component that is speaking to each other. Another key feature is its ability to build a live map, and it also shows real-time metrics and traces, the application response time, compute resources, and more.
The real-time metrics and observability map from IBM Instana Observability have helped me in my daily work. When I had to manually push the observability to see if I was trying to send real-time dumps to stress test my compute resource, there was a particular time I was trying to stress test it and it showed me that the particular resource was being affected as a result of the stress. IBM Instana Observability has impacted my organization positively in that it has helped me find out what the issue is in real-time because of its one-second granularity and its ability to identify issues as quickly as possible.
I have seen specific outcomes from IBM Instana Observability, such as help monitoring latency in microservices applications. It has helped me get real-time metrics around latency, IO disk utilization, network utilization, read-writes, bandwidth, and compute resources. It also provides traces for end-to-end request flow.
What needs improvement?
IBM Instana Observability can be improved by providing access to the materials. It is not open-source, and I have to be a partner to get more access to the products.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Instana Observability for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability's scalability is good in that I can still support more features and more container-based applications. When it started, it was basically more about on-premises services, but now I can use it to monitor container environments. More innovations are coming in every day, so it is scalable and more applications are becoming container-based.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support I experience with IBM Instana Observability is great. IBM support for Instana is responsive and helpful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I never used a different solution before.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with IBM Instana Observability. Time saved is a relevant metric because it helps me identify issues quickly. Rather than having to log into every server to see what is wrong with it, once I have the agent installed in my infrastructure, I just need it on one box. From there I can draw in other servers or my virtualized environment. It provides a single pane of glass from which I can see what is happening with all the servers in my infrastructure, which saves time.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not have much experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing. I only worked with the product.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other options before choosing IBM Instana Observability.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using IBM Instana Observability is that it gives real-time and automated visibility into the application and infrastructure. It helps detect issues faster and helps fix them quickly. I rate this product 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Saisurya P
Unified monitoring has improved infrastructure visibility but customer support needs work
Reviewed on Dec 11, 2025
Review from a verified AWS customer
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for IBM Instana Observability is to gain more insights about my infrastructure, servers, traffic flow, CPU and memory utilization, and metrics.
I use IBM Instana Observability to mainly understand the flow of traffic inside my Kubernetes clusters and to check the logs of my pods.
On a daily basis, I use IBM Instana Observability mostly for the monitoring of my infrastructure stack.
What is most valuable?
One of the best features IBM Instana Observability offers is its nice and clean UI, with everything being clean and sorted out.
What stands out to me specifically about the UI of IBM Instana Observability is the way everything is organized, clean, easy to read, and easy to understand with clear navigation to each component.
IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted my organization by making it easy to observe the entire infrastructure under one platform, which was the biggest advantage of onboarding onto IBM Instana Observability.
Once we had an incident where my Kubernetes pods were crashing frequently, and it was really easy to troubleshoot because of the easily available monitoring tool IBM Instana Observability. It was easy to navigate inside IBM Instana Observability and find the logs from the pods and debug the traffic flow.
IBM Instana Observability definitely saves a lot of time. Since it integrates many things into one dashboard, it is really easy to navigate and find the root causes of failures, making it easy to troubleshoot issues as well, and all of this saves a lot of time.
What needs improvement?
One main issue I found with IBM Instana Observability was the customer support, which was very poor when we needed some features to be enabled or integrated into IBM Instana Observability sensors. They used to take a long time to respond and implement the features we requested, and customer support was not really great. They were slow to integrate new features, whereas competitors were providing better features at a faster pace.
IBM Instana Observability is not really stable; I would say it is stable approximately 95 percent of the time.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Instana Observability for around two years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of IBM Instana Observability is pretty good.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support of IBM Instana Observability is really awful; that is one area where I found myself disliking IBM Instana Observability, as they are very slow to respond and integrate new features.
I would rate the customer support of IBM Instana Observability five out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, I was using self-managed Prometheus, but then it was an organizational decision to move to a managed service, so we went with IBM Instana Observability.
What about the implementation team?
I myself did not deploy IBM Instana Observability; the seniors and the leads in my team actually did that, so they would have more insight on that.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM Instana Observability, I evaluated a few others such as DataDog and Groundcover.
What other advice do I have?
IBM Instana Observability is not a top-of-the-line tool and definitely has flaws, but it also has a good side as well.
I would suggest others looking into using IBM Instana Observability to fully understand it first and see if it fits their use case. If their use case is very simple and beginner level, there is no need to go with a sophisticated tool such as IBM Instana Observability; but if they have a pretty large infrastructure, they can definitely go with IBM Instana Observability.
My company has no business relationship with IBM Instana Observability other than being a customer; it is purely that.
I would definitely suggest that the customer experience of IBM Instana Observability be improved significantly, and as far as the features go, please be quick to adopt new features into the tool, since competitors are really aggressive in implementing new features and rolling them out to users.
I rate IBM Instana Observability a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Marahmed Marahmed
Improved incident tracing has reduced errors while complex filters still slow down alert setup
Reviewed on Dec 11, 2025
Review provided by PeerSpot
What is our primary use case?
I use IBM Instana Observability to trace our services, especially the incidents part and events. One particular feature I appreciate is the filtering of calls so that I can view analytics, including how many calls we received, how many failed, and how many succeeded.
What is most valuable?
IBM Instana Observability sends alerts through Slack, and I check Slack for messages. When I review the messages, I find the link to a particular trace. When I view a particular trace, I can see where I had a failed connection, had an error, and so on.
The integration with alerting systems such as email and Slack is the best feature of IBM Instana Observability in my opinion. The alerting integrations in IBM Instana Observability are mostly reliable, though it depends on the filter I put. The problem is that the filter is somewhat complex to integrate.
IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted our organization by decreasing our 500 errors. Our errors in general have decreased, our response time has decreased, and so on.
What needs improvement?
The interface of IBM Instana Observability is really slow, especially when there is a lot of data and when there are a lot of traces. The interface almost hangs up.
The alerting integrations in IBM Instana Observability are mostly reliable, though it depends on the filter I put. The problem is that the filter is somewhat complex to integrate.
I had many false positives with IBM Instana Observability. Then I fixed the filters and it became more accurate on the errors reported. Also, errors gradually decreased from around 10 to 500 errors per 100 calls to one or two.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Instana Observability since I joined Ejada, for about two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM Instana Observability scales well.
How are customer service and support?
I did not encounter customer support for IBM Instana Observability.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution before IBM Instana Observability.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with IBM Instana Observability, but we do not have really solid metrics. I can only say that we saved time, especially in the response time department. It made a notable difference from when we were almost blind to being able to respond to calls immediately.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for IBM Instana Observability was fair. It is not that costly, especially since we only use two instances.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM Instana Observability, we did not evaluate other options.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using IBM Instana Observability is to set up your alerts correctly to avoid false positives. I would rate this product 7 out of 10.