Observe

Name: Observe
Brand: Observe

Leader

AI-powered observability in your data lake. Troubleshoot 3x faster, at 3x lower cost.

Est 2017|Valuation $848M|Raised $507M|13 Ref Customers

LinkedIn 16K|Web traffic 34K|FTEs 229|HQ San Mateo, California, US

MarketsInfrastructure Monitoring Observability Platform Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

Published Oct 22, 2026

01Common complaints

- If you need a highly intuitive UI with minimal training - Multiple Gartner “dislikes” cite navigation difficulty and a “high learning curve” for advanced configuration/query building. - If search quality and “Google-like” discovery is your top requirement - A Gartner dislike explicitly states: “Search isn't very useful.” - If your observability program depends on many niche third-party integrations - Gartner dislikes cite “Complex Integration” for certain APIs/tools, implying integration work may be non-trivial. - If you prefer purely on-demand PAYG without commit planning - Observe’s pricing is based on a committed volume of uncompressed telemetry ingested; buyers who want fully elastic on-demand spend may prefer other models. - If you want a single vendor for security + observability with deep SIEM adjacency - Splunk and some large-suite vendors may be better aligned if SIEM/SOC workflows are central. - Current limitations acknowledged by customers/review snippets - Navigation and account switching challenges (Gartner dislike) - Search usefulness concerns (Gartner dislike) - Learning curve for advanced configuration and query building (Gartner dislike) - Integration complexity (Gartner dislike) - Roadmap / future features - No roadmap dates were captured in the sources used. - Scale limitations - Vendor materials emphasize scale; however, independent benchmarking was not found in this run. - Security or compliance gaps - SOC 2 certification is claimed by the vendor, with reports available on request. - ISO 27001/27017/27018 and privacy compliance statements (GDPR/CCPA/HIPAA/PCI) were not clearly documented in the accessible sources collected here.

02Why they buy

- unique selling points supported by at least some customer evidence - UI responsiveness: “The UI is fast… Dashboards are quick to load…” (Gartner likes) - OpenTelemetry support is praised in Gartner likes. - Cost savings narrative appears in Gartner snippet (“costs have come down”). - unique selling points primarily vendor-claimed (need verification) - Broad economic superiority vs incumbents and claims about typical retention defaults vs Splunk are largely framed in vendor comparison materials and should be validated in a buyer’s own workload proof-of-concept. - Areas where competitors clearly have advantages (balanced) - Datadog: commonly strongest in integrations breadth and packaged modules across infra/APM/logs/RUM/security. - Splunk: often strongest in enterprise platform breadth and security operations adjacency. - Grafana/OSS: strongest in flexibility and avoidance of SaaS vendor lock-in (with higher internal operations burden).

03Field reports

- Notes on review-source accessibility - Gartner Peer Insights content was accessible for summary snippets and “likes/dislikes,” but full detailed reviews require account access (“Join for Free” gating is shown on the page). - Capterra page for Observe errored in one attempt (internal error), limiting direct extraction of quotes. - G2 shows very few reviews for Observe (insufficient volume for broad statistical conclusions). - Direct quotes (with attribution) — positive - Gartner Peer Insights (review snippet on listing): - “My overall experience with the Observe software has been positive, as it provides clear insights into logs, network activities, and API Performance, making issue detection and resolution much faster.” (Reviewer snippet visible on listing; Sep 14, 2025) - Gartner Peer Insights “likes” snippet: - “- The UI is fast - Dashboards are quick to load and easily readable - Support OTEL” - Direct quotes (with attribution) — negative / critical - Gartner Peer Insights “dislikes” snippet: - “- Hard to navigate the UI - Difficult to see/switch between accounts we have with observe - Search isn't very useful” - Gartner Peer Insights “dislikes” snippet (learning curve / overhead / integration): - “1. High Learning Curve: Advanced configuration and query building require significant time and technical knowledge. 2. Resource Intensive: The system consumes heavy infrastructure resources, which can increase operating costs. 3.Complex Integration: Setting up integrations with certain APIs or third-party tools can be cumbersome and not always straightforward.” - Common criticisms and complaints (support issues, bugs, missing features) - Based on the visible Gartner Peer Insights “dislikes” list: - UI/navigation friction and account switching - Search usefulness concerns - High learning curve for advanced configuration and query building - Integration complexity with some APIs/tools - “Depth into Infrastructure and IT used cases” (suggests some buyers perceive weaker coverage in broader infra/IT operations workflows) - Why customers chose this product over alternatives - Cost control and savings narrative appears in Gartner snippets: - “We were previously on another log analysis tool… after using observe our costs have come down. There was an initial learning curve…” (Gartner snippet; Jul 25, 2025) - Product performance UX narrative: - “The UI is fast… Dashboards are quick to load…” (Gartner likes) - Why some customers left for competitors (churn reasons) - No explicit “we churned to X competitor” quotes were directly accessible in the sources collected in this run. - However, the listed “dislikes” (search usefulness, navigation difficulty, learning curve, integration friction) are typical drivers that can contribute to churn in observability platforms. - Specific outcomes customers achieved (with metrics when available) - Metrics are limited in accessible review snippets. - The “costs have come down” comment is qualitative and does not provide percentage or absolute savings. - Deal-breakers and reasons customers didn't purchase - Not explicitly available in accessible sources; inferred likely deal-breakers include: - Teams needing strong “infrastructure and IT use case” depth (as called out in Gartner dislikes) - Teams sensitive to learning curve and query complexity - Environments requiring a large catalog of prebuilt integrations where “complex integration” becomes a blocker - Vendor and vendor-licensed analyst material exists but is not equivalent to independently audited case studies - Observe hosts/links to S&P Global / 451 Research “Observability Coverage” and a 451 Research “Market Insight Report Reprint.” - The vendor page includes a licensed excerpt that itself notes Observe is “making all the same promises as other observability vendors do” and frames differentiation around unification/correlation at scale. - Metrics and verification - Many marketing claims (speedups, cost savings, scale) appear in positioning and snippets; however: - Independent, methodologically transparent ROI studies were not found in the accessible set collected here. - Where cost reduction is mentioned in Gartner snippets, the magnitude and methodology are not described. - Mixed results / struggle cases - While not full “failed deployment” case studies, Gartner dislikes point to adoption friction (learning curve, integration complexity) that can slow time-to-value.

04Best fit

- Company sizes - Based on Gartner’s vendor listing (51–200 employees for Observe as a company) and typical buyers: - Mid-market to enterprise engineering orgs with meaningful telemetry volume and distributed systems. - Practical buyer bands (inferred): - ~200–5,000+ employees, or any organization where telemetry cost and investigation time are material. - Industries and verticals where adoption is strongest (with customer examples) - Gartner review snippets show reviewer industries such as Banking, Hardware, Software, IT Services (from listing metadata). - This suggests cross-industry applicability rather than a single vertical specialization. - Roles and personas - Decision makers: - VP/Director of Engineering, Head of SRE/Platform, CIO/IT leadership for centralized observability - End users: - SREs, DevOps engineers, platform engineers, on-call responders - Pain points and challenges the product addresses - High telemetry volumes and the need to search/correlate quickly - Cost control relative to legacy log platforms - Faster issue detection and resolution (as stated in Gartner snippet) - Qualification criteria: what makes a GREAT fit - You have large, growing log/trace volumes and want predictable spend with committed ingest. - You use or plan to use OpenTelemetry (OTEL support is explicitly praised). - You can invest in enablement/training for query building and advanced configuration. - Deal disqualifiers: what makes a POOR fit - Teams that need minimal learning curve and very simple “search-first” workflows may struggle if they align with the “search isn’t very useful” feedback. - Organizations requiring extensive, prebuilt integrations with minimal engineering effort may be sensitive to “complex integration” feedback.

05The pitch

- What the product does (core value proposition in objective terms) - Observe is a SaaS observability platform focused on ingesting and analyzing machine-generated telemetry (logs, metrics, traces) for faster troubleshooting and investigation in modern distributed systems. - The vendor positions the product around a “data-centric” approach and cost predictability (commit-based ingest pricing) with “compute included” for core telemetry. (See pricing section.) - Target market and market positioning - Primary users: SRE, DevOps, platform engineering, operations/IT teams who need to search and correlate high-volume telemetry. - Positioning themes evident across vendor materials and third-party coverage: - Scale and speed for large telemetry volumes - Economic predictability vs. “surprise” overages - A modern alternative to legacy log analytics stacks (often contrasted with Splunk) - Company background (founding year, HQ, key leadership) - Observe was founded in 2017 and incubated by Sutter Hill Ventures. (Vendor “About” page.) - Gartner Peer Insights lists: - Year founded: 2017 - Head office: San Mateo, United States - Company type: Private - Employee range: 51–200 - Executive/leadership notes from coverage: - VentureBeat (2022) quotes CEO Jeremy Burton discussing the market problem (cloud, distributed systems, rapid releases). - Funding and growth: investment rounds, acquisitions, estimated customer count/revenue if public - VentureBeat reported: - $70M “Series A-2” round (May 11, 2022). - $115M Series B (March 27, 2024), with Sutter Hill Ventures and participation including Snowflake Ventures. - Observe’s own “In the News” page states it closed a $156M Series C (page headline/announcement). - M&A / consolidation: - TechCrunch (Jan 8, 2026) reported Snowflake announced intent to acquire Observe. - TechCrunch also notes Observe’s “most recently valued at $750 million as of July 2025, according to the company.” (This is a vendor-sourced valuation claim as presented by TechCrunch; valuation methodology isn’t independently detailed in the article excerpt.) - Public customer count and revenue are not clearly published in the sources accessed for this report. - Pricing model with specific tiers and costs where available - Observe publishes list starting prices (usage-based by ingest volume of uncompressed telemetry): - Logs: starting at $0.49/GiB (includes compute, unlimited users, 30-day retention) - Metrics: starting at $0.008/DPM (includes compute, unlimited users, 13-month retention) - Traces: starting at $0.59/GiB (includes compute, unlimited users, 30-day retention) - Pricing mechanics and policies highlighted on the pricing page: - Subscription pricing “based on a committed volume of uncompressed telemetry data ingested.” - “No Overages” policy: “We will never send you an overage bill… we will work with you to right-size your capacity.” - Free trial is available; vendor states no credit card required and immediate provisioning. - Total cost of ownership considerations (implementation, training, hidden costs) - Likely TCO drivers (based on pricing structure and review feedback): - Data volume planning (committed ingest) becomes a procurement and capacity-planning exercise. - Retention add-ons: the vendor markets “Unlimited Retention for only $0.01 / GiB per Month” (needs scenario-based modeling; retention needs vary widely). - Training/enablement costs: Gartner Peer Insights “dislikes” explicitly cite a high learning curve and advanced query/configuration effort. - Integration engineering time: Gartner Peer Insights cites “Complex Integration” with some APIs/third-party tools being cumbersome. - Key competitors in the space (list 4-6 direct alternatives) - Datadog - Splunk Observability Cloud / Splunk platform - New Relic - Grafana Labs (Grafana/Prometheus/Loki stack) - Elastic (ELK / Elastic Observability) - Honeycomb

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