27 Best APM Tools To Utilize For Application Performance Monitoring

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools play a critical role in ensuring the success of digital applications. This upcoming blog post will provide an exploration of APM functionalities. We will thoroughly compare their features and explore how these tools empower developers to identify and address performance issues proactively. Regardless of experience level, this article offers insights designed to enhance application monitoring practices and optimize software performance.

Looking for a free APM solution to help you on this journey? Try Alerty, a free APM tool that is a game-changer for developers seeking seamless monitoring solutions. Perfect for those who need to compare APM tools and their functionalities, this tool is here to make your life easier without the hefty price tag. 

Table of Contents

• What Is Application Performance Monitoring (APM)?
• Why Is Application Performance Monitoring Important?
• Why Are APM Tools Important?
• 27 Best APM Tools To Utilize For Application Performance Monitoring
• How To Choose The Right APM Tool For Your Organization?
• Essential Features of an APM Tool
• Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's Free APM Solution

What Is Application Performance Monitoring (APM)?

Application performance management (APM) software plays a critical role in ensuring an organization's essential applications meet established expectations for:

• Performance
• Availability
• Customer or user experience

This technology allows organizations to predict and prevent performance issues before they impact users or hinder business operations.

How Does Application Performance Monitoring Work?

APM software measures application performance, alerts administrators when performance baselines are unmet, provides visibility into the root causes of performance issues, and automatically resolves many performance issues before they impact users or the business. 

By monitoring performance, organizations can effectively manage the performance of their applications. 

What Is the Relationship Between APM and Application Performance Monitoring?

Although often used interchangeably, APM is an abbreviation for application performance management, whereas application performance monitoring is a component of APM. Monitoring performance is a crucial step in managing it effectively.

How Are APM Solutions Evolving?

Modern APM solutions are moving beyond traditional application performance:

• Monitoring tools 
• Incorporating observability

This technology facilitates the collection and analysis of performance data, making it more suitable for modern, distributed, cloud-native applications.

What Does Effective Monitoring Strategy Encompass?

An effective monitoring strategy includes various monitoring tools and techniques designed to provide a comprehensive view of an application's health across different environments, whether in:

• Development
• Testing
• Production

This strategy allows organizations to detect issues early and ensure the optimal performance of their applications.

Related Reading

• Observability vs Monitoring
• Application Performance Metrics
• Application Security Monitoring
• Application Monitoring Best Practices
• Web App Monitoring
• APM vs Observability
• How To Monitor A Web Server
• Application Performance Issues
• Kubernetes Application Monitoring
• Automated Anomaly Detection

Why Is Application Performance Monitoring Important?

Increase Application Stability

Application performance monitoring plays a crucial role in ensuring application stability. By monitoring metrics like response times and resource utilization, APM tools can identify potential challenges before they impact an application's stability. 

This proactive approach helps maintain a positive reputation for your business and keeps customers satisfied with reliable app experiences.

Improve the Quality of Software Releases

With APM tools, developers can gather insights into their applications' performance and behavior. This allows them to implement learnings during development, ensuring high-quality software releases.

Developers can continuously monitor performance throughout the development cycle, optimizing the codebase for better reliability and efficiency.

Reduce Time to Recovery in Case of App Failure

APM plays a crucial role in reducing the time to recovery in case of application failure. By detecting issues early, IT teams can swiftly:

• Investigate the root cause of an issue 
• Take immediate corrective actions

This proactive monitoring approach minimizes incidents that disrupt app performance and degrade user experience.

Boost App Uptime

APM tools help identify and address issues that could cause downtime, ensuring your app stays up and running smoothly.

You can take immediate remedial action by continuously monitoring performance before users are impacted. This ensures your application remains available and reliable, enhancing the user experience.

Drive Engineering Productivity and Collaboration

APM tools provide real-time insights into an app’s performance, enabling engineers to identify inefficiencies in the code, leading to:

• Optimized code 
• Enhanced productivity

APM tools facilitate collaboration among different app development and maintenance teams.

Reduce the Number of App Performance Incidents

By proactively monitoring various metrics, APM tools identify potential issues before they become significant problems, reducing app performance incidents. This helps businesses maintain high application availability while avoiding costly downtime.

Enhance End-User Experience

APM tools help businesses discover how their applications affect the end-user experience. Companies can ensure smooth and seamless user experiences by proactively monitoring and optimizing app performance, leading to:

• Customer satisfaction
• Loyalty
• Increased profits

Peed Up Root Cause Analysis of Defects

APM tools provide detailed insights into various metrics, logs, and traces, aiding developers in pinpointing the exact source of performance issues.

By analyzing data in real-time, teams can streamline their troubleshooting processes and ensure that applications:

• Remain stable 
• Perform optimally

Maintain Consistent Revenue Generation

APM strategies help businesses ensure their apps perform optimally, delivering value to users and the business.

APM tools manage issues that could lead to app crashes and provide data on user behavior, enabling informed decisions about monetization strategies. 

Effortless Monitoring, Powerful Results: Try Alerty's Free APM Today

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups, offering application performance monitoring, database monitoring, and incident management.

Technology Support for Issue Resolution

• NextJS
• React
• Vue
• Node.js

Database Monitoring by Alerty

• Supabase
• PostgreSQL
• RDS
• Tracks CPU usage and memory consumption

Alerty features quick incident management and Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize the user experience. Its Universal Service Monitoring covers dependencies like Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel. 

Alerty: AI-Powered Monitoring Made Easy

• Simplifies setup with AI
• Cost-effective compared to competitors
• Designed for ease of use
• Integrates with tools like Sentry

Catch issues today before they affect your users with Alerty's free APM solution!

Why Are APM Tools Important?

Imagine you're running a busy restaurant. You need to know if the kitchen is working efficiently, if customers are happy with their meals, and if any issues arise that could slow down service. APM tools do something similar for your web applications. They closely monitor how your apps are performing, ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently.

Detecting Issues Early

APM tools help you catch problems before they become significant issues. They monitor your application in real-time and alert you if something goes wrong, like a sudden spike in response time or an unexpected error. This means you can often fix issues before your users notice.

Understanding Performance

These tools provide detailed insights into how your application is performing. They can show you which parts of your app are running slowly, where bottlenecks are, and what might be causing any delays. This information is crucial for optimizing performance and ensuring your app runs smoothly for users.

Enhancing User Experience

A smooth, fast, and reliable application leads to a better user experience. By using APM tools, you can ensure that your users have a good experience, which is essential for retaining and keeping customers happy. 

Slow-loading pages or frequent errors can drive users away, so monitoring performance is key to maintaining a positive user experience.

Proactive Management

APM tools allow you to be proactive rather than reactive. Instead of waiting for a user to report a problem, you can identify and address issues immediately. 

This proactive approach helps maintain your application's reputation and avoids potential revenue loss due to downtime or poor performance.

Informed Decision Making

Having detailed performance data at your fingertips helps you make informed decisions about your application. 

You can see trends over time, understand how different updates or changes impact performance, and make data-driven decisions to improve your app. This can also help you plan for future growth and efficiently scale your application.

27 Best APM Tools To Utilize For Application Performance Monitoring

1. Alerty

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups, offering application performance monitoring, database monitoring, and incident management.

Technology Support for Issue Resolution

• NextJS
• React
• Vue
• Node.js

Database Monitoring by Alerty

• Supabase
• PostgreSQL
• RDS
• Tracks CPU usage and memory consumption

Alerty features quick incident management and Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize the user experience. Its Universal Service Monitoring covers dependencies like Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel. 

Alerty: AI-Powered Monitoring Made Easy

• Simplifies setup with AI
• Cost-effective compared to competitors
• Designed for ease of use
• Integrates with tools like Sentry

Catch issues today before they affect your users with Alerty's free APM solution!

2. Middleware APM

Middleware APM is a full-stack application performance monitoring platform that facilitates developers' real-time problem identification and root cause analysis. 

It interfaces impeccably with multi-tiered applications and is deployable and scalable within environments such as Kubernetes. 

Developer-Friendly Setup

This platform provides on-premise data storage and a single-script installation, enhancing the developer experience. 

It enables synthetic monitoring for:

• Expedited troubleshooting
• Environment monitoring
• MTTR reduction

3. Dynatrace

Dynatrace is a popular application performance and network monitoring tool that provides deep insights into your full application stack. 

Deep Visibility

You can monitor your application development environment from top to bottom and understand how everything is connected. 

This platform offers code-level monitoring, allowing you to identify the source of any issue down to the line of code. It can also check for vulnerabilities and bugs in your code to help you fix them. 

Dynatrace has native integrations with many cloud services, including:

• AWS
• Azure
• Google Cloud
• VMware

Effortless Integration

If you use any of these services, it’s easy to connect your app to Dynatrace to get performance insights. Dynatrace incorporates artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to help troubleshoot issues with your app. 

Proactive Detection

This AI engine, Davis, continually scans your app to detect flaws before they become expensive problems. Dynatrace has an intuitive interface that’s easy to navigate. 

User-Friendly Interface

The main drawback is that it is expensive, with full-stack monitoring starting from $0.08 per hour. You can use the free trial period to test its features before deciding.

4. LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor is a well-known cloud infrastructure monitoring tool. It offers an application monitoring tool that gives you deep insights into your applications. 

Comprehensive Monitoring

This tool covers every part of your application architecture, enabling you to identify potential issues or the source of problems already occurring. Proactive monitoring helps you prevent potential outages and save time and money. 

User Behavior Insights

LogicMonitor provides excellent insights into your user behavior. It delivers these insights in an easy-to-navigate and monitor dashboard. LogicMonitor was built with a collaborative focus so all your ITOps and DevOps staff can work from a shared dashboard. 

Unified View

It gives them a bird' s-eye view of your application and visualizes the relationships between all app components. This platform works with both hybrid and multi-cloud environments. It scales very well. It can keep monitoring your app as it grows without sacrificing performance. 

Large-Scale Expertise

LogicMonitor is known to work very well with large-scale apps. Like many APM tools, LogicMonitor has a steep learning curve. It’ll likely be challenging initially, but you can get used to it with time. 

5. New Relic

New Relic is a well-known web tracking and analytics platform. It offers an application performance monitoring tool that lets enterprises stay on top of their apps and online services.

Cloud Connectivity

New Relic has integrations with popular cloud services like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, so you can easily connect it to your apps hosted on these platforms. 

Proactive Monitoring

New Relic constantly monitors your apps to detect anomalies and alert you to them. If an issue occurs, you can troubleshoot the app to discover the root cause. It also gives you insights into your code performance to optimize it for better results. 

Fees & Features

Unlike most other APM tools, New Relic offers a free version with significant features. The free version supports one user and lets you ingest up to 100GB of monthly data. Anything above this feature will need a payment, starting from $0.30 per GB of ingested data. You must also pay a monthly fee of between $49 and $99 for each user.

6. Raygun APM

Raygun APM is a SaaS server-side performance monitoring platform that provides trend and real-time application and user experience data. The platform supports software applications such as:

• .NET
• Ruby
• Node.js

Automated Issue Management

It proactively identifies and alerts customers to performance issues. It also includes an automated issue creation engine that lists the most urgent performance concerns.

7. Scout APM

Scout APM is a performance monitoring platform that provides proactive alerting and real-time insights into the application environment. 

Enhanced Visibility

Offered as SaaS, Scout APM provides:

• Error
• Database
• External service monitoring
• Basic application monitoring

Other features include:

• Deployment tracking
• GitHub integration 
• Background job monitoring

8. Site24x7 APM Insight

APM Insight is an AI-powered performance monitoring system that tracks application behavior and its effect on users in real-time. It is offered as a SaaS-based product that can monitor the entire application stack, from the URL down to the database. 

It supports Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, and Node.js platforms and can track and optimize all transactions.

9. SolarWinds AppOptics

AppOptics is a SaaS-based APM and infrastructure tool for hybrid and cloud-native IT environments. It enables organizations to visualize and troubleshoot application bottlenecks. 

The platform includes more than 150 out-of-the-box plugins and integrations for monitoring servers, virtual hosts, and containers, with support for features such as:

• Distributed tracing
• Live code profiling
• Exception tracking

10. Stackify Retrace

Stackify Retrace is an application performance management and observability platform offered as SaaS. The platform aggregates performance, log, error, and metric data to provide consolidated monitoring and insights into production and preproduction environments. 

Retrace includes enhanced search and drill-down capabilities into server and application logs, as well as the ability to create customized log queries.

11. Cisco

Acquired by Cisco in 2017, AppDynamics provides an application and business monitoring platform for today’s enterprises. Their platform includes products for:

• End User Monitoring (Synthetic and RUM monitoring)
• Infrastructure Visibility
• Business Performance to help manage end-to-end performance

Application Mapping

Deploying agents throughout the environment, AppDynamics gives teams a view into their app topology, regardless of the environment, through customizable dashboards. These dashboards provide metrics and data to make informed business decisions and drive application performance.

12. Datadog

Founded in 2010, the Datadog APM platform looks at web performance from a comprehensive dashboard. An all-in-one monitoring service, Datadog can monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize application performance across your stack:

• Hybrid cloud applications
• Servers
• Databases
• Applications

Expanded Functionality

Datadog recently announced its:

• Integration with Cloudability
• Support for serverless monitoring (AWS Lambda)
• The addition of a synthetic monitoring solution called Datadog Synthetics.

A beta version of Datadog Synthetics will be available in December 2018.

13. Smartbear

SmartBear builds tools for development, testing, and operations teams for monitoring software applications and websites. Their APM suite includes:

• API lifecycle products
• Software testing platforms
• Application monitoring tools
• Code collaboration 
• Optimization tools

SmartBear recently acquired the continuous platform HipTest and the Zephyr test management solution.

14. Prometheus

Prometheus enables you to capture time-series data as metrics. These metrics can be aggregated to give insights into our systems' behavior. 

It was initially developed at SoundCloud in 2012 before being released as an open-source project. After Kubernetes, it was the second project to graduate from CNCF. 

Scalability Limitations

Prometheus does not do distributed tracing but can effectively monitor time-series data as metrics. It also has some limitations at scale as it is designed for a single machine.

The Prometheus visualization layer is basic, but it is generally used with Grafana, a visualization tool for creating charts and graphs.

15. Javamelody

Javamelody is an open-source APM tool for monitoring Java or Java EE applications in QA and production environments. It is mainly used to track and measure the statistics of requests on an application based on its usage.

16. Stagemonitor

Stagemonitor is an open-source APM tool for Java server applications. It enables you to monitor the performance of your Java web app's performance throughout its development, QA, and production lifecycle. 

It monitors applications with the help of servlet filters and bytecode manipulation. Stage monitor integrates well with time-series databases like:

• ElasticSearch
• Graphite
• InfluxDB

17. Zipkin

Zipkin is an open-source APM tool used for distributed tracing. It captures timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. In distributed systems, tracing user requests across different services is challenging. 

Identifying the Cause

If a request fails or takes too long, distributed tracing helps identify the events that caused it. Zipkin was initially developed at Twitter and drew inspiration from Google's Dapper. Unique identifiers called Trace ID are attached to each request, which then identifies that request across services. 

Trace ID Tracking

Zipkin's in-built UI is limited, and for better analytics and visualizations, you can use Grafana or Kibana from the ELK stack. 

It also includes a dependency diagram that shows how many user requests went through each service. This diagram can help you identify error paths and calls to deprecated services.

18. Jaeger

Jaeger is an open-source APM tool developed at Uber and later donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation(CNCF). Inspired by Google's Dapper, It is a distributed tracing system. 

Microservices Focus

It is used to monitor and troubleshoot microservices-based distributed systems. Some of its key features include the following: Jaeger supports two popular open-source NoSQL databases as trace storage backends:

• Cassandra 
• Elasticsearch. 

Trace Visualization

Jaeger's UI allows you to see individual traces. You can filter the traces based on service, duration, and tags.

19. Apache Skywalking

This open-source APM tool is focused on monitoring distributed systems, including:

• Microservices
• Cloud-native
• Container-based architectures

Deep Service Insights

Some of the key features of the APM tool includes: 

• Service
• Service instance
• Endpoint metrics analysis
• Root cause analysis with code profiling
• Service topology map analysis
• Slow services and endpoint detection
• Distributed tracing 
• Context propagation. 

Skywalking also supports the collection of telemetry data in multiple formats.

20. SigNoz 

SigNoz is a full-stack open-source APM solution that provides a unified view of logs, metrics, and traces, eliminating the need for vendor lock-in. It exclusively utilizes ClickHouse, a single database native to OpenTelemetry. 

Detailed Performance Insights

This versatile tool showcases distinctive charts for application metrics such as:

• P90
• Error rates
• p99 latency

Its distributed tracing capability empowers users to pinpoint the root cause of any issue.

21. Loupe

Loupe Logging APM is considered suitable for:

• .NET 
• Java applications

It combines logging with error reporting, which allows you to save time while identifying errors. 

It offers environment-specific telemetry analysis. 

Performance Monitoring

Loupe tracks error rates, database query performance, page hits, etc., to identify potential problems in your application quickly. Due to its design, it is suitable for IT specialists and enterprise customers.

22. Sematext APM

Sematext provides end-to-end application performance monitoring to optimize user experience. It offers:

• Synthetic API
• Website monitoring
• Distributed transaction tracing
• Logs monitoring

Faster Troubleshooting

The APM combines the power of traces, logs, metrics, and real user data to reduce resolution time and help troubleshoot faster. 

23. ManageEngine Applications Manager

With comprehensive app performance management capabilities, ManageEngine Applications Manager monitors every facet of applications to identify issues. It measures the impacts of different components to provide data-driven performance insights. 

The APM tool supports the auto-discovery of application topology to present visualized dependencies. It uses Apdex Scores to measure end-user satisfaction levels. This APM can be used to monitor:

• Hybrid
• Virtual
• Cloud
• Container technologies

24. Opsview

Opsview Application Monitoring tools provide a single view of the entire infrastructure and the performance of business applications. 

In the digital technology era, multiple applications are deployed at various locations, so obtaining performance data and displaying it in a single context is challenging. Opsview makes its automated and unified approach easier to use.

25. eG Innovations

eG Innovations is another famous application performance and IT infrastructure monitoring, which helps the application managers and DevOps to detect the leading cause of application performance issues and troubleshoot faster. It also helps in providing unified solutions to address observability and IT performance.

26. Sentry

Sentry is a widely-used APM tool known for its error monitoring and crash reporting capabilities. 

These capabilities come from collecting and centralizing error data from all your applications to easily see where and what’s causing errors. Sentry also provides various tools to help you debug errors, including:

• Stack traces
• Logs
• Environment variables

27. Paessler PRTG

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor, developed by Paessler AG, is a comprehensive network monitoring and management solution with APM features. 

Sensor-Based Monitoring

PRTG uses sensors, where a sensor is a single item you monitor, such as a server, a network port, or a website. These sensors can periodically send requests to application endpoints, measuring response times and other performance metrics. 

Users can set up threshold values and alerts to be notified of performance degradation or outages.

Related Reading

• Application Monitoring Strategy
• Why Monitoring Your Application Is Important
• Web Applications Monitoring Tools
• Datadog Alternatives
• Grafana Alternatives
• Splunk Alternatives
• Log Monitoring Tools
• Free Server Monitoring
• Pagerduty Alternatives
• SigNoz vs DataDog
• Newrelic Pricing
  
• Solarwinds Alternatives
• Dynatrace Alternatives
• New Relic Alternatives
• Sentry Alternatives
• Datadog APM Pricing

How To Choose The Right APM Tool For Your Organization?

Cloud Service Integration

Does the APM tool integrate with popular cloud services like:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Microsoft Azure

Seamless integration with cloud services is crucial for easy application monitoring.

Ease of Use

Select an APM tool that is easy to set up and deploy quickly with minimal hassles. Look for a tool with an intuitive dashboard that makes monitoring every aspect of your application easy.

Cloud vs. On-Premise

Decide if you need a cloud-based APM tool or one you can deploy on your servers. Many APM tools offer both types, giving you flexibility and choice.

Cost

Consider the cost of the APM tool and ensure it fits within your budget in the long term. Look for hidden costs in the pricing structures, and take advantage of free trial periods to test the features before committing.

Essential Features of an APM Tool

Server Monitoring

APM tools should enable you to monitor your servers to detect issues and maintain optimal performance. Monitoring server uptime and load is critical for efficient resource management.

Real User Monitoring (RUM)

RUM captures every action a user takes on your application, providing insights into user interactions, such as:

• Page views
• Clicks
• Session duration

These insights are invaluable for making user-centric improvements to your app.

Root Cause Analysis

Applications may experience issues, and it's crucial to quickly identify the source of these problems. APM tools that offer root cause analysis capabilities help diagnose the causes of app downtime and prevent future disruptions.

Smart Selection

Choosing the right APM tool is essential for ensuring your applications' optimal performance and reliability. Consider the criteria mentioned above and the essential features of APM tools to make an informed decision that meets your monitoring needs.

Related Reading

• Prometheus Alternatives
• Prometheus APM
• APM Tools Comparison
• Logicmonitor Alternatives
• Logrocket Alternatives
• Site24X7 Alternatives

Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's Free APM Solution

Alerty is a cutting-edge cloud monitoring service that caters to the needs of developers and early-stage startups. With a comprehensive suite of features like application performance monitoring, database monitoring, and incident management, Alerty is your go-to solution for running your applications smoothly.

Cutting-edge Technology Support

Alerty: Support for Diverse Technologies

• Supports NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js
• Ensures coverage for various tech stacks
• Helps developers identify and resolve issues promptly
• Ensures applications run at peak performance

Database Monitoring Made Easy

Optimizing Database Performance With Alerty:

• Monitors Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS
• Tracks key metrics: CPU usage and memory consumption
• Optimizes database performance

Incident Management and Real User Monitoring

Alerty features quick incident management tools, ensuring you can promptly address any issues. Its Real User Monitoring (RUM) capabilities also allow you to optimize user experience, leading to higher user satisfaction and retention rates.

Universal Service Monitoring

Alerty's Universal Service Monitoring covers dependencies like the Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel, giving you a comprehensive view of your application's ecosystem. By monitoring these dependencies, you can ensure your application's integrations run smoothly.

AI-driven Simplified Setup

Alerty uses artificial intelligence to simplify setup, making it easy for developers to get started quickly. By providing a cost-effective solution compared to competitors, Alerty ensures that monitoring your application's performance doesn't break the bank.

Seamless Integration With Essential Tools

Alerty integrates seamlessly with tools like Sentry, making it ideal for developers and small teams that need efficient, affordable monitoring solutions. By catching issues before they affect users, Alerty ensures that your applications always deliver a top-notch user experience.

Stop app outages before they happen! Get Alerty's free APM to monitor performance and proactively keep your users happy.