You can't fix what you can't see. Datadog makes the application observable.
Datadog APM, infrastructure monitoring, log management, and alerting for production Next.js applications. We configure Datadog to give visibility into application performance, error rates, and infrastructure health — so problems surface before users report them.
Production application with no monitoring or observability — errors discovered by user complaints, performance degradation with no data to diagnose, and no alerts before problems become outages
Applications in production without monitoring are flying blind. The failure mode: a user encounters an error, the error isn't logged anywhere observable, and the problem persists until a user reports it.
The specific gaps:
No error visibility. console.error in production doesn't alert anyone. Without an error monitoring tool, errors go undetected until user complaints accumulate.
No performance data. Slow API endpoints, N+1 database queries, and memory leaks don't surface without APM (Application Performance Monitoring). The first indication is user churn, not a dashboard alert.
No infrastructure visibility. CPU spike during peak traffic, memory exhaustion, disk approaching capacity — these infrastructure problems often precede application failures. Catching them in Datadog before they become outages is the value of infrastructure monitoring.
No alerting. Metrics without alerts require someone to look at dashboards. Error rate exceeding threshold, P95 latency above SLA, and infrastructure metrics outside normal ranges should trigger PagerDuty or Slack alerts without human review.
Datadog vs. Sentry: Sentry is focused on error tracking and session replay — excellent for front-end error capture. Datadog covers full-stack APM, infrastructure monitoring, log aggregation, and dashboards. Production applications often use both: Sentry for front-end errors and session data, Datadog for backend performance and infrastructure.
Datadog APM implementation with distributed tracing, error tracking, infrastructure metrics, and alert policies that surface problems before users do
APM instrumentation
`dd-trace` initialization in the Next.js application. Distributed traces across frontend, API routes, and database queries. Service maps showing dependencies.
Custom metrics
Business metrics (new signups/hour, payment success rate) instrumented via `dogstatsd`. Dashboard visualizations.
Log management
Structured JSON logging with `pino`. Datadog log pipeline configuration. Log correlation with traces.
Infrastructure monitoring
Datadog Agent on the server or container. CPU, memory, disk, and network metrics. Auto-discovered services.
Alerting
Monitor configuration for error rate, latency P95, and infrastructure thresholds. PagerDuty or Slack notification channels.
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
Datadog APM implementation with distributed tracing, error tracking, infrastructure metrics, and alert policies that surface problems before users do
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Why Fixed-Price Matters Here
Observability setup is defined by the application's architecture and monitoring requirements. Fixed price.
Related engagements.
Questions, answered.
Common production setup: Sentry for front-end error tracking (source maps, user session data, React error boundaries) + Datadog for backend APM, infrastructure, and log management. They complement each other. For a tighter budget, start with Sentry for error tracking and Datadog's free tier for basic infrastructure.
Included in every production application build. Baseline error monitoring (Sentry) is always configured. Datadog APM and infrastructure monitoring for applications that require it.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.