Published on: Dec 01, 2023
Last updated: Jul 26, 2024

FullStory vs DataDog: Comparison & Best Alternatives

Inspectlet and FullStory are two popular digital analytics software applications for businesses. But which is better? We break that down.

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In the dynamic world of digital analytics, finding the right solution to monitor, analyze, and enhance user experiences can be a challenging task. Two leading contenders in this space are FullStory and DataDog. Both provide powerful platforms that cater to different aspects of user experience analytics, yet their approaches, features, and focus areas vary significantly.

In this article, we will conduct a detailed comparison of FullStory and DataDog and also discuss some of the best alternatives available in the market. Let's dive in!

What is FullStory?

Fullstory

FullStory is a digital experience intelligence platform that provides businesses with critical insights to improve user experiences on their websites and apps. It captures customer experience data, offers pixel-perfect session playback, and helps analyze user interactions for high-impact digital improvements.

What Is DataDog?

datadog

DataDog is a cloud-based observability service that provides monitoring and analytics for cloud-scale applications. It collects data from servers, containers, databases, and other tools and services, offering IT and DevOps teams insights into performance metrics to optimize their systems.

FullStory vs. DataDog: Features Comparison

In the following section, we'll compare the features offered by FullStory and DataDog to help you understand their similarities and differences.

FullStory

  • Complete Data Capture: FullStory offers comprehensive data capture, allowing you to record and replay every customer interaction on your website or app. This includes mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, form submissions, and more.
  • Tagless Autofeature: FullStory automatically detects and tags important elements on your website without requiring you to manually add any tags. This makes it easier to track and analyze specific user interactions and behaviors.
  • Frustration Signals: FullStory can identify frustration signals in your users' interactions, such as error messages, slow loading times, or confusing workflows. This helps you pinpoint areas of your website or app that may be causing frustration for your users.
  • Journey Mapping: FullStory's journey mapping feature allows you to visualize and understand the paths that users take on your website or app. This helps you identify common user flows and potential areas for improvement.
  • Session Replay: FullStory records and replays individual user sessions, allowing you to see exactly what each user did on your website or app. This can be invaluable for troubleshooting issues or understanding user behavior.
  • Heatmaps: FullStory generates heatmaps that visually represent user engagement and interaction patterns on your website or app. This can help you identify areas of high or low engagement, optimize content placement, and improve user experience.

DataDog

  • Browser Real User Monitoring: DataDog's Real User Monitoring feature allows you to monitor and analyze user behavior and performance on web browsers, helping you understand how users interact with your website and identify potential issues.
  • Session Replay: DataDog's Session Replay feature allows you to record and replay user sessions, giving you a visual representation of their journey on your website or application. This helps you identify usability issues, track user flows, and improve overall user experience.
  • Error Tracking: DataDog's Error Tracking feature enables you to track, monitor, and analyze application errors in real-time, helping you identify and resolve issues quickly to ensure a smooth user experience.
  • CI Visibility: DataDog provides visibility into your continuous integration (CI) pipelines, allowing you to monitor and troubleshoot the performance of your CI processes, identify bottlenecks, and improve overall software delivery efficiency.
  • CoScreen: DataDog's CoScreen feature enables team collaboration by allowing members to share screens, making it easier to troubleshoot issues, discuss code, and work together remotely.
  • Integrations: DataDog offers integrations with various tools and services, allowing you to consolidate data from multiple sources and streamline your workflows. This enables you to centralize your monitoring and analysis efforts for more efficient operation.

FullStory vs. DataDog: use case comparison

When it comes to deciding if FullStory or DataDog is the right fit for your business, it ultimately comes down to your specific use case and needs.

FullStory

FullStory is a versatile tool that can benefit various teams, including product management, engineering, marketing, and customer success. Product managers can gain insights into user behavior, engineers can identify and resolve technical issues, marketers can optimize campaigns, and customer success teams can provide personalized support. With its ability to track user interactions and provide deep insights, FullStory proves valuable across multiple departments.

DataDog

DataDog is a versatile monitoring and analytics platform suitable for various industries. It is beneficial for financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, government, education, media, technology, and gaming. From monitoring system performance to optimizing processes and enhancing customer experiences, DataDog offers valuable solutions across multiple sectors.

FullStory vs. DataDog: user reviews comparison

In this section, we'll cover user reviews for both FullStory and DataDog. Both tools have a good rating, with FullStory scoring 4.5/5 and DataDog scoring 4.3/5 on G2 Crowd.

FullStory

FullStory has a 4.5 rating out of 5-star rating based on 357 independent reviews.

Users talk about how FullStory makes it easier to view user sessions for companies to support their users with difficulties or questions. Additionally,  it helps companies with their pre-built QPIs, such as RageClick, ErrorClick, and DeadClick, which are valuable. Negative reviews mention that the search function is very confusing and not extensive enough.

DataDog

DataDog has a 4.3 out of 5-star rating based on 436 independent reviews.

Users talk about how amazing of a resource it is for monitoring logs across various microservices and the importance of debugging unhandled exceptions in production. Additionally, Datadog has a simple-to-understand user interface. Negative reviews mention how the licensing cost is very high compared to other monitoring platforms.

FullStory vs. DataDog: pricing comparison

In this section, we'll compare the pricing plans offered by FullStory and DataDog.

DataDog

DataDog offers a free plan that includes a 1-day metric retention and up to 5 hosts. The paid plans start at $15 per host per month.

FullStory

Fullstory does not offer pricing information on its website. Instead, they provide a customized quote based on the user's specific needs and requirements.

Alternative to FullStory and DataDog: Fullview

GDPR-Compliant Solution

Fullview stands out as an EU-based solution ensuring absolute GDPR compliance and securing data storage on European servers. For those inclined towards US storage, Fullview seamlessly accommodates that preference.

In-Depth User Behavior Insights

What distinguishes Fullview from its counterparts is its unique capacity to capture each user interaction on your website through session replays, delivering a thorough perspective on user behavior. A notable feature of Fullview is its automatic identification of console warnings, errors, and indicators of user frustration, such as rage clicks. These points are distinctly highlighted on the video timeline, simplifying navigation through relevant sections.

Empowering Cobrowsing Tool

Additionally, Fullview introduces cobrowsing, a tool empowering support agents and product developers to initiate calls with users, assume control of their screens, and promptly address any support tickets, bugs, or implementation challenges. Moreover, Fullview ensures straightforward issue diagnosis by incorporating console logs for all session replays and cobrowsing calls.

Flexible Pricing Alternatives

Furthermore, Fullview has a 'forever free' plan encompassing 4 cobrowsing calls and 1000 session replays per month. For more extensive requirements, competitive paid plans commence at just $49/seat for cobrowsing and $79 monthly for session replays, positioning Fullview as one of the most budget-friendly session replay tools available.

Customer-Centric Philosophy

Diverging from other tools, Fullview adopts a customer identity-centric approach, furnishing invaluable insights into the specific customers engaging in sessions—a particularly advantageous feature for customer support teams. With Fullview, you can observe both live and historical sessions. Its robust filtering and segmentation capabilities empower you to craft custom views based on selected filters, readily accessible on your dashboard.

Streamlined Implementation

A notable advantage of Fullview lies in its straightforward implementation—no downloads are necessary, and you can be up and running in mere minutes.

Sources used:

Sources last checked on: 21-Nov-2023

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