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New Relic vs Papertrail: What are the differences?
Key Differences between New Relic and Papertrail
New Relic and Papertrail are both popular software solutions used for monitoring and troubleshooting applications and servers. However, there are several key differences between the two:
Feature Set: New Relic is a comprehensive application performance monitoring (APM) tool that provides detailed insights into application performance, user experience, and infrastructure monitoring. It offers features like transaction tracing, error analytics, and real user monitoring. On the other hand, Papertrail is primarily a log management tool that focuses on centralizing and analyzing log data from various sources. It offers features like real-time log search, alerts, and log archiving.
Scope: New Relic provides monitoring capabilities for both applications and infrastructure. It can monitor the performance of applications running on various platforms and frameworks, as well as the underlying infrastructure components such as servers, databases, and cloud services. Papertrail, on the other hand, is specifically designed for log management and analysis and does not offer detailed insights into application performance or infrastructure monitoring.
Deployment: New Relic is typically deployed as a software agent that runs alongside the application being monitored, collecting performance data directly from the application code. It provides libraries and plugins for various programming languages and platforms. Papertrail, on the other hand, is a cloud-based service that works by collecting log data from different sources, including log files, syslog, and cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Heroku.
Cost Structure: New Relic follows a subscription-based pricing model, where the cost is based on the features and the number of monitored entities (e.g., applications, servers, databases). The pricing usually scales with the usage and the level of features required. Papertrail, on the other hand, offers a usage-based pricing model, where the cost is determined by the volume of log data ingested and stored. The pricing may vary based on the retention period and the storage capacity needed.
Integration Ecosystem: New Relic has a rich ecosystem of integrations with various third-party tools and services. It offers pre-built integrations with popular frameworks, libraries, and cloud platforms, allowing users to leverage their existing tools and workflows. Papertrail also provides integrations with some third-party services but has a more limited ecosystem compared to New Relic.
In summary, New Relic is a comprehensive APM tool that provides detailed performance monitoring for applications and infrastructure, while Papertrail is a log management tool that focuses on centralizing and analyzing log data. New Relic has a wider scope and feature set, with more emphasis on application performance, while Papertrail is specifically tailored for log management. The deployment models, cost structure, and integration ecosystems also differ between the two.
We are looking for a centralised monitoring solution for our application deployed on Amazon EKS. We would like to monitor using metrics from Kubernetes, AWS services (NeptuneDB, AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, etc) and application microservice's custom metrics.
We are expected to use around 80 microservices (not replicas). I think a total of 200-250 microservices will be there in the system with 10-12 slave nodes.
We tried Prometheus but it looks like maintenance is a big issue. We need to manage scaling, maintaining the storage, and dealing with multiple exporters and Grafana. I felt this itself needs few dedicated resources (at least 2-3 people) to manage. Not sure if I am thinking in the correct direction. Please confirm.
You mentioned Datadog and Sysdig charges per host. Does it charge per slave node?
Can't say anything to Sysdig. I clearly prefer Datadog as
- they provide plenty of easy to "switch-on" plugins for various technologies (incl. most of AWS)
- easy to code (python) agent plugins / api for own metrics
- brillant dashboarding / alarms with many customization options
- pricing is OK, there are cheaper options for specific use cases but if you want superior dashboarding / alarms I haven't seen a good competitor (despite your own Prometheus / Grafana / Kibana dog food)
IMHO NewRelic is "promising since years" ;) good ideas but bad integration between their products. Their Dashboard query language is really nice but lacks critical functions like multiple data sets or advanced calculations. Needless to say you get all of that with Datadog.
Need help setting up a monitoring / logging / alarm infrastructure? Send me a message!
Hi Medeti,
you are right. Building based on your stack something with open source is heavy lifting. A lot of people I know start with such a set-up, but quickly run into frustration as they need to dedicated their best people to build a monitoring which is doing the job in a professional way.
As you are microservice focussed and are looking for 'low implementation and maintenance effort', you might want to have a look at INSTANA, which was built with modern tool stacks in mind. https://www.instana.com/apm-for-microservices/
We have a public sand-box available if you just want to have a look at the product once and of course also a free-trial: https://www.instana.com/getting-started-with-apm/
Let me know if you need anything on top.
I have hands on production experience both with New Relic and Datadog. I personally prefer Datadog over NewRelic because of the UI, the Documentation and the overall user/developer experience.
NewRelic however, can do basically the same things as Datadog can, and some of the features like alerting have been present in NewRelic for longer than in Datadog. The cool thing about NewRelic is their last-summer-updated pricing: you no longer pay per host but after data you send towards New Relic. This can be a huge cost saver depending on your particular setup
I'd go for Datadog, but given you have lots of containers I would also make a cost calculation. If the price difference is significant and there's a budget constraint NewRelic might be the better choice.
I haven't heard much about Datadog until about a year ago. Ironically, the NewRelic sales person who I had a series of trainings with was trash talking about Datadog a lot. That drew my attention to Datadog and I gave it a try at another client project where we needed log handling, dashboards and alerting.
In 2019, Datadog was already offering log management and from that perspective, it was ahead of NewRelic. Other than that, from my perspective, the two tools are offering a very-very similar set of tools. Therefore I wouldn't say there's a significant difference between the two, the decision is likely a matter of taste. The pricing is also very similar.
The reasons why we chose Datadog over NewRelic were:
- The presence of log handling feature (since then, logging is GA at NewRelic as well since falls 2019).
- The setup was easier even though I already had experience with NewRelic, including participation in NewRelic trainings.
- The UI of Datadog is more compact and my experience is smoother.
- The NewRelic UI is very fragmented and New Relic One is just increasing this experience for me.
- The log feature of Datadog is very well designed, I find very useful the tagging logs with services. The log filtering is also very awesome.
Bottom line is that both tools are great and it makes sense to discover both and making the decision based on your use case. In our case, Datadog was the clear winner due to its UI, ease of setup and the awesome logging and alerting features.
I chose Datadog APM because the much better APM insights it provides (flamegraph, percentiles by default).
The drawbacks of this decision are we had to move our production monitoring to TimescaleDB + Telegraf instead of NR Insight
NewRelic is definitely easier when starting out. Agent is only a lib and doesn't require a daemon
Pros of New Relic
- Easy setup415
- Really powerful344
- Awesome visualization244
- Ease of use194
- Great ui151
- Free tier107
- Great tool for insights80
- Heroku Integration66
- Market leader55
- Peace of mind49
- Push notifications21
- Email notifications20
- Heroku Add-on17
- Error Detection and Alerting16
- Multiple language support13
- Server Resources Monitoring11
- SQL Analysis11
- Transaction Tracing9
- Azure Add-on8
- Apdex Scores8
- Detailed reports7
- Analysis of CPU, Disk, Memory, and Network7
- Application Response Times6
- Performance of External Services6
- Application Availability Monitoring and Alerting6
- Error Analysis6
- JVM Performance Analyzer (Java)5
- Most Time Consuming Transactions5
- Top Database Operations4
- Easy to use4
- Browser Transaction Tracing4
- Application Map3
- Weekly Performance Email3
- Custom Dashboards3
- Pagoda Box integration3
- App Speed Index2
- Easy to setup2
- Background Jobs Transaction Analysis2
- Time Comparisons1
- Access to Performance Data API1
- Super Expensive1
- Team Collaboration Tools1
- Metric Data Retention1
- Metric Data Resolution1
- Worst Transactions by User Dissatisfaction1
- Real User Monitoring Overview1
- Real User Monitoring Analysis and Breakdown1
- Free1
- Best of the best, what more can you ask for1
- Best monitoring on the market1
- Rails integration1
- Incident Detection and Alerting1
- Cost0
- Exceptions0
- Price0
- Proce0
Pros of Papertrail
- Log search85
- Easy log aggregation across multiple machines43
- Integrates with Heroku43
- Simple interface37
- Backup to S326
- Easy setup, independent of existing logging setup19
- Heroku add-on15
- Command line interface3
- Alerting1
- Good for Startups1
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Cons of New Relic
- Pricing model doesn't suit microservices20
- UI isn't great10
- Expensive7
- Visualizations aren't very helpful7
- Hard to understand why things in your app are breaking5
Cons of Papertrail
- Expensive2
- External Network Goes Down You Wont Be Logging1
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