The article discusses the current state of observability tools, with a focus on OpenTelemetry (OTel). Drawing on 27 years of experience, the author outlines various pricing models from popular vendors like New Relic, Datadog, and Dynatrace. They emphasize the importance of being transparent about costs—but point out that OTel does not fully address existing challenges in the field. The article serves as both an exploration of new developments and a call for clarity in product pricing within this evolving industry.
New Relic charges 35¢ per GB for any data you send them, although the pricing page doesn't make this particularly clear.
Datadog has a veritable laundry list of options, charging $15-$34 per host alongside various prices for netflow and log records.
Dynatrace's pricing page lists several options, emphasizing that while Grafana is open source and free if hosted by the user, other services have set pricing.
After 27 years in monitoring and observability, I've seen plenty of tools rise and fall, but the practicality of observability tools like OTel remains crucial.
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