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Felipe Lopes - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering Manager at Alice
Real User
Oct 17, 2022
You can create dashboards to instantly see your business, technical, and service metrics
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is straightforward with just a few clicks on the solution's cloud."
  • "The solution has improved our organization by providing a centralized way to instantly see our business, technical, and service metrics."
  • "The solution has room for improvement with a better API to help automate the construction of the dashboards easier."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case of the solution is to create business and technical dashboards in the metrics provided by the services through Prometheus.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution has improved our organization by providing a centralized way to instantly see our business, technical, and service metrics.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the user-friendly interface and the ability to connect with many data sets.

What needs improvement?

The solution has room for improvement with a better API to help automate the construction of the dashboards easier.

Buyer's Guide
Grafana
October 2026
Learn what your peers think about Grafana. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously we used New Relic before switching to the solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward with just a few clicks on the solution's cloud.

What about the implementation team?

The solution was implemented in-house with a few clicks.

What was our ROI?

I have seen a return on investment.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

There are 40 people using the solution in our organization and it requires three people to maintain it.

I would recommend you try to use as many tools as you can. You can have an ecosystem that is quiet and works like using Temple, Prometheus, and so on.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
AbhishekGupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering Leader at Walmart
Real User
Oct 10, 2022
Beneficial operational excellence, reliable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good."
  • "Grafana has helped our organization with observability and operational excellence."
  • "The look and feel of the charting and graph capabilities in Grafana could improve. If they provided a storyboard type of feature as they have in other solutions, such as PowerBI. The multi-tenanted and stitch metrics features could improve."
  • "The look and feel of the charting and graph capabilities in Grafana could improve."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Grafana for observability dashboards.

How has it helped my organization?

Grafana has helped our organization with observability and operational excellence. Operational excellence is a key part of any organization from a data platform perspective and setting the alerts and monitoring policies on Grafana was easy.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good.

What needs improvement?

The look and feel of the charting and graph capabilities in Grafana could improve. If they provided a storyboard type of feature as they have in other solutions, such as PowerBI. The multi-tenanted and stitch metrics features could improve.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Grafana for a couple of years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of Grafana is good. I have not seen any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Grafana has been scalable in the pipelines we have used it in. We have 10,000 web links for 10,000 Grafana dashboards.

How are customer service and support?

I have not used the support from Grafana.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We had set up our own monitoring and metrics dashboards and custom dashboards prior to Grafana.

How was the initial setup?

I have not set up Grafana but my team has found it easy to do. We have an automated setup of Grafana. Every new pipeline gets created, and it creates a deep link into a Grafana dashboard.

What was our ROI?

Grafana is good as a solution because it is easy to offset monitoring and alerting policies in Grafana.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Grafana a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Grafana
October 2026
Learn what your peers think about Grafana. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IT Analyst at Hydro Quebec
Real User
Aug 30, 2022
Agent-free with great dashboards and an active community
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a stable, reliable product."
  • "It would be helpful if they simplified the data source."
  • "In the area of documentation, they must do a better job."

What is our primary use case?

It's for monitoring our infrastructure. They have some databases and some applications running Java. There are some Kubernetes and old Kubernetes deployments. The company wanted to visualize the logs and send some application sys logs. This is the main utilization.

It's a web application, Tomcat application, Java application, and database application. They are the main focus for collecting the application or system logs.

What is most valuable?

There is no agent to install. There are many dashboards also. 

There is an active community where you can gather a lot of information about how the solution works. I come from Splunk. If I compare it with Splunk, Splunk has its own SPL, for example. You can play with the dashboard. There is some advantages in common with SPL. Visualization and collecting logs it's similar. However, Grafana is trying to cover many types of open-source infrastructure. This is why I appreciate Grafana versus, for example, Splunk.

The initial setup is not difficult. 

It is a stable, reliable product. 

What needs improvement?

They are doing well in terms of improvements they're making. They progressed much in dashboarding. However, it's very, very complicated when you start to understand how you make dashboards. You need to figure out how you collect and source your logs, for example. In the area of documentation, they must do a better job. Splunk documentation is much more organized than Grafana. Since it's open-source, you have to test your infrastructure more. You need to really understand it before you install it. 

It would be helpful if they simplified the data source.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for about a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

You have to plan. You have a certain number or gigabit of logs that you can index. You also have a limited number of series. For users, I don't remember if we had any issues adding users. However, there is a cost per the size of the logs or the number of series. Scaling will drive costs up. Right now, our IT and development team is on the product. They are encouraging other departments to try it out. 

How are customer service and support?

The department where we worked has used support. We had to collaborate with Grafana since sometimes we were applying some solution that was not working. The logs were not coming and there were some errors. We had to open tickets and deal with the supplier to resolve the issues.

From my experience, when dealing with Splunk, for example, it's a big company and sometimes I have to deal with people that have no knowledge. However, with Grafana, we don't have that issue. They are good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In one company, they asked me to play with Grafana and Prometheus. I've used them both.

I've used Splunk as well. It's not an open-source product. 

How was the initial setup?

It is very easy to set up the solution. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

It's a couple of months before you start. For example, for a company that doesn't have any experience, they need to take time to understand it, especially if they only have a sys admin and not a senior person. 

In our case, we did a lot of testing and installed it on a virtual machine. You do have a couple of months to play with it before you decide to go into production. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have a license. The pricing varies. It depends on the number of metrics that you want to ingest per day.

What other advice do I have?

We are a customer and end-user.

If you use this product for the first time, I would encourage you to try some sort of live demo. Go to see the product in action and understand how it works, and test it. To install it in the cloud, you can have a free license at the start or a limited license for some events. You can try to play with the product and create some dashboarding to ingest some logs. 

You don't have to install the whole thing as it's complicated to install the whole product, and you need many machines, CPUs, and memory. It's a good idea to try it out in a small way to see if it fits your needs or if you like it.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I had a good experience testing the solution.

This is a good solution for companies that are using, for example, open source or Linux options for all the tools or those coming from the world of open source.

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?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Faustine Chisasa - PeerSpot reviewer
Faustine ChisasaSystem Administrator at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Top 5Real User

Insightful review!

reviewer2535048 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Aug 16, 2024
Can monitor metrics on dashboards but needs to have own query language
Pros and Cons
  • "It's easy to make changes. We can put many dashboards in one place. There's no delay in showing data - what you see on Grafana matches the server metrics."
  • "Grafana could improve by having its own query language. Currently, it uses languages like Prometheus or InfluxDB, which not everyone knows. Their query language should be easier."

What is our primary use case?

We use the tool to monitor metrics on dashboards. 

What is most valuable?

It's easy to make changes. We can put many dashboards in one place. There's no delay in showing data - what you see on Grafana matches the server metrics.

What needs improvement?

Grafana could improve by having its own query language. Currently, it uses languages like Prometheus or InfluxDB, which not everyone knows. Their query language should be easier.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the product for four years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, our on-premises version was mixed, but the cloud version is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My company has 2000 users. 

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Grafana is moderately difficult, especially writing query languages and custom metrics. Creating custom metrics requires writing new query language at the server level, which can be challenging.

What other advice do I have?

If you want to use Grafana for the first time, I'd say you can. It's cost-effective compared to other products like Datadog. But if cost isn't an issue, I'd recommend Datadog. For beginners, learning to use Grafana is moderately difficult. I rate it a seven out of ten. 

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Google
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Łukasz Zawrotny - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer / Systems & Storage at Vernity
Real User
Jan 30, 2024
A tool that users can understand and learn quickly to use
Pros and Cons
  • "The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
  • "I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation."

What is our primary use case?

I use Grafana since it is interconnected with Zabbix. I also use Grafana for the dashboard of machines from VMware and for some network devices connected to Zabbix.

What is most valuable?

The ability to use Grafana with Zabbix is a valuable feature for me. Zabbix provides me with alerts and information if something goes wrong, while Grafana offers a better dashboard that is more stable. If you know Grafana well, it can show you everything, like the uptime of different sources and other areas.

What needs improvement?

I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation. There is a problem in the area of some graphs where you connect elements. With Grafana, there is only one name that can be included for ten hours. In Grafana, only one big field with one text name is shown in the documentation. When it comes to production, it is only for a period of time that some fields on each side give the information they have. I researched on Google and other forums and saw that people face problems when they can't connect a field with the same value. The aforementioned area in the tool needs improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Grafana for nine months. I am a customer of the product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have always had a stable version of the product. In general, I have not had any issues with the product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The technical personnel in my company use the tool, and it is possible to add or delete devices and other statuses in the solution. Around five people in my company use the product.

How are customer service and support?

I have always used the online forums or the internet to find information related to the product. I have not contacted the tool's technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution. I don't know if there are different paid versions of the product.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My company chose Grafana over other products in the market considering its integration capabilities with Zabbix, good documentation, and the many topics about the tool that are available on the internet.

What other advice do I have?

I would suggest Grafana to those who use Zabbix because it helps users get a lot of information on networks and resolve a lot of problems.

I could do everything in Grafana with the help of graphs and documentation and get information on different types of devices.

I rate the overall tool an eight to nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2132970 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Operations Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Apr 13, 2023
Good dashboard and user forums but needs more plugins
Pros and Cons
  • "The dashboards are very easy to work with."
  • "There are not a lot of plugins for financial market monitoring."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution in a financial institution to monitor applications and infrastructure. 

What is most valuable?

We really only started. 

So far, the management is very good.

The dashboards are very easy to work with. 

It's a fantastic tool.

Support is helpful. There are many useful forums users can turn to as well.

It can scale.

The stability is good.

What needs improvement?

There are not a lot of plugins for financial market monitoring. Our old tool had more plugin capabilities. 

We need more AI features. We need more data analytics and monitoring done by AI.

For how long have I used the solution?

We just started using the solution. We haven't used it for that long. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable. There are no issues with reliability. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I'd rate the scalability nine out of ten. It can extend well. 

How are customer service and support?

The team that is implementing the solution has relied quite a bit on the support and forums, and so far, it has been helpful. So far, we are satisfied with the level of support on offer. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used to use a different solution. It had very specific tools for fixed message monitoring, among other features, that were useful for finance companies. Grafana doesn't have much that tailors to our sector. 

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the implementation. I work with the team that has implemented it. 

What other advice do I have?

We're a customer and end-user. 

We are likely using the latest version of the solution. I'm not sure of the version number. 

I'd rate the solution six out of ten. So far, I can't say it's doing more than our older monitoring was doing. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Varaprasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Lead
Real User
Mar 29, 2023
Great heat maps and dashboards with decent reliability
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution can scale well."
  • "The formatting could be better."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for site visibility.

How has it helped my organization?

It helps us monitor our applications and their performance, including CPU.

What is most valuable?

The heat maps are great.

We like the dashboards on offer. 

It's a stable product.

The solution can scale well.

Pricing isn't overly expensive.

Technical support is good. 

What needs improvement?

I cannot think of any specific issues we've had.

We'd like an enhancement of legends and labels in the UI. The formatting could be better. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for two years. I haven't used it for too long just yet. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'd rate the stability eight out of ten. There aren't bugs or glitches that I have noticed. It doesn't crash or freeze. I find it to be reliable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I'd rate the scalability eight out of ten. It can extend well. 

We had 50 or more people using it in my previous organization. 

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is fine. They have been helpful and responsive. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I'm not sure if it is easy to set up the solution. I did not handle the deployment. 

What was our ROI?

I have not looked into the ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is moderate. It is neither too expensive nor overly cheap. 

What other advice do I have?

I am using the latest version of the solution. 

As a cloud solution, it is very good. Many organizations are going to the cloud, and Grafana is the best way to monitor those cloud environments.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It is a good solution. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2126454 - PeerSpot reviewer
Backend Dev at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Real User
Mar 25, 2023
Gives the visibility we need, and increases productivity and observability
Pros and Cons
  • "It gives us the visibility we need. I like that when we add deployment markers or release markers, we know exactly when an issue arises. For instance, if there is an increased usage of CPU, we can link it directly to the deployment that might have caused the issue. It increases productivity and observability. We can now easily tell when a certain issue arises. It's way easier to debug because it can point you to certain things based on these markers, and we can debug easier."
  • "It's difficult to see the trends on the graph when the range is too long."

What is our primary use case?

We have a few use cases. We have charts for infrastructure, CPU usage, etc. We have included a lot of metrics for WAFs. We also have some customer metrics and business metrics, such as any number of transactions for a specific action happening on the site. 

What is most valuable?

It gives us the visibility we need. I like that when we add deployment markers or release markers, we know exactly when an issue arises. For instance, if there is an increased usage of CPU, we can link it directly to the deployment that might have caused the issue. It increases productivity and observability. We can now easily tell when a certain issue arises. It's way easier to debug because it can point you to certain things based on these markers, and we can debug easier.

What needs improvement?

It's difficult to see the trends on the graph when the range is too long. 

For how long have I used the solution?

At the company, they'd been using Grafana since I joined. It has been about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been working fine for us.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With our workload, it's working fine. Going by that, I'd rate it a 10 out of 10, but I don't know about the other cases.

How are customer service and support?

I've not contacted them.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I don't know if it's the same, but we were using CloudWatch in AWS.

Honeycomb is also similar to this. With all the metrics and performances, you can build dashboards, but I'm new to it.

How was the initial setup?

Our team has two people who are in charge of that, but I'm not aware of its implementation.  

What other advice do I have?

I don't have much experience with other tools, but for my specific case, it has been working great. I'd rate it a 10 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Senior Consultant at Tata Consultancy
Real User
Feb 22, 2023
Great visualization tool, but could have better UI
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable thing was that it had a good visualization tool."
  • "Its UI features to create charts can also be improved. Some features could have a link to the documentation."

What is most valuable?

I was using a restricted version of Grafana where I didn't have the option to create alerts and didn't have direct options to build dashboards. We used the already built-in dashboards there. Therefore, the most valuable thing was that it had a good visualization tool where we got better clarity on the issues to select the timeline and see the data or charts. So, the visualization tool is the most valuable feature I found.

What needs improvement?

It could be more user-friendly. For example, if I need to build a chart, I first need to sit and learn something on Grafana to write a query to create a chart, it is not user-friendly. 

Its UI features to create charts can also be improved. Some features could have a link to the documentation. 

Another thing I would like is the alerting feature because it was not there in the version I was using.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Grafana is a stable product because with whatever frequency I have used this tool, I have never faced any downtime. Grafana's dashboard is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable product because we used Grafana on-prem, with only one server. If we need to add more Grafana servers, it is possible.

How are customer service and support?

I did not use Grafana that much as it was a built-in application of the company I worked at.

What other advice do I have?

Grafana does not have straightforward documentation or direct answers on help pages. I would suggest Grafana users get support from another user or someone who already has used Grafana. While using Grafana, we need to understand how the queries are written to build a new chart. A new user would need to explore it, how it works, how to install it, etc. It would make it easier to use Grafana.

I give Grafana a rating of six out of ten because it is not very user-friendly. It also needs clear documentation and requires time to get started.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Product Owner at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Feb 15, 2023
Easy to deploy, and stable, but the multiple dashboards are complex
Pros and Cons
  • "Grafana is able to connect with multiple data sources, unlike Elasticsearch."
  • "There is room for improvement when using multiple dashboards because they can become complicated to keep track of and use."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution as a dashboard and visualization tool for our business units.

What is most valuable?

Grafana is able to connect with multiple data sources, unlike Elasticsearch.

What needs improvement?

There is room for improvement when using multiple dashboards because they can become complicated to keep track of and use.

I would like to have alerting functions added to the solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Pearl and PHP but they were outdated.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are using the open-source license.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

The solution requires one day a week for maintenance.

We have 200 people using the solution in our organization.

We built a web service around Prometheus and Grafana and control them through the web API, which is very helpful with deployment.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Grafana Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: October 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Grafana Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.