Listen Notes cuts monitoring costs by 90% after replacing Datadog, PagerDuty, and Atlassian with Better Stack

Company: Listen Notes

Listen Notes is kind of like Google, but just for podcasts. Millions of shows and episodes from across the internet can be searched in one place. Whether you're tracking interviews, gathering project research, or discovering new podcasts, it's an invaluable resource.

There are over 3.5 million podcasts and close to 179 million episodes in the database. And with more than 2 million people using the site every month, it’s become a go-to for podcast fans. Developers also integrate the Listen API into their own tools and applications.

To date, Listen Notes has facilitated over 33 million searches and more than 367 million listens, establishing itself as a quietly essential tool in the podcast ecosystem.

Industry: Technology / Podcast search engine

Use cases: Infrastructure monitoring, incident management, status page

Savings: Reduced from $3,500/year to $348/year — that’s a 90% cut!

Switched from: Datadog, PagerDuty, Atlassian Statuspage

Listen Notes needed to replace expensive, overbuilt tools with a simpler, more affordable solution

Since launching in 2017, Listen Notes relied on a trio of enterprise-grade tools: Datadog for infrastructure monitoring, PagerDuty for incident management, and Atlassian Statuspage for public incident communication.

While these tools were effective, they came with a hefty price tag and a suite of features Listen Notes didn't need. “Like many small businesses, we continuously review our expenses,” says the Listen Notes team. “We realized we were paying for a lot of functionality we weren’t using – and wanted a more streamlined, cost-effective solution.”

A costly three-tool setup was replaced with Better Stack, unifying monitoring, alerting, and status pages into a simpler, more affordable solution

In December 2024, Listen Notes began the transition to Better Stack, consolidating three platforms into a single, unified observability solution. The entire migration took around two weeks and covered three major components:

Infrastructure monitoring & metrics

The most involved part of the migration was shifting from Datadog’s metric-based workflow to Better Stack’s log-centric observability model. Originally, Listen Notes used statsd to push metrics into Datadog. After exploring Better Stack’s Vector integration and consulting with support, the team opted to ingest structured logs and derive metrics directly from them – a more natural fit with Better Stack’s architecture.

Incident management

Replacing PagerDuty was also straightforward. The team configured heartbeat and uptime alerts in Better Stack, along with customized escalation rules. Notably, the switch provided a smoother user experience and friendlier support. “The breakup with PagerDuty was the most painful, but switching was quick and easy.”

Status page

Migrating from Atlassian Statuspage was quick and seamless. Using Better Stack’s uptime monitoring and built-in status pages, Listen Notes created a fully branded status page at listennotesstatus.com in just minutes.

Better Stack has fast and friendly customer support. With big vendors like Datadog, Atlassian, and PagerDuty (all public companies), it’s hard to reach a real person. When things break, you need quick help. Good customer support is key when picking a DevOps tool. Outages happen. If the vendor isn’t there when you need them, the tool isn’t useful.

— Wenbin Fang | Founder & CEO

The switch cut costs by over 90%, streamlined tooling, and improved the developer experience

By switching to Better Stack, Listen Notes:

• Consolidated three tools into one.
• Reduced annual costs by over 90% (from ~$3,500 to just $348).
• Improved developer experience with faster setup and friendlier support.

We’re very pleased with our switch to Better Stack. Our new setup covers everything we need at a fraction of the cost – and we’re confident it’ll continue to meet our needs as we grow.

— Team Listen Notes

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