hoFrustrated by a sluggish or unresponsive web application? Practical monitoring tools are essential for smooth performance and user satisfaction In this blog, we will dive into web application performance monitoring to help you stay ahead of issues.
Alerty's free APM solution optimizes your web app’s performance. Whether you're a seasoned developer or new to web apps, Alerty’s intuitive real-time monitoring helps you pinpoint and address slowdowns for maximum impact.
Web application monitoring is a vital aspect of IT Operations. Its primary purpose is to detect and diagnose web application performance issues proactively. This helps quickly pinpoint mission-critical web application problems and resolve them before end users notice them.
One method is injecting a Javascript agent directly into the client web browser or using a network monitoring appliance that tracks packets across the wire.
Both methods are forms of real-user monitoring. Another approach is to monitor web application performance by running synthetic transactions against the website or web app at regular intervals from “robots” stationed worldwide.
Web application or application performance monitoring (APM) tools are essential for software engineers to identify events that deviate from expected performance and behavior.
Knowing about the various APMs used in the industry can help you choose the right tool to maximize your job efficiency. A fully integrated approach is ideal for web or application performance monitoring.
Statistics reveal that even a second’s delay in your webpage or application load time could reduce your page views by approximately 11% and consumer satisfaction by around 16%. From a business perspective, this is lethal. You must ensure your website or web application is up 24/7.
Monitoring your web applications will provide you with several benefits. Not only can you detect issues quickly and fix them before harm can occur, but you can also maximize its performance.
Enhanced security is another critical benefit of web application monitoring. With cyber attackers constantly searching for vulnerabilities in web applications, monitoring tools help detect security issues quickly, enabling timely mitigation to prevent potential data breaches or reputation damage.
Web application monitoring tools help optimize performance by identifying factors that might lead to application slowdowns. This improves loading speed and enhances the overall user experience.
Alerty is a cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups, offering:
It supports technologies like NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js, helping developers identify and fix issues.
Alerty uses AI to simplify setup, providing a cost-effective solution compared to competitors. It is designed for ease of use, allowing quick setup, and integrates with tools like Sentry, making it ideal for developers and small teams needing efficient, affordable monitoring.
Catch issues before they affect your users with Alerty's free APM solution today!
Synthetic monitoring plays a crucial role in proactively evaluating web application performance. It involves simulating user interactions and transactions to provide valuable insights into how a website behaves under different conditions. This enables the identification of potential issues before users encounter them, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Functions of synthetic monitoring tools:
This tool enables the creation and monitoring of multi-step transactions, such as login processes or e-commerce transactions, helping identify bottlenecks or errors users may encounter during website navigation.
Regularly checking a website's availability from multiple global locations ensures accessibility to users across different geographical regions and highlights any downtime or performance issues that demand attention.
Real User Monitoring (RUM) captures and analyzes user data in real-time, providing insights into real users' experiences. Monitoring user interactions and browsing behavior allows website owners to understand user interactions with the website and the performance they experience.
Functions of RUM tools:
This data helps analyze the user experience and identify performance bottlenecks or usability issues affecting user satisfaction.
Insights from RUM tools help understand how users experience the website across various devices and browsers, optimizing the website for compatibility and performance on different platforms for a smooth user experience across all visitors.
Tracking user data based on geographic location and demographic information enables businesses to understand their user base and customize website performance and content to cater to specific audience segments.
Alerty is a cloud monitoring service designed for developers and early-stage startups. It focuses on:
The platform supports technologies including:
Alerty excels in monitoring databases such as Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS, tracking key metrics like CPU usage and memory consumption.
With Universal Service Monitoring, Alerty covers dependencies like:
Alerty’s AI-driven approach simplifies setup, offering a cost-effective solution compared to its competitors. It is designed for easy setup and integration with tools like Sentry, making it ideal for developers and small teams requiring efficient and affordable monitoring.
Try Alerty's free APM solution today to catch issues before they impact user experience.
Middleware APM is a full-stack application performance monitoring platform that caters to developers by facilitating real-time issue identification and root cause analysis. It interfaces with multi-tiered applications and is deployable and scalable within environments such as Kubernetes.
Developers benefit from Middleware APM's on-premise data storage and single-script installation, enhancing user experience.
Middleware APM offers numerous solutions that enhance developer productivity while ensuring application performance optimization.
Dynatrace is a renowned application performance monitoring and network tool that provides deep insights into the entire application stack. Through code-level monitoring, Dynatrace identifies the source of any issue down to the line of code.
Native integrations with multiple cloud services:
Dynatrace incorporates artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to troubleshoot issues proactively through its AI engine called Davis. Although Dynatrace boasts an intuitive interface, it comes at a premium price, starting from $0.08 per hour for full-stack monitoring. Users can explore the features through a free trial before committing to a subscription.
Dynatrace is a comprehensive tool for developers seeking deep insights into their application performance.
LogicMonitor is a popular cloud infrastructure monitoring tool that offers an application monitoring solution providing deep insights into applications. The platform covers every part of the application architecture, enabling users to identify potential issues or troubleshoot existing problems.
LogicMonitor's proactive monitoring helps prevent potential outages, saving time and costs. It provides comprehensive insights into user behavior through an easy-to-navigate dashboard that fosters collaboration between ITOps and DevOps staff. LogicMonitor scales efficiently, making it ideal for monitoring large-scale applications. While it has a steep learning curve, users can adapt to leverage its robust monitoring capabilities over time.
New Relic is a well-known web tracking and analytics platform offering enterprises an application performance monitoring tool.
The platform integrates with popular cloud services like:
New Relic's constant monitoring detects anomalies and alerts users to potential issues, enabling proactive troubleshooting to improve app performance. With insights into code performance, New Relic helps optimize apps for better results.
Unlike most APM tools, the platform offers a free version with significant features supporting one user and up to 100GB of monthly data ingestion. Pricing for additional features starts at $0.30 per GB, with monthly user fees ranging from $49 to $99.
New Relic is a comprehensive APM tool that offers valuable features for enterprise developers.
Raygun APM is a SaaS server-side performance monitoring platform providing trend and real-time application and user experience data.
The platform supports software applications in:
It proactively identifies and alerts customers to performance issues and includes an automated issue creation engine that lists the most urgent performance concerns.
Scout APM is a performance monitoring platform that provides proactive alerting and real-time insights into the application environment.
Offered as SaaS, Scout APM provides:
Other features:
APM Insight is an AI-powered performance monitoring system that tracks application behavior and its effect on users in real-time. It is a SaaS-based product that can monitor the entire application stack, from the URL down to the database.
APM Insight supports multiple platforms, such as:
AppOptics is a SaaS-based APM and infrastructure tool for hybrid and cloud-native IT environments. AppOptics enables organizations to visualize and troubleshoot application bottlenecks.
Over 150 out-of-the-box plugins and integrations for monitoring:
AppOptics supports advanced features:
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 and the ability to create customized log queries.
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, and Business Performance to help manage end-to-end performance.
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.
Founded in 2010, the Datadog APM platform analyzes web performance from a comprehensive dashboard.
Datadog recently announced its integration with Cloudability, serverless monitoring (AWS Lambda) support and the addition of a synthetic monitoring solution called Datadog Synthetics. A beta version of Datadog Synthetics will be available in December 2018.
SmartBear builds tools for development, testing, and operations teams to monitor software applications and websites.
SmartBear recently acquired the continuous platform HipTest and the Zephyr test management solution.
Prometheus enables you to capture time-series data as metrics. These metrics can be aggregated to give insights into the behavior of our systems. 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.
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 visualization layer of Prometheus is essential, but it is generally used with Grafana, a visualization tool to create charts and graphs.
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.
Stagemonitor is an open-source APM tool for Java server applications. It enables you to monitor your Java web app's performance throughout its development, QA, and production lifecycle. It monitors applications using servlet filters and bytecode manipulation.
Stagemonitor integrates well with time-series databases like:
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. If a request fails or takes too long, distributed tracing helps identify the events that caused it.
Zipikin 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.
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. It can help you to identify error paths and calls to deprecated services.
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, Jaeger is a distributed tracing system for monitoring and troubleshooting microservices-based distributed systems.
Some of its key features include:
It supports:
Jaeger's UI allows users to see individual traces. They can filter the traces based on service, duration, and tags.
This open-source APM tool monitors distributed systems, including:
Some of the key features of the APM tool includes:
Skywalking also supports the collection of telemetry data in multiple formats.
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.
This versatile tool showcases distinctive charts for application metrics such as:
Its distributed tracing capability empowers users to pinpoint the root cause of any issue.
Loupe Logging APM is considered suitable for .NET and Java applications. It combines logging with error reporting, which allows you to save time while identifying errors. It offers environment-specific telemetry analysis.
Due to its design, it is suitable for IT specialists and enterprise customers.
Sematext provides end-to-end application performance monitoring to optimize user experience.
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 monitor hybrid, virtual, cloud, and container technologies.
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 multiple locations, so obtaining performance data and displaying it in a single context is challenging. Opsview makes its automated and unified approach more straightforward to use.
eG Innovations is another famous application performance and IT infrastructure monitoring, which helps application managers and DevOps to detect the main cause of application performance issues and troubleshoot faster. It also helps in providing unified solutions to address observability and IT performance.
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.
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor, developed by Paessler AG, is a comprehensive network monitoring and management solution with APM features. PRTG uses sensors, where a sensor is a single item you monitor, such as:
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.
Dotcom-Monitor monitors multi-step web transactions for functionality, accessibility, and performance worldwide and inside the network.
Create scripts easily to monitor transactions like:
You can record the user path while navigating web applications and upload it to the portal. Use Dotcom-Monitor's global monitoring network to set up monitoring from multiple locations or use a Private Agent to monitor inside the network. Review the charts, receive alerts instantly on any failures, and understand the problem to reduce your web application's downtime.
It monitors critical paths end-users take, including:
With Dotcom-Monitor, you can script end-user interactions easily to ensure Rich Internet Applications' performance and proper functionality, including:
Boost your web application performance with the Dotcom-Monitor’s critical features like reporting, alerts, APIs, web recorders, private agents, filters, schedules, integrations, and more. You can also view the live status of your web application in an integrated and single interface.
Real-time reports show you the high-level information you need, such as aggregate performance metrics. You can easily share dashboards with clients and users outside your organization. Perform trend analysis, such as load time, response time, and availability, to compare historic web application monitoring data with the present one and predict future results.
Want to nip website issues in the bud? Pingdom’s got you covered. This tool lets you monitor your website's uptime, performance, and availability like a pro. With alerts coming your way whenever something's off, you can tackle issues head-on.
Pingdom blends synthetic and real user monitoring for a crystal-clear view of user interactions. You'll see how your site performs across browsers, devices, and locations, and you can even simulate visitor actions to spot issues with critical pages.
Do you need to monitor your site from all over the globe? Uptrends does just that with 233 checkpoints worldwide. It tracks uptime and web performance accurately, so you know exactly what's happening.
Easily monitor user journeys, such as shopping carts and logins, with script recording or support. Spot performance bottlenecks with detailed load time analysis and Core Web Vitals tracking.
Uptime Robot has been around since 2010, offering rock-solid website monitoring without breaking the bank. It’s got global coverage to ensure accurate results and advanced features like:
Take a break during maintenance windows without false alerts and investigate incidents with root-cause analysis. Visualize response times to catch performance hiccups and customize HTTP requests for fine-tuned monitoring.
ManageEngine packs a punch with comprehensive website and network monitoring. Whether you monitor webpage performance or network health, this tool covers you. Track individual webpages or workflows to ensure smooth operation.
Test critical pages before launch, and watch out for unauthorized content changes. Integrate seamlessly with other tools and get instant alerts via:
Linko’s all about ensuring your website is in tip-top shape. It monitors SSL certificate health and broken links while monitoring your domain status. Servers worldwide mean your site gets monitored from various locations for a global performance snapshot.
Efficient crawlers, email alerts, and integration with NODATA make managing your site a breeze. SSL monitoring, uptime checks, log analysis, and domain expiry notifications are all part of Linko’s daily work.
Better Stack offers a monitoring platform that handles:
Say goodbye to false alerts with verified incident checks from multiple locations. Monitor everything from web pages to:
Catch errors with screenshots and error messages so you know exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.
Always supervise your tech infrastructure, network, and deployed web application. Consistent reviews and analyses happen constantly, ensuring the organization of your tech resources. Optimize system speed, utilize RAM, server accesses, and more in real-time, preventing problems and offering preventive solutions to stop breaches and vulnerabilities.
The systems continuously monitor for anomalies and errors, generating reports at the backend. Automation-based web testing tools can detect glitches easily. Retrieve reports anytime, look for patterns, and understand the source of attacks or bugs. Develop action plans for problems and deal with them more efficiently.
Web application downtime can be harmful to your business. Having more than one check to supervise web app performance is always recommended. Web app monitoring tools offer instant alerts when your web app is down or notify probable downtimes.
One of the most crucial aspects of choosing a web application monitoring tool is the frequency at which it monitors your website. The smaller the monitoring interval, the better, as it ensures that your website is constantly being checked for uptime and resource loading issues. A monitoring frequency of around 5 minutes is generally sufficient unless you have particular third-party services with inconsistent performance that need constant monitoring.
A top-tier web application monitoring tool should ideally have integrated server and log monitoring capabilities.
Monitoring these factors can directly impact user experience on your website or application.
With these monitoring solutions, you can identify weaknesses and tackle issues before they escalate into major problems.
For the best user experience, it's recommended to have a combination of synthetic and natural user monitoring capabilities. Synthetic monitoring involves simulating user interactions to test website performance, while accurate user monitoring captures users' actual experiences interacting with your site.
Combining these two methods provides a comprehensive view of your website's performance and user satisfaction, enabling you to react to issues more efficiently.
To accurately measure website speed and performance, it's essential to have monitoring nodes in various locations worldwide. Monitoring your website's performance locally may yield different results than running tests in distant countries. Having testing locations across the globe allows you to identify slow-loading parts of your website and address any issues affecting different user segments.
Ensuring your web application monitoring tool supports multiple browsers is crucial, as different browsers can render websites and scripts differently. What works seamlessly on Safari might encounter issues on Internet Explorer and vice versa. By testing across multiple browsers, you can effectively understand the variations in user experience and address any compatibility issues.
Setting up alerts for different sections and functions throughout your website is essential for proactive issue identification and resolution. Opt for a monitoring tool with robust alerting capabilities to provide an early warning system for potential problems. Configuring alerts across multiple communication channels can help you stay informed and respond promptly to critical issues.
Consider the pricing structure of web application monitoring tools, which may vary based on features and functionalities. While higher prices may sometimes offer more features, aligning the tool's capabilities with your website's specific needs is essential. Some tools may require annual contracts with significant costs, so understanding your website's requirements and budget constraints is crucial in selecting the most suitable monitoring tool.
Calibrating your monitoring alerts is like tuning an old guitar. You want them sharp enough to catch real issues but not so sensitive that they go off in the slightest breeze.
Focus your alerts on business-critical metrics that genuinely impact user experience and performance. This will ensure that your team responds to what matters most without drowning in a sea of false alarms.
Real User Monitoring (RUM) is your window into the world of actual users. It captures and analyzes user interactions in real-time, giving you a front-row seat to how your app performs across different devices and networks.
With RUM, you pinpoint usability issues and optimize content delivery, ensuring your app meets and exceeds user expectations.
With so much data available, it’s easy to get lost. Stick to metrics that align with your goals to cut through the noise. Focus on:
These metrics can help you quickly identify performance issues and decide where to focus your efforts.
Effective log management and analysis give you a granular view of your application’s behavior. By collecting, storing, and analyzing log data, you can troubleshoot issues, monitor security, and easily ensure compliance.
Automated log analysis tools can detect patterns and anomalies indicative of operational or security issues, enabling proactive resolution.
Chaos engineering sounds intense, but it’s all about building resilience. You can assess your systems' recovery capabilities by intentionally introducing disruptions to your applications or infrastructure.
This practice encourages a proactive approach to system design, focusing on building systems that can recover from unexpected failures.
Monitoring across multiple dimensions, performance, user experience, security, and infrastructure health, gives you a holistic view of your application.
Integrating different monitoring tools and approaches ensures coverage across all critical aspects of application functionality and performance, enabling a more effective response to issues and trends.
Understanding and mapping application dependencies is crucial for effective monitoring and troubleshooting.
By identifying how different components interact with each other and external services, you can more quickly pinpoint the root causes of performance issues. This knowledge is also essential for planning system updates or changes, as it highlights potential impacts on interconnected services.
Web monitoring tools guard your online presence. They track your site's performance and availability.
With real-time insights into uptime, response times, and user experience, they help spot issues before your users do. They are your early warning system, keeping your brand reputation intact and users happy.
Alerty is a cloud monitoring service that aims to simplify application performance monitoring for developers and early-stage startups. It offers a comprehensive suite of monitoring tools, including:
Supporting a wide range of technologies, such as NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js, Alerty helps developers identify and fix issues quickly before they impact end users.
This monitoring service is especially beneficial for small teams and developers seeking an efficient and affordable solution for monitoring their web applications.
Provides insights into key metrics:
Supports databases such as:
By offering visibility into these vital metrics, Alerty enables developers to pinpoint potential performance bottlenecks that could affect the overall user experience. With this database monitoring feature, developers can proactively address issues before they escalate into more significant problems that could impact end-users interactions with web applications.
Alerty boasts quick incident management capabilities, allowing developers to respond promptly to application issues. With the ability to set up alerts and notifications for critical incidents, developers can stay informed in real time and take swift action to resolve any problems that may impact application performance. This rapid incident management feature is crucial for maintaining a seamless user experience and ensuring that web applications are always up and running without interruptions.
One standout feature of Alerty is its Real User Monitoring (RUM) functionality, which provides developers with insights into how real users interact with their web applications.
This user-centric approach to monitoring helps developers prioritize enhancements that directly impact end-users, resulting in a more satisfying and engaging user experience.
By monitoring these external services and integrations, developers can ensure that all components of their web applications are functioning correctly and delivering the expected performance. This comprehensive monitoring capability helps developers identify and address issues across the entire application stack, ensuring a smooth and seamless user experience for all users interacting with their web applications.
Alerty is designed for ease of use, offering a seamless setup process and integration with popular developer tools like Sentry. This streamlined approach to monitoring enables developers to get up and running quickly and start monitoring their applications without unnecessary complexities. By integrating with tools developers are familiar with, Alerty ensures a smooth transition to a new monitoring solution and minimizes any learning curve associated with adopting a new platform.
One of Alerty's key advantages is its cost-effective monitoring solution, which provides developers with comprehensive monitoring tools at an affordable price point.
By leveraging AI to simplify setup and reduce operational overhead, Alerty offers a competitive monitoring solution accessible to developers and small teams looking for an efficient and affordable way to monitor their web applications. This cost-effective approach to monitoring makes Alerty an attractive option for developers seeking a robust monitoring solution without breaking the bank.
Try Alerty's free APM solution today to streamline your application performance monitoring. Experience comprehensive insights and rapid incident management to keep your web applications running smoothly and efficiently.