Sensu
Sensu develops Sensu Go, an open-source observability pipeline and "monitoring as code" platform for DevOps and SRE teams running dynamic multi-cloud and container infrastructure. The product consolidates metrics, logs, and tracing integrations and is sold as Sensu Enterprise under Sumo Logic ownership.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2017
- HeadquartersRedwood City, United States
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Sensu does
Sensu Inc. is a Redwood City-based software company that develops and maintains Sensu Go, an open-source observability pipeline and monitoring platform designed for dynamic, multi-cloud infrastructure. The product is positioned as a "monitoring as code" platform: declarative configuration files are version-controlled and shared across teams, the underlying architecture uses publish-subscribe and role-based subscriptions, and a lightweight Sensu agent automates the registration and deregistration of ephemeral compute across bare metal to Kubernetes. Sensu Go consolidates metrics, logging, and tracing integrations — including Nagios, StatsD, Telegraf, and Prometheus exporters — behind a single control plane exposed through a REST API and the sensuctl CLI. The Sensu Enterprise commercial offering layers governance, multi-datacenter support, and tiered SLAs (Pro, Enterprise with 3-hour response, Premium with 1-hour response and 24x7 coverage) on top of the open-source core, with Sensu Plus and the Sensu Catalog providing Sumo Logic-powered dashboards and a marketplace of pre-built monitoring integrations. Sensu employs a community-led, product-led growth motion (free download, 15-minute Docker quick start, 4M+ annual installs, 5,000+ GitHub stars, 2,000+ Slack members) combined with an enterprise field sales motion targeting DevOps and SRE teams at large organizations. Sensu was founded in 2017, raised $12.5M in venture capital from Battery Ventures and Foundry Group, and was acquired by Sumo Logic Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMO) in June 2021, after which it operates as a product line within Sumo Logic's observability portfolio.
Sensu firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Sensu
- Legal name
- Sensu Inc.
- Website
- https://sensu.io
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2017
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Sensu develops Sensu Go, an open-source observability pipeline and "monitoring as code" platform for DevOps and SRE teams running dynamic multi-cloud and container infrastructure. The product consolidates metrics, logs, and tracing integrations and is sold as Sensu Enterprise under Sumo Logic ownership.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Where Sensu is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Redwood City
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices2 records
Markets served
Sensu business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- Open Source Software (Sensu Go OSS): Free and open source monitoring software released in 2017, available for download. Community-supported with no direct revenue.
- Commercial Licensing (Sensu Enterprise): Commercially supported monitoring and observability solution for enterprises with enhanced features for simplified operations, governance, and multi-datacenter support.
- Enterprise Support: Enterprise support includes 3-hour response SLA and next business day resolution for Level 1 issues, plus dedicated account manager.
- Premium Support: 24x7 support with 1-hour response time, custom integration development, professional services, and phone support hotline.
- Pro Support: Business hours support with 6-hour response SLA and helpdesk/web-based portal access.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Free Community Support |
| Subscription | Annual | Pro Support |
| Subscription | Annual | Enterprise Support |
| Subscription | Annual | Premium Support |
Go-to-market motion3 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels9 records
Sensu product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Sensu develops and sells Sensu Go, an open-source observability pipeline platform that delivers monitoring as code across multi-cloud and dynamic infrastructure environments. The platform consolidates existing monitoring tools (Nagios, StatsD, Telegraf, Prometheus), fills gaps between metrics/logging/tracing, and automates registration and de-registration of ephemeral compute resources. The company offers commercial Sensu Enterprise licensing, tiered support subscriptions (Pro, Enterprise, Premium), and add-on modules including Sensu Plus analytics and Sensu Catalog pre-built integrations.
Product overview
Sensu offers an observability pipeline platform centered on Sensu Go, which provides monitoring-as-code capabilities across multi-cloud environments. The portfolio consists of the open-source Sensu Go core platform, the commercially-supported Sensu Enterprise product with enhanced governance and multi-datacenter features, the Sensu Plus analytics add-on powered by Sumo Logic for turn-key dashboards, the Sensu Catalog for self-service monitoring integrations, and the sensuctl CLI tool for resource management. The company was acquired by Sumo Logic in June 2021.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Sensu Go: Open source monitoring and observability platform released in 2017, featuring monitoring as code capabilities, multi-cloud support, and an observability pipeline for enterprises.
- Sensu Enterprise
- Sensu Plus
Products and services
- Sensu Go Core open-source monitoring and observability platform that delivers monitoring-as-code on any cloud, consolidating monitoring tools and filling gaps in observability between metrics, logging, and tracing. Designed for DevOps and SRE teams managing multi-cloud and containerized infrastructure.
- Sensu Enterprise Commercially-supported monitoring platform that enhances the Sensu Go open source framework with features to simplify operations, governance, and multi-datacenter support for fast-paced companies running monitoring at scale.
- Sensu Plus Turn-key dashboards and analytics add-on powered by the Sumo Logic Continuous Intelligence platform, enabling real-time visualization of infrastructure and application monitoring observability data.
- Sensu Catalog Pre-built monitoring integrations and workflows catalog add-on for Sensu Go, enabling self-service infrastructure monitoring configuration and deployment.
Quantifiable outcome
- Replaced legacy monitoring for 10,000+ systems in under 9 months for a single customer
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use Sensu
Customer profileNamed customers13 records
Segments4 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Sensu technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration23 records
Feature9 records
Sensu partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
One partnership is on record.
- Sumo Logic Inc.flagshipSensu Inc was acquired by Sumo Logic Inc in June 2021 (Nasdaq: SUMO). Sumo Logic is a leading provider of cloud-native, machine-data analytics platforms. Sensu operates as part of Sumo Logic's observability portfolio.
Scale indicators8 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights5 records
Sensu competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Datadog: Cloud-native monitoring and observability platform offering infrastructure monitoring, APM, log management, and more. Most direct commercial competitor to Sensu's multi-cloud monitoring vision, though Datadog is a much broader, SaaS-first platform.
- New Relic: Observability platform providing infrastructure monitoring, APM, log management, and real-user monitoring. Targets the same DevOps/SRE buyer as Sensu and competes on cloud-native monitoring-as-code workflows.
- Dynatrace: Enterprise application performance monitoring and observability platform with AI-driven automation (Davis AI). Competes with Sensu for large enterprise infrastructure monitoring budgets in multi-cloud and Kubernetes environments.
- Grafana Labs: Open-source observability stack (Grafana, Loki, Mimir, Tempo, Pyroscope) competing directly with Sensu Go for the cloud-native monitoring stack. Also uses open-source community-led GTM similar to Sensu's model.
- Prometheus: Open-source metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit, de facto standard for Kubernetes monitoring. Sensu explicitly integrates with and competes against Prometheus for cloud-native monitoring workloads.
- Nagios: Legacy open-source monitoring framework. Sensu explicitly positions itself as a cloud-native Nagios replacement while maintaining Nagios plugin compatibility, making Nagios a primary displacement target.
Broad incumbents
- Splunk: Machine-data analytics and log monitoring platform with broad enterprise penetration across IT operations and security. Overlaps with Sensu's metrics/log/event handling and competes for enterprise monitoring spend at a much larger scale.
- Cisco AppDynamics: Application performance monitoring and infrastructure visibility suite from Cisco. Competes with Sensu in enterprise APM and infrastructure monitoring for large organizations already standardized on Cisco.
Emerging players
- Chronosphere: Cloud-native observability platform purpose-built for metrics at scale, founded by ex-Uber engineers who created M3. Competes with Sensu for Kubernetes and microservices monitoring deals among large enterprises.
- Honeycomb.io: Observability platform focused on high-cardinality event data and structured tracing for modern engineering teams. Adjacent competitor to Sensu for cloud-native DevOps and SRE buyers prioritizing modern observability.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Sensu social profiles
Digital presenceSensu compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance3 records
Sensu financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Sensu leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles6 records
Sensu funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds2 records
Investors2 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Sensu M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Sensu
What does Sensu do?
Sensu develops and sells Sensu Go, an open-source observability pipeline platform that delivers monitoring as code across multi-cloud and dynamic infrastructure environments. The platform consolidates existing monitoring tools (Nagios, StatsD, Telegraf, Prometheus), fills gaps between metrics/logging/tracing, and automates registration and de-registration of ephemeral compute resources. The company offers commercial Sensu Enterprise licensing, tiered support subscriptions (Pro, Enterprise, Premium), and add-on modules including Sensu Plus analytics and Sensu Catalog pre-built integrations.
Is Sensu a public or private company?
Sensu is a private company. It is classified as corporate owned and is currently operating.
When was Sensu founded?
Sensu was founded in 2017. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Sensu based?
Sensu is headquartered in Redwood City, United States, in the North America region.
How does Sensu make money?
Five revenue lines are on record. Open Source Software (Sensu Go OSS) is the primary driver. The others are commercial Licensing (Sensu Enterprise), enterprise Support, premium Support and pro Support.
Who are Sensu's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs, Prometheus and Nagios. Broad incumbents are Splunk and Cisco AppDynamics. Emerging players are Chronosphere and Honeycomb.io.
Does Sensu have an API?
Yes. Sensu provides a backend REST API (API version v2) for automated, repeatable monitoring and observability workflow configuration and event data access. The API supports first-class API clients including sensuctl and the web UI. It uses JSON-formatted requests and responses, with wrapped-json format for non-core APIs. Authentication via JWT access tokens or persistent API keys. Supports response pagination, Etag headers, and response filtering with label/field selectors. Developer documentation is at docs.sensu.io/sensu-go/latest/api.