The Best Amazon Web Services (AWS) Monitoring Services & Tools

Monitoring cloud infrastructure on AWS is one of the most complex responsibilities for IT and DevOps teams today. Without proper tools in place, teams can struggle with delayed alerts, missing logs, blind spots in performance issues, and unexpected cost spikes. As organizations scale, their AWS environment often becomes harder to manage, with multiple services running across accounts, regions, and configurations.

To avoid performance bottlenecks, security misconfigurations, and cost overruns, you need a dedicated AWS monitoring tool. These platforms help you track real-time metrics, visualize system health, receive timely alerts, and optimize costs.

They specifically address these common pain points:

• Limited visibility across AWS services and regions
• Delays in detecting system failures or performance degradation
• Alert fatigue due to excessive, non-prioritized notifications
• Manual tracking of service usage and costs
• Lack of compliance visibility and audit readiness

In this article, our team reviewed and analyzed the most effective AWS monitoring tools. Whether you run a single cloud workload or manage an enterprise-scale architecture, our guide will help you choose the right tool for better control, faster insights, and smarter cloud management.

Here are the best AWS monitoring tools & services:

1. eG Enterprise AWS Monitoring (FREE TRIAL) Choose to take this monitoring service as a SaaS service or an on-premises software package. Either way, you will be able to monitor cloud platforms, such as AWS, as well as your on-premises resources. Access a 30-day free trial.
2. ManageEngine Applications Manager (FREE TRIAL) A system monitor that runs on Linux or Windows and can monitor AWS and other online services.
3. Site24x7 AWS Monitoring (FREE TRIAL) A cloud-based service that can monitoring servers wherever they are. This monitoring capability extends to cloud services, such as AWS. The infrastructure monitor also includes connection supervision.
4. Nagios XI Popular network monitoring tool that can be extended by plugins to monitor AWS and other cloud-based services.
5. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor A combined network, server, and applications monitor that is capable of monitoring cloud-based services, such as AWS.
6. Datadog AWS Monitoring Server and application monitoring tools that work well for cloud-based systems, such as AWS. You can consolidate the monitoring of multiple AWS services and also your accounts on other cloud platforms.
7. Dynatrace An AWS APN Advanced Technology Partner that will monitor E, EBS, ELB, S3, and RDS as well as applications on your on-premises servers.
8. AppDynamics Monitor E, ECS, EKS, AWS Lambda, and AWS Fargate with this network monitor.
9. Zenoss This system monitoring package is available in a free version, called Zenoss Community Edition, and paid versions that operate on-premises and as a SaaS package. All versions include AWS monitoring via an extension.
10. Splunk A very well-known network analyzer that extends to cloud servers, including AWS.
11. Opsview An infrastructure monitor that can monitor on-premises, cloud, or hybrid systems and includes AWS monitoring.
12. Zabbix A free infrastructure monitor that runs on Linux and can monitor AWS and other cloud-based resources.

Key Points to Consider Before Purchasing an AWS Monitoring Service

Selecting the right AWS monitoring software makes a big difference in the control and visibility you have over your AWS infrastructure. More importantly, it can impact the efficiency and performance of your systems as well.

The ground rule is that the AWS monitoring service must fit into your existing infrastructure and align with your organization’s systems and operations. Additionally, consider the following key points.

• Depth of AWS Integration: Look for platforms that natively integrate with core AWS services like EC2, RDS, Lambda, S3, ELB, CloudFront, VPC, and CloudWatch. Support for tagging, autoscaling, and AWS Config is a bonus.
• Real-Time Alerting: The tool should offer real-time or near real-time monitoring with thresholds, anomaly detection, and the ability to prioritize alerts by severity or affected service.
• Ease of Deployment: Opt for tools that offer automatic discovery, support for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), and quick onboarding through CloudFormation templates or integrations with AWS Marketplace.
• Visualization and Dashboards: The platform’s dashboards must be intuitive enough to help teams understand performance trends, cost spikes, and service dependencies at a glance. Bonus if the tool includes drag-and-drop widgets and templates for specific AWS services.
• Cost Monitoring: Look for tools that efficiently track usage and also provide spending forecasts, cost allocation by project or team, and support for Reserved Instance (RI) and Savings Plan tracking.
• Security and Compliance: If you’re handling sensitive data or must meet regulatory standards, ensure the tool supports the monitoring of security configurations like S3 bucket permissions, security groups, and IAM policies. It also helps if it supports compliance with standards like CIS, SOC 2, PCI DSS, or HIPAA.
• Scalability: If you’re operating in a multi-account or multi-region setup, the tool should offer centralized monitoring and support for AWS Organizations or consolidated billing.
• Third-Party Integrations: Integration with incident response platforms like PagerDuty or Opsgenie, ticketing systems like Jira or ServiceNow, and collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams can improve your operational efficiency.
• Historical Data Retention: Retention periods vary by tool. If your organization needs to analyze trends or meet audit requirements, make sure the platform stores historical data for the timeframes you need.

How to Calculate the ROI of AWS Monitoring Software

Investing in AWS monitoring software can undoubtedly be beneficial, as you will reduce downtime, improve performance visibility, and control costs. However, to select the tool that offers the best return of investment, follow our structured approach described in the steps below.

Step 1: Establish Your Metrics

Before buying, assess the current challenges and how they impact operations. Metrics to track include:

• Average number of performance issues or outages per month.
• Average time spent resolving each issue.
• Revenue or operational loss per hour of downtime.
• Time spent manually analyzing AWS bills and usage.
• Cost of overprovisioned or idle AWS resources.
• Time and effort spent on compliance reporting or audits.
• Cost of existing monitoring tools.

Step 2: Know the Cost of the New Tool

List all the costs associated with the new monitoring software, which could include the following.

• License or subscription fees.
• Onboarding, training, or setup charges.
• Cost of adding more AWS accounts or users.
• Ongoing support or service fees.
• Any infrastructure overhead.

Step 3: Calculate the Benefits

Now, quantify what you’ll save or gain from switching.

• Fewer outages due to faster detection and resolution.
• Time saved by automated alerting and dashboards.
• Better use of AWS services through usage and cost visibility.
• Avoided costs from rightsizing or turning off unused resources.
• Less time spent generating compliance or audit reports.
• Fewer SLA violations and better customer satisfaction.

Step 4: Plug in the Numbers

Finally, use this formula to calculate your ROI.

• ROI (%) = ((Annual Cost Savings – Total Investment) / Total Investment) × 100
• For example, if your annual savings from reduced downtime and improved usage is $60,000 and the total cost of the monitoring tool is $20,000, the ROI is,
• (($60,000 – $20,000) / $20,000) × 100 = 200%

Use our AWS Monitoring Software ROI Calculator

AWS Monitoring ROI Calculator

The Best Services & Tools for Monitoring AWS

1. eG Enterprise AWS Monitoring (FREE TRIAL)

Best for: Comprehensive, multi-layered AWS performance monitoring with automated root-cause diagnostics

Relevant for: Enterprises managing complex hybrid or multi-cloud environments requiring deep visibility across applications, infrastructure, and user experience

Price: Depends on the deployment model. The SaaS/cloud deployment starts at $125/mo, the subscription model at $100/mo, and perpetual at $10,000

The eG Enterprise monitoring package from eG Innovations is an infrastructure and application monitoring system that is fully customizable. You get a library of screens to choose from and all of them drill down through your applications to give you full-stack observability. This provides instant root cause analysis when performance problems arise, letting you know exactly which service is causing delivery issues.

eG Enterprise’s Key Features:

• Full-Stack Observability: Provides complete visibility into the entire stack for thorough monitoring.
• Over 200 Specialized Monitors: Extensive range of specialized monitors for diverse technological needs.
• Instant Root Cause Analysis: Rapidly pinpoints the source of performance issues.

Unique Business Proposition

An end-to-end monitoring solution that provides unified visibility into AWS services, on-premises systems, and hybrid infrastructures. Its strength lies in its ability to correlate performance metrics across different layers, from user experience to application code, virtual machines, and physical hardware. Furthermore, it supports a wide range of technologies, including Citrix, SAP, VMware, and Microsoft applications.

Feature-in-Focus: Automated Root-Cause Diagnosis

One of eG Enterprise’s standout features is its automated root-cause diagnosis capability. When a performance issue arises, the system automatically analyzes the interdependencies across various components to identify the underlying cause.

Why do we recommend it?

eG Enterprise AWS Monitoring is part of a system-wide monitoring package that is able to look after networks, servers, and applications. The AWS monitoring is part of the tool’s cloud monitoring services, which cover Azure and other platforms as well. This system extracts performance data from AWS Cloudwatch.

The infrastructure monitor is able to watch over the performance of resources on the cloud and on-premises. The eG Enterprise system is very flexible and you need to make decisions about how you want to implement it. The main decision you need to make is whether to take the system as a software package to host yourself or to access the system as a SaaS package.

The eG enterprise system has specialized monitoring services for more than 200 technologies and you probably won’t need all of them. To prevent your menu from being crowded with services that you don’t want, product-specific monitoring screens are provided through a library of plugins.

To get AWS monitoring, you need to activate an integration. This is a free extension that adds on screens to the console and opens up a connection manager to your AWS account.

The eG Innovation website states that the AWS monitoring service is agentless. This is possible because it interfaces to AWS CloudWatch – the monitoring service that is built into the AWS platform. You still need to set up the monitor, however, by giving it the details of your account.

Who is it recommended for?

eG Innovations has created a delivery model that makes the eG Enterprise system suitable for many businesses. It is available as a cloud-based SaaS package and is also offered as a software package, which can be bought outright on a perpetual license or accessed on a subscription. The software package runs on Windows, Linux, and Unix.

The eG Enterprise tool offers a lot more than AWS monitoring, so you really need to check out the system yourself to get a complete picture of its capabilities. If you choose the on-premises option, you can run the software on Windows, Windows Server, Linux, or Unix.

Licensing is evaluated per physical server, which gives you the monitoring capacity for unlimited virtual systems on that platform. The price for the SaaS version starts at $125 per month. You can choose to get the on-premises package on a subscription with a starting price of $100 per month or get a perpetual license for $10,000. Access a 30-day free trial to assess the package.

eG Enterprise Access 30-day FREE Trial

2. ManageEngine Applications Manager (FREE TRIAL)

Best for: Comprehensive AWS monitoring with integrated application performance management

Relevant for: Organizations that need unified visibility across AWS services, on-premises infrastructure, and hybrid environments​

Price: The cost depends on the number of monitors. The starting price for 10 monitors with one user is $395 under the annual subscription model and $995 in the perpetual licensing model

Cloud monitoring is an area that ManageEngine Applications Manager is equipped for inside and out. With ManageEngine Applications Manager you can monitor the health of your cloud services including AWS. The program closely monitors Amazon E and RDS instances to assess the cloud performance and utilization metrics of your service. This performance data can then be converted into a graph for closer inspection.

ManageEngine Applications Manager’s Key Features:

• Cloud and On-Premises Monitoring: Monitors services both in the cloud and on-site for a comprehensive overview.
• AWS-Specific Monitoring: Tailored monitoring routines for AWS services.
• AWS Hosting Capability: Can be hosted directly on AWS for seamless integration.

Unique Business Proposition

It offers a unified monitoring solution that bridges the gap between AWS cloud services and on-premises systems. Its strength lies in providing a single-pane-of-glass view, using which you can monitor diverse environments from a centralized location. The platform supports over 100 technologies to support every IT stack.

Feature-in-Focus: AWS Service Monitoring

This tool provides extensive monitoring for various AWS services, including EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, and Lambda. Moreover, it offers detailed insights into performance metrics like response times, resource utilization, and error rates. This platform’s ability to correlate these metrics across services is a key strength, as it helps identify performance bottlenecks and optimize resource allocation.

Comparitech SupportScore – 9.3

ManageEngine is well-supported and has excellent documentation and resources. Its customer support has also been top-notch based on user reviews. The only downside is its employee satisfaction, which is only 6.5 out of 10. Likewise, its Glassdoor score is also lower than its competitors. Both these numbers could point to a possibly high attrition rate. From a customer standpoint, it could mean drops in customer support, especially during the onboarding process of new employees who will have to go through training to replace the ones who leave.

Despite this, the support score is high because of ManageEngine’s customer support.

Why do we recommend it?

ManageEngine Applications Manager creates an applications dependency map. This discovers all application components, no matter where they are hosted and it will combine the monitoring of software packages, the services they access, and the resources that support them. The tool is able to monitor cloud platforms, such as AWS as well as on-site servers.

When monitoring E instances you can view data such as instance ID, region name, state, platform, public DNS name, availability, and health. The health section is color-coded so that you can tell from a glance if a service is going down. ELB monitoring tracks the activities of the Application Load Balancers, Network Load Balancers, and Classic Load Balancers provided by Amazon’s Elastic Load Balancing service.

Similarly, ManageEngine Applications Manager’s RDS monitoring allows you to view the CPU utilization, database connections, latency metrics, and traffic of RDS instances.

All of this information is displayed in a clear format without any complex displays. However, if you want to integrate ManageEngine Application Manager with another tool then you can make use of the REST API to pull custom metrics from other monitoring solutions.

Who is it recommended for?

This is a large package and, although it includes a great deal of automation in its monitoring processes, it provides more than a small business needs. However, ManageEngine has produced a Free edition, which accounts for this because it has fewer functions. The paid editions are packaged for a single LAN and for multiple sites.

ManageEngine Applications Manager is worth consideration based on its low-maintenance approach to AWS monitoring. The Professional Edition of ManageEngine Applications Manager starts at $945 (£724) for 25 monitors to 250 monitors for $7,195 (£5,514). The Enterprise Edition starts at $9,595 (£7,353) for 250 monitors to $83,995 (£64,375) for 5000 monitors. There is also a 30-day free trial that you can download for Windows and Linux.

ManageEngine Applications Manager Download 30-day FREE Trial

3. Site24x7 AWS Monitoring (FREE TRIAL)

Best for: Monitoring EC2 health, Lambda function performance, and RDS metrics from a single, unified console

Relevant for: IT teams managing a large volume of AWS-native services

Price: There are three plans; Pro starts at $35, Classic at $89, and Enterprise at $225, respectively. All prices are the monthly costs paid annually

Site24x7 is a suite of systems monitors delivered from the cloud. The service is offered in modules and one of these, Infrastructure, is a network, server, and cloud services monitor. This tool is very good at tracking the performance of AWS and fine-tuning the services settings.

Site24x7’s Key Features:

• Integrated AWS Tracking: Seamlessly combines AWS monitoring with other IT infrastructure services.
• Connection Supervision: Monitors the performance and reliability of network connections.
• Comprehensive Cloud Service Monitoring: Extends monitoring capabilities to other platforms and on-site systems.

Unique Business Proposition

Site24x7 brings together AWS monitoring, infrastructure performance, and end-user experience in one lightweight, cloud-native platform. It integrates with over 75 AWS services and offers detailed metrics, logs, and traces with minimal configuration. The tool’s AI engine detects anomalies based on historical trends and sends alerts through email, Slack, or third-party integrations.

Feature-in-Focus: Smart AWS Cost Analyzer

The AWS Cost Analyzer tracks spending trends across services, and also flags unusual billing patterns. Using this feature, you can easily detect potential resource wastage. When combined with detailed usage metrics, it helps avoid budget overruns.

Why do we recommend it?

Site24x7 AWS Monitoring is delivered as part of a SaaS package. The platform provides monitoring options for Azure as well. The cloud platform monitoring system is delivered together with activity tracking for on-premises servers, networks, and applications. This provides instant root cause analysis if problems arise.

AWS isn’t restricted to monitoring Amazon Web Services. It is also capable of monitoring on-site and remote company-owned servers, so you can integrate the monitoring of AWS into your entire infrastructure monitoring system with one interface to cover a hybrid environment.

AWS includes a very long list of services and many of them are complimentary. It is difficult to see the points of interaction between the different services and coordinate the settings of services effectively. Tying together your different AWS services through the Site24x7 system creates a more manageable front end than Amazon provides for your AWS subscriptions.

Site24x7 has specialist tools and screens for 35 AWS services. These include:

• Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
• Lambda
• Elastic Beanstalk
• Elastic Container Service (ECS)
• Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
• Lightsail Instance
• Simple Storage Service (S3)
• S3 Object
• Elastic Block Storage (EBS)
• Elastic File System (EFS)
• Storage Gateway
• Amazon FSx

Database services, load balancers, network systems, CDN services, analytics, and security systems provided by AWS can also be included in Site24x7 Infrastructure monitoring.

The system isn’t cluttered up with features that you don’t need. These services only appear in the dashboard when you add them into the services settings for your account – all of these integrations add-ons are free to access and use.

Who is it recommended for?

The Site24x7 system is delivered in plans that include monitoring for all IT assets, including cloud systems – it can monitor more than 50 AWS services. The basic plans for the subscription service are leveled at the needs of small businesses. Larger businesses pay extra for more capacity.

Site24x7 Infrastructure is a subscription service with a base package that is paid for annually. The base plan can be enhanced by extra services, enabling each company to tailor the ideal combination of services. You can get a 30-day free trial of Site24x7 Infrastructure.

Site24x7 AWS Monitoring Start 30-day FREE Trial

4. Nagios XI

Best for: On-premises monitoring solution for AWS services

Relevant for: IT teams that require detailed monitoring of AWS resources and prefer a self-hosted solution with extensive configuration options

Price: The cost depends on the number of nodes. For 100 nodes, the Enterprise plan costs $4,490, while the Standard plan costs $2,495

Nagios XI is a network monitoring tool that also offers support for monitoring AWS monitoring. Nagios XI can monitor key AWS components like E. However the main focus of this tool is on measuring the availability of AWS. The moment a service goes down, you’ll know about it. This approach is quite basic, but it does provide you with enough information to know if your service is in jeopardy.

Nagios XI’s Key Features:

• Versatile Monitoring: Monitors networks, servers, and applications, including AWS services.
• AWS CloudWatch Integration: Utilizes AWS CloudWatch plugins for enhanced AWS monitoring capabilities.
• Availability Focused: Concentrates on the availability and uptime of AWS services.

Unique Business Proposition

A robust monitoring platform that provides comprehensive visibility into AWS environments. With built-in wizards for services like EC2 and S3, it simplifies the setup process and makes it easy to monitor critical metrics like CPU utilization, network traffic, and storage usage.

Feature-in-Focus: EC2 and S3 Monitoring Wizards

Nagios XI’s EC2 and S3 monitoring wizards streamline the process of setting up monitoring for these services. The EC2 wizard allows you to track metrics like CPU credit usage and instance health, while the S3 wizard monitors storage metrics, request rates, and error counts. These wizards provide a user-friendly interface for configuring monitoring parameters.

Why do we recommend it?

Nagios XI provides monitoring for networks, servers, and applications. The package includes cloud monitoring capabilities but these can be deepened by the installation of plug-ins. There are thousands of free plug-ins available from the Nagios Exchange. Extending the system with an AWS Cloudewatch plug-in gets activity data for all AWS services.

What makes Nagios XI great for AWS monitoring is its use of additional plugins. There are a variety of different free plugins that can be downloaded specifically for monitoring AWS. One of the most significant is AWS Cloudwatch Metrics. AWS Cloudwatch Metrics is a plugin that has been designed to pull information, such as S3 storage statuses and ELB load balancing activities, straight from AWS CloudWatch.

Once this information has been pulled by the plugin, it can then be used for monitoring and can even produce alerts to notify you when something changes. Nagios XI’s alerts system notifies you when metrics exceed specific thresholds. This means that you’re not under pressure to catch everything, as the system will notify you automatically when you need to take action.

Who is it recommended for?

Nagios XI is designed for use by mid-sized and large organizations. There is a free version called Nagios Core that might interest small businesses more. However, that edition doesn’t have a proper front end and needs to be paired up with an interface, such as Kibana. The AWS plug-ins also work with Nagios Core.

Nagios XI is available on CentOS and Redhat Enterprise Linux. It can be purchased as a license. The cheapest license is the Standard Edition which costs $1,995 (£1,529) and includes configuration wizards and reporting. The next version is the Enterprise edition which costs $3,495 (£2,678) and also provides web-based server console access and audit logging. You can download the free trial of Nagios XI.

5. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor

Best for: Deep visibility into AWS services alongside on-premises infrastructure

Relevant for: IT teams managing hybrid environments who require customizable monitoring across AWS services like EC2, RDS, and ELB, with the flexibility to integrate additional sensors as needed

Price: There are many tiers based on the number of aspects, which is one metric per device. The minimum is 500 aspects, which costs $179 per month. It can go up to $1,492 for 10,000 aspects

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor is a tool that has incorporated its own slant on AWS monitoring. Touting “all-in-one monitoring for your Amazon Cloud infrastructure“, it is free for users who need less than 100 sensors to monitor with, which makes it ideal for SMBs.

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor’s Key Features:

• AWS and Multi-Platform Monitoring: Monitors AWS alongside other platforms for a unified approach.
• Comprehensive Connection Monitoring: Observes connections as well as server resources for thorough analysis.
• Customizable Monitoring: Tailors monitoring to specific needs, avoiding unnecessary overhead.

Unique Business Proposition

PRTG is a unified monitoring platform that bridges the gap between AWS cloud services and on-premises systems. With dedicated sensors for AWS services such as EC2, RDS, ELB, and EBS, PRTG offers detailed insights into performance metrics. Using this data, you can proactively detect and resolve issues.

Feature-in-Focus: AWS Sensor Suite

PRTG’s AWS Sensor Suite includes specialized sensors for monitoring key AWS services, like the following:

• AWS EC2 v2 Sensor – Monitors CPU utilization, network traffic, disk I/O, and instance status, providing comprehensive insights into EC2 performance.
• AWS RDS v2 Sensor – Tracks database performance metrics, including CPU load, memory usage, and storage capacity.​
• AWS ELB v2 Sensor – Analyzes load balancer metrics like request count, latency, and backend connection errors.​
• AWS EBS v2 Sensor – Monitors Elastic Block Store volumes for throughput and latency, for identifying storage performance issues.​
• AWS Cost Sensor – Provides visibility into AWS spending.​
• AWS Alarm v2 Sensor – Integrates with AWS CloudWatch alarms for centralized alert management.

Comparitech SupportScore – 8.8

Though the number of employees is much smaller when compared to competitors, Paessler scores a perfect score in both documentation and customer satisfaction. Also, the cash flow score is on the higher side, reflecting the company’s stability.

One downside is employee satisfaction, which is only 5.3 out of 10. This explains why our support score is slightly lower than other vendors.

Why do we recommend it?

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor has a misleading name because it also monitors servers and applications. It isn’t limited to monitoring on-premises servers because it can also extract activity data from cloud platforms, including AWS. The system is customizable, so you only pay for the monitoring capabilities that you need.

PRTG Network Monitor can use Amazon Web Service CloudWatch data to provide you with performance metrics on your Amazon Cloud service. The PRTG Network Monitor model is based on transparency targeted towards AWS and has its own CloudWatch sensors available out of the box. The CloudWatch sensors supported by PRTG Network Monitor include:

• Amazon CloudWatch Alarm Sensor
• Amazon CloudWatch EBS Sensor
• Amazon CloudWatch E Sensor
• Amazon CloudWatch ElastiCache Sensor
• Amazon CloudWatch ELB Sensor
• Amazon CloudWatch RDS Sensor
• Amazon CloudWatch SNS Sensor
• Amazon CloudWatch SQS Sensor

Each of these sensors has its own unique metrics that it uses to monitor the performance of your cloud service.

For instance, if you were using the AWS Elastic Cloud Computing (E) service then you would use the Amazon CloudWatch E Sensor. This sensor would tell you the CPU utilization, disk I/O, network load, status, and read and write speed. If you wanted to monitor load balancing provided by the Network Load, Balancer, the Application Load Balancer, or the Classic Load Balancer, you would activate the Amazon CloudWatch ELB Sensor of PRTG. All of this information is provided as numerical values in a table below as a range of larger dials for easy reading.

Who is it recommended for?

PRTG is available for on-premises installation on Windows Server. If you don’t have any servers running Windows, you can access the system as a SaaS package. The service is suitable for businesses of all sizes because you only pay for the sensors that you activate. If you only need 100, the package is free to use.

PRTG Network Monitor is a tool that is most suited for those looking for a general network monitoring solution with AWS server monitoring capabilities. The paid versions of PRTG Network Monitor start from $1,600 (£1,226) for 500 sensors. The largest version of PRTG is PRTG XL1 which costs $14,500 (£11,112) and provides you with unlimited sensors. You can also download a 30-day free trial.

6. Datadog AWS Monitoring

Best for: Real-time, multi-account AWS monitoring and troubleshooting

Relevant for: Enterprises running large-scale AWS environments that need full-stack visibility, including developers, DevOps teams, and cloud architects

Price: The cost depends on the number of hosts. The Pro plan starts at $15, while the Enterprise plan starts at $23. Both are priced per host per month

Amazon Web Services offers a menu of applications as well as virtual servers to run them on. Datadog can monitor both application and server performance on cloud servers, so it is well suited to the task of overseeing the performance of AWS.

Datadog’s Key Features:

• Adaptive AWS Integration: Tailored specifically for AWS products, ensuring comprehensive monitoring.
• Application Tracking: Keeps tabs on application performance on AWS for efficient management.
• Resource Monitoring: In-depth observation of resource usage, enhancing cloud efficiency.

Unique Business Proposition

A unique aspect of Datadog is its deep and native integration with over 80 AWS services. As a result, you can collect, visualize, and analyze cloud infrastructure metrics with minimal setup. With its pre-configured dashboards, auto-discovery of resources, and correlation between logs, metrics, and traces, you can troubleshoot faster.

Feature-in-Focus: AWS Integration Layer

Datadog’s AWS Integration Layer allows you to link multiple AWS accounts and auto-ingest CloudWatch metrics, CloudTrail logs, and VPC Flow Logs with just a few clicks. From there, the platform enriches this data with context like resource tags and application-level insights to give a unified view of your cloud operations.

Comparitech SupportScore – 9.5

Datadog has excellent support and documentation, and this reflects in the high customer satisfaction. However, the employee job satisfaction score is low, and this could lead to higher attrition. Consequently, the company may have to spend more money on training and during this onboarding phase, there could be drops in customer service. Despite this small downside, Datadog scored a perfect 10 in our other aspects, and this is why it has ended up with a high support score, reflecting its stability and top-notch support.

Why do we recommend it?

Datadog AWS Monitoring is part of the Datadog Infrastructure plan, which is a SaaS package. This system tracks the performance of all the services that support user-facing interfaces and this includes the platforms that host all software. This tool is able to monitor all of the AWS services and that includes serverless AWS Fargate systems.

Datadog is a SaaS system and it is paid for by subscription. Buyers can choose from a range of modules, any of these can work as a standalone service or they can be combined. The combination of the Datadog Infrastructure monitoring system and the Datadog APM would fully cover all of the monitoring needs for AWS. Users access the interactive dashboard through a browser and can customize the screens of the system management console.

The Datadog operations and console can be adapted by activating vendor-specific integrations and there is an AWS integration available. This adds extra screens to the console, such as the ELB monitoring screen to track the performance of load balancing.

Datadog Infrastructure provides live performance metrics on the virtual server’s operations and the connections to it from the other elements of your IT system. The APM monitors the delivery of AWS services and the software that you run on your Amazon servers.

Features in the Datadog service include a stack analysis system, which groups together overviews of both software and hardware live statuses. End-to-end delivery is also examined live as are host maps and network topology maps. All of the graphics in the screens are color-coded to make problem recognition a lot faster.

The standard version of Infrastructure, which is called Pro includes an alerting system, so you should be able to spot problems before they become critical. The higher plan, which is called Enterprise, uses AI methods to discover more complicated problems that involve several elements of system performance. Enterprise also gives you AI-based support with a problem root core investigation tool to spot the cause of any problem.

The APM service can trace through code to identify inefficient processing and problems with resource locking. The combination of Infrastructure and APM provides a tracing system that can identify the source and destination of your greatest traffic generators. These analytical insights also extend to software and services running on Amazon cloud servers.

Who is it recommended for?

Datadog infrastructure is charged on a subscription that is levied per host, which makes it a very scaleable plan. A Free plan for small businesses will monitor up to five hosts. This is a SaaS package, so you don’t need to download the software or manage it. The plan also includes storage space for performance metrics.

Limited Trial Period: A longer trial period would be beneficial for thorough testing in diverse environments.

Both Infrastructure monitoring and the APM are available for Datadog on a 14-day free trial.

7. Dynatrace

Best for: AI-driven, full-stack observability across AWS services, applications, and infrastructure

Relevant for: Organizations that operate complex, distributed AWS environments.

Price: Full-stack monitoring costs $0.08 per hour for an 8GB host

Dynatrace is a network monitoring solution that allows you to thoroughly examine the performance of your AWS resources. If your service is experiencing poor performance then Dynatrace will be able to tell you. You can view the performance data and health status of your AWS resource. It is interesting to note that Dynatrace is actually affiliated with AWS as an AWS APN Advanced Technology Partner.

Dynatrace’s Key Features:

• Advanced AI Monitoring: Leverages AI for insightful analysis and problem detection on AWS.
• Integrated AWS Support: Offers deep integrations with various AWS services for comprehensive monitoring.
• Resource Optimization: Maps out resource requirements for efficient usage and allocation.

Unique Business Proposition

Dynatrace integrates with over 100 AWS services, including EC2, RDS, Lambda, and S3. This platform’s OneAgent technology supports full-stack monitoring by collecting metrics, logs, and traces across applications, infrastructure, and user sessions. Additionally, Dynatrace’s Smartscape topology mapping offers real-time visualization of dependencies within AWS environments for better troubleshooting.

Feature-in-Focus: Davis AI Engine

At the heart of Dynatrace’s monitoring capabilities is the Davis AI engine. It continuously analyzes data from AWS services to detect anomalies, identify root causes, and assess the business impact of performance issues. Using machine learning and causal analysis, Davis reduces alert noise and speeds up problem resolution.​

Why do we recommend it?

Dynatrace excels at identifying the resource demands of applications. The tool uses machine learning to calculate the requirements of all applications so it can spot when server resource availability is insufficient. It is able to track AWS and other cloud platforms as well as on-premises servers.

Machine learning is a feature that separates Dynatrace from other run-of-the-mill network monitoring products. Dynatrace uses machine learning to monitor AWS services and detect abnormal behavior. Whether you’re using E, EBS, ELB, S3, or RDS, Dynatrace has you covered and can point to the root cause of most performance issues. This is invaluable when troubleshooting the service (particularly when transparency over AWS is so hard to come by!).

There is also considerable support for larger organizations that want to concentrate on optimizing resource usage. Dynatrace has its own Smartscape visualization system which shows you how much of your resource is being dedicated to each service. This allows you to see if there are ways you could optimize how your resources are being used.

Who is it recommended for?

The Dynatrace package can be downloaded but it only runs on Linux. So, if you only have servers running Windows, you should opt for the SaaS platform version. This tool is particularly interesting for businesses that have complicated applications that source components from many locations, such as microservices.

As an AWS monitoring product, Dynatrace is top notch. Its use of machine learning and its close partnership with Amazon make it one of the most natural solutions for monitoring AWS resources. Dynatrace is available as an on-premises installation, SaaS package, or a license. However, you’ll need to contact the company directly to receive a price quote. You can download a 15-day free trial of Dynatrace.

8. AppDynamics

Best for: Deep application performance monitoring across AWS services

Relevant for: Enterprise IT and DevOps teams running customer-facing applications

Price: Starts at $6 per month per CPU core

AppDynamics is a network monitoring provider that delivers a full-stack performance monitoring experience for AWS. With AppDynamics you can monitor AWS like Amazon E, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, AWS Lambda, and AWS Fargate. This product can also automatically discover resources connected to your network.

AppDynamics’ Key Features:

• Automated Resource Discovery: Automatically discovers and monitors networked devices and applications.
• Detailed Dependency Mapping: Provides clear visualization of network and application dependencies.
• AWS-Specific Monitoring: Offers specialized monitoring capabilities for various AWS services.

Unique Business Proposition

AppDynamics connects technical performance with real-world outcomes. Its strength lies in translating complex telemetry into business context. The platform auto-discovers application components across AWS, maps dependencies, and detects anomalies in real time.

Feature-in-Focus: Business Transaction Monitoring

Unlike traditional monitoring tools that focus on server health, AppDynamics tracks every critical business transaction across AWS services. It measures latency, error rates, and throughput in real time and flags issues when performance deviates from the baseline. More importantly, AppDynamics pinpoints exactly where and why an event is happening, and how it affects users and revenue.

Why do we recommend it?

AppDynamics provides infrastructure and application monitoring. The tracking of cloud platforms, such as AWS is part of the Infrastructure Monitoring module. The package is able to collect activity data on all AWS services by connecting to AWS CloudWatch. The application monitoring module includes a discovery service. It creates an application dependency map, which identifies system resource demand.

The main reason to use AppDynamics is its user interface. The user interface provides you with a real-time perspective of your cloud resources which allows you to look specifically at resource utilization. This is important for AWS monitoring because it ensures you’re always making the best use of your resources.

However, you aren’t limited to AppDynamic’s core AWS monitoring experience. You also have a variety of extensions designed specifically to support AWS resource monitoring. For instance you can use an AWS SQS Monitoring Extension, AWS ElasticCache Monitoring Extension, and AWS S3 Monitoring Extension. The AWS ElasticCache extension is used to take data straight from Amazon CloudWatch and display it within AppDynamic’s Metric Browser. The AWS ELB Monitoring Extension also operates through CloudWatch to gather statistics on load balancing with the Network Load Balance, the Application Load =, Balancer, and the Classic Load Balancer of ELB.

Who is it recommended for?

AppDynamics is a SaaS package that is charged on a subscription model with a rate per CPU core. That structure makes the tool accessible to all businesses although the higher plans that include application monitoring are a little pricey. Smaller businesses that use AWS services would be interested in the affordable Infrastructure Monitoring Edition.

If you’re looking for a state-of-the-art AWS monitoring experience then look no further than AppDynamics. To view the price for AppDynamics Application Performance Management you’ll need to contact the sales team (though the price is reported to be considerably higher than many other products on this list). That being said, there is also a free trial which you can download.

9. Zenoss

Best for: Full-stack visibility into AWS services with dynamic service modeling and predictive analytics

Relevant for: IT operations teams managing hybrid or multi cloud infrastructures

Price: Negotiated price, depending on the number of devices you want to monitor

Zenoss started as a free, open-source project, called Zenoss Core. That version is now called the Zenoss Community Edition, while the system has evolved into a more comprehensive paid service.

Zenoss’ Key Features:

• AWS ZenPack Extension: Adds AWS monitoring capabilities to Zenoss through a specialized extension.
• Full Stack Monitoring: Provides a complete overview of IT infrastructure, including AWS services.
• Performance Alerting: Notifies users of performance issues, aiding in prompt resolution.

Unique Business Proposition

Zenoss’s platform supports real-time event management and service impact analysis. With this feature you can better understand the implications of infrastructure issues on business services. Additionally, Zenoss offers expense analysis features that help organizations monitor estimated charges for AWS services.

Feature-in-Focus: AWS ZenPack Integration

Zenoss’s AWS ZenPack connects to AWS APIs to automatically find and track resources like EC2, RDS, S3, and VPCs. Also, it collects performance data using CloudWatch metrics. It even supports real-time event management and service impact analysis. These features provide full visibility into your AWS environment, so you can quickly diagnose issues and manage both performance and costs from a single interface.

Why do we recommend it?

Zenoss is a good general monitoring package for IT systems but its Zenpack extensions make it a very interesting system for monitoring AWS services. The extension accesses AWS Cloudwatch data to provide live activity information in the Zenoss console. The package simultaneously monitors all of your other assets.

Zenoss has its own Amazon Web Services ZenPack designed for AWS monitoring. This Zenpack is available for free for all versions of Zenoss and it offers an extensive range of ways to monitor how AWS resources perform. You can monitor Amazon E, Amazon VPC, ELB load balancing, and Amazon S3 services. You can also monitor the estimated costs of your AWS resources.

Who is it recommended for?

The survival of the original free version of Zenoss provides a good option for small businesses. The capacity limits on the package indicate the size of business that should upgrade to the paid system. Zenpacks are available for all versions of the tool and the paid version is offered in SaaS and on-premises versions.

Zenoss Community Edition is recommended for those who want a free open-source monitoring package that has AWS monitoring capabilities. You can download Zenoss Comunity Edition for Windows, Linux, macOS, and Unix from Sourceforge. There are two versions of the paid Zenoss: Zenoss On-premises and Zenoss Cloud. The on-premises software runs on the same operating systems as the Community Edition. You’ll need to contact the sales team to receive a price quote. You can request a demo of Zenoss for free.

10. Splunk

Best for: Full-stack observability across AWS and hybrid cloud environments

Relevant for: IT and DevOps teams managing high-scale AWS deployments. IT and DevOps teams managing high-scale AWS deployments

Price: Negotiated price

Splunk is another well-respected name within the network monitoring space that includes a range of AWS monitoring capabilities. With Splunk you can view information on AWS instance changes, audit activity, security group violations, and unauthorized users. All of this information can be read through clear dashboard displays that stand with the very best on the market.

Splunk’s Key Features:

• Comprehensive AWS Resource Mapping: Provides detailed maps and overviews of AWS resources.
• Real-Time AWS Monitoring: Offers live monitoring capabilities for immediate insights into AWS performance.
• Advanced Data Visualizations: Features graphs and alerts for a clearer understanding of AWS metrics.

Unique Business Proposition

Splunk offers out-of-the-box dashboards for common AWS services for easy visualization. It also uses AI to provide intelligent alerting, so you can stay on top of every issue. It is easy to set up with either AWS CloudFormation or Terraform.

Feature-in-Focus: AWS Integration and Data Correlation

Splunk’s AWS integration collects data via Amazon CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and AWS Config. This data is then sent to the Splunk Observability Cloud, where it is correlated with logs, metrics, and traces to provide comprehensive insights and visualizations. Moreover, it automatically discovers and maps AWS resources for quicker incident response and more accurate root cause analysis.

Comparitech SupportScore – 9.5

Splunk is another vendor with strong customer support and employee satisfaction. Its self-supporting documentation and financial stability are added reasons to expect continuous high-quality support.

Why do we recommend it?

Splunk is a flexible data analysis tool. The producers of the system have also created a series of packages that provide pre-built applications on top of the Splunk system, such as the Infrastructure Monitoring package that is able to combine monitoring for AWS and other cloud platforms along with on-premises systems.

When it comes to the raw data, Splunk delivers an experience that provides you with everything you need to know. You are provided with utilization metrics, usage data, traffic volumes, load balancing activities, and latency data so that you can tell how your AWS cloud resource is performing. These metrics can be displayed in a variety of visualizations driven by account, region and time.

One of the most useful features offered by Splunk is a visual display of your AWS resources. There is a Topology view that shows you a map of your AWS cloud resources. You also have the option to view additional information and resources by region, account, VPC, and time. For instance, you can go back to an earlier point in time to see how your resources were structured in the past.

Who is it recommended for?

Splunk can be adapted to many data analysis tasks, not just system monitoring. You can save money by building your own analysis searches. However, there is no longer a free version of Splunk. Buying the Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring package is a great time saver.

There are two versions of Splunk: Splunk Enterprise for on-premises installation and Splunk Cloud, which is a SaaS plan. The price for both systems is calculated through a formula. You can get a 14-day free trial of Splunk Cloud or a 60-day free trial of Splunk Enterprise.

11. Opsview

Best for: Unified monitoring across AWS and hybrid environments with customizable dashboards and alerting systems

Relevant for: Teams managing diverse environments, including AWS services like EC2, RDS, S3, and ELB

Price: Negotiated price

Opsview has its own fully-featured AWS monitoring capabilities. This tool allows you to view the performance of AWS instances through a high-quality display. In particular, you can view the current availability of your AWS service. Dashboards are completely customizable so that you can choose exactly how to monitor your cloud resources.

Opsview’s Key Features:

• AWS Performance Monitoring: Provides live monitoring of AWS services with customizable alerting.
• Flexible Dashboard Customization: Allows for tailored monitoring experiences with customizable screens.
• Graphical Data Representation: Offers a range of graphs and charts for an intuitive view of AWS metrics.

Unique Business Proposition

Through its AWS Opspacks, Opsview can monitor many AWS components, including EC2 instances, RDS databases, S3 buckets, and ELB load balancers. It also offers customizable dashboards, alerting systems, and multi-tenancy support for precise customization. Additionally, many users have praised Opsview for its ease of use and scalability.

Feature-in-Focus: AWS Opspacks Integration

Opsview’s AWS Opspacks are specialized plugins to monitor specific AWS services. For example, the EC2 Opspack tracks metrics like CPU and credit usage, while the RDS Opspack monitors database performance indicators like CPU usage and storage space. The S3 Opspack provides insights into bucket operations, including GET and PUT requests. Additionally, the ELB Opspack monitors load balancer metrics like latency and backend connection errors.

Why do we recommend it?

Opsview provides AWS monitoring along with its other infrastructure and application monitoring features. This service is able to keep track of your AWS account usage, raising an alert if the accumulated usage reaches your maximum budget for the month. The system can also monitor Azure and other cloud platforms.

The Opsview platform has notifications to keep you up-to-speed. Notifications can be sent via Slack, Amazon SNS, Twilio Voice, or Twilio Text. This helps you to stay up-to-date with changes affecting your resource performance. These notifications work on a range of filters that you can easily apply to AWS metrics. If you need more information you can generate reports based on historical AWS data.

Who is it recommended for?

Opsview is available in SaaS and self-hosting versions. The SaaS option, Opsview Cloud, is twice the price of the self-hosted Opsview Enterprise. In both cases, charges are levied as a subscription with a rate per monitored host. Opsview Enterprise runs on Linux, Hyper-V, or AWS EC2. There are MSP and SMB editions of both versions.

There is a free version of Opsview which covers up to 25 hosts on Linux and Windows. The first paid version is the SMB plan which costs $2 (£1.53) a host per month for up to 300 hosts. The next plan is the Enterprise Plan which costs $4.50 (£3.45) per host per month which offers up to 20,000 hosts. You can download Opsview for free.

12. Zabbix

Best for: Self-managed, open-source monitoring with flexible customization

Relevant for: Organizations with in-house expertise that need to monitor AWS alongside on-premise systems

Price: Free

Finally, we have Zabbix, an open-source network monitoring solution with over 300,000 installations worldwide. Zabbix has a range of cloud monitoring features and can monitor AWS services with ease. This tool has a traditional widget-based monitoring experience and the ability to convert metrics into graphs for further analysis.

Zabbix’s Key Features:

• No-Cost Monitoring Solution: A completely free, open-source network monitoring solution with AWS capabilities.
• AWS-Specific Monitoring Templates: Offers specialized screens and templates for enhanced AWS monitoring.
• Expandable with Free Templates: Allows for the addition of new monitoring capabilities through free templates.

Unique Business Proposition

With strong automation capabilities, built-in support for high availability, and JSON-based templates, Zabbix helps teams monitor AWS metrics without vendor lock-in or licensing costs. It also supports hybrid monitoring including cloud, on-premise, and containers, from a single unified interface.

Feature-in-Focus: CloudWatch Integration with Custom Templates

Zabbix uses external scripts and built-in templates to pull metrics from AWS CloudWatch at defined intervals. Templates include pre-configured items, triggers, graphs, and discovery rules. These templates make it easy for you to track key metrics like CPU utilization for EC2, database IOPS for RDS, or object requests for S3.

Why do we recommend it?

Zabbix is an on-premises system that provides full stack monitoring. This is a completely free system – there is no paid version. The system’s extensions are called templates and there is one available that connects to AWS CloudWatch.

Zabbix has a full-featured alerts system. You can customize alert messages to different recipients and even escalate automatically if the first point of contact doesn’t respond. This means that if something changes in your AWS environment then the alert will be passed to the next available staff member. You can also customize message content so that the recipient has all the information needed to do further troubleshooting.

Who is it recommended for?

Zabbix is attractive for small businesses that don’t want to pay for monitoring software. However, the tool has an impressive list of large organizations that use the system, so it is suitable for businesses of all sizes. The software for Zabbix installs on Linux.

Organizations in need of a free tool for AWS monitoring would be well advised to download Zabbix. It has the core design to function well within an SME or large organization environment. Zabbix is available on CentOs, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu. You can download Zabbix for free.

Choosing an AWS Monitoring Tool

That concludes our look at the best Amazon Web Services monitoring tools. In the interests of keeping your monitoring simple, we recommend you choose a tool like ManageEngine Applications Manager.

In most cases, these application monitoring tools don’t have AWS monitoring screens included with them automatically. However, with a simple activation button in the settings screens, AWS monitoring becomes available.

Integrations add on monitoring of the AWS environment and any extra services, such as the Network Load Balancers, Applications Load Balancers, or Classic Load Balances of ELB. In other monitoring tools, AWS monitoring is provided by add-ons or plugins. This is the case with Nagios, Zenoss, ServerDensity, and AppDynamics.

Our Methodology for Choosing AWS Monitoring Software

Our methodology involves a unique process, where our researchers combine in-depth technical analysis with real-world use-cases to get a comprehensive idea of each tool’s relevance to solving the pain points mentioned earlier. We do hands-on testing wherever possible and tap into user reviews to provide the efficiency and performance of different tools.

We evaluated different AWS monitoring tools based on the below factors:

1. AWS-Native Integrations

We prioritized tools with native integrations for AWS services like EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, and CloudWatch, as they score higher for compatibility and data accuracy.

2. Multi-Account and Multi-Region Support

Organizations often operate across multiple AWS accounts and regions. This is why we assessed each tool’s ability to provide centralized dashboards and unified alerts across distributed environments.

3. Customized Alerts

We examined how well each platform tracks CPU utilization, memory, disk I/O, latency, and error rates. More importantly, we looked at their alerting capabilities, and those with granular thresholds and event correlation were rated higher.

4. Cost Monitoring Capabilities

Tools that could provide actionable insights into AWS billing, resource usage anomalies, and potential savings on idle or underutilized resources were given preference.

5. Ease of Use

We tested how quickly users could deploy the tool in an AWS environment, whether through agents, CloudFormation templates, or native marketplace options. Simpler setup processes and user-friendly dashboards were key differentiators.

6. Compliance and Reporting

We looked for tools that simplify compliance reporting by offering audit logs, change tracking, and predefined templates for standards like HIPAA, SOC 2, and PCI-DSS.

7. Vendor Ecosystem

Lastly, we factored in how long the vendor has supported AWS monitoring, the number of active deployments, and their support for hybrid or multi-cloud setups where applicable.

With this structured and technical approach, we identified AWS monitoring tools that are practical and efficient across real-world AWS environments.

Broader B2B Software Selection Methodology

​Our B2B software review methodology addresses the unique challenges faced by business buyers. Recognizing the high stakes involved in B2B software purchases, our approach emphasizes factors such as:

• Vendor Reliability
• Scalability
• Support Quality
• Long-Term Value

With this focus, we provide business decision-makers like you with comprehensive insights to make informed software choices.​

Learn more about our methodology.

Comparitech SupportScore Methodology

Our SupportScore is a proprietary metric that evaluates a B2B software vendor’s capability to provide effective customer and product support. Unlike crowd-sourced review models, SupportScore relies on a multi-point analysis of external signals that are indicative of strong support performance. This includes assessing factors like:

• Vendor’s Size
• Vendor’s Revenue
• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Satisfaction

By combining these factors, our SupportScore provides a comprehensive understanding of a vendor’s support infrastructure.

To know more, visit our SupportScore Methodology section.

Why Trust Us?

We take software evaluation seriously. Every tool we review is chosen based on its relevance to real-world business needs. Our process includes technical assessments, product testing, and a deep dive into what actual users are saying. We also examine how well each vendor supports their product after the sale, from onboarding to troubleshooting and updates.

Our team includes seasoned professionals with hands-on experience managing IT environments and cloud-based infrastructure. With a clear methodology and a focus on practical outcomes, we aim to give you the insights you need to choose the right solution.

AWS Monitoring Tools & Services FAQs

See also: Best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Tools