How do small development teams, typically with 1 to 10 members, manage log aggregation effectively without resorting to setups like ELK or investing in services like DataDog?
3 Answers
I'm really happy with using OpenTelemetry and Honeycomb for our logging setup.
Regardless of the logging solution, I’d recommend cutting down on unnecessary logs. It might sound obvious, but many apps log way more than they actually need—like, I've seen apps logging 10,000 times more data than necessary. If keeping costs down is a priority, ask yourself if you even need so many logs or if they all need to be indexed and searchable. Small teams often overlook this, leading to wasted budget.
That’s super important! I used to lead a team of about 25 devs, and after migrating to DataDog, we ended up spending more on log storage and indexing than on our compute resources.
We rely on Alloy combined with Loki, Prometheus, and Grafana for our logging needs. It's working really well for us!
Thanks for the insight! Just curious, do you handle the setup yourself or do you go for a managed cloud solution? If you manage it, what made you choose that route? If it's managed, is it pricey?
What specifically drew you to Honeycomb? Did you consider other options before settling on it?