Whether your business runs on apps or your business is building apps – cloud-based, Web, or mobile – you know that you need them to run smoothly and each to work “as advertised” so your business can meet its goals. But, how well are all those apps really working? Are they working correctly? Efficiently? Are all the various apps you use to get the job done, whatever it may be, all playing nicely together?
If that question catches you off guard, it’s probably because you don’t have a real-time tool to let you visualize how well your apps are working. In other words, you’ve probably never discovered the best application performance management software.
If you’re an IT professional, chances are good that a large chunk of your time is spent monitoring some sort of application performance management tool. If your current tool is out of date, your screen is too cluttered, or you just don’t think you’re getting the insights you need, you owe it to yourself to check out the latest in application monitoring and performance management.
Here are our picks for the top ten application performance management tools of 2014.
LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor is a serious tool for serious IT professionals. LogicMonitor provides performance monitoring of your complete stack. It also provides you with unlimited email and text alerts, to let you know when an issue needs attention. You can also use LogicMonitor to set alert routing and escalation, for those times when the problem exceeds your administrative capabilities.
LogicMonitor allows unlimited user access, free ongoing updates, and unlimited collectors of data.
New Relic
New Relic is a tool that gives you deep insights into your stack of applications. New Relic provides a real-time overview of the availability of your apps. New Relic also provides real-time alerts and email notifications. New Relic even offers an API for creating custom apps and developing your own performance data analytics routines. New Relic is imminently scalable and versatile, and that makes it one of the ablest tools for discerning IT professionals, like you. (Bonus, New Relic is how we monitor our website and integrations at GetApp!)
CopperEgg
CopperEgg provides ultra high-resolution monitoring of your servers and apps. CopperEgg provides a unified, hybrid dashboard that makes it easy to understand the status of your servers in terms of overall health and performance. CopperEgg gives you unparalleled insights into user experience, from loading time to root-cause troubleshooting. CopperEgg is even a snap to install!
Stackify
Stackify is a unique application performance tool that adds database monitoring to the expected insights it offers into your application stack. Stackify provides secure access to contextual data that lets you know not just what happened, but why it happened. Stackify provides alerts and notification. You can also escalate problems that exceed your permissions. Stackify also bears the distinction of being intensely developer friendly.
Datadog
Datadog specializes in meeting the needs of development teams who need to write and test applications under the gun (so to speak) of real-world stresses. Datadog provides clean visualizations and a well-thought-out built-in search feature to help you drill down the heaps of data Datadog collects. Datadog even lets you overlay disparate data sources to find correlations that would otherwise not be apparent. A full complement of alert and notifications is also included in Datadog.
Site24x7
Site24x7 is a tool that helps you monitor the up-time and performance of websites, applications, servers, and cloud-based apps, even in hybrid configurations. Site24x7 provides monitoring of email services, transaction processing tools, and SSL certificates. In short, Site24x7 lives up to its name by helping you keep your technology up and running as much as possible. As an IT professional, you know that no one – not even yourself – can guarantee 100% up time of digital products and services, but with Site24x7, you can get as razor-close as possible.
Load Impact
Load Impact is beautifully named. You see, it does exactly what its name implies: it monitors the load placed on your servers and applications. So good is Load Impact at delivering on its name that it is trusted by NASDAQ to deliver real-time stock quotes and charts for thousands of liquid, moving equities in real-time to millions of investors and speculators each day. If it can keep up with all that, there’s not much you can throw at Load Impact that it can’t handle.
ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager gets right to the heart of your IT troubles: the network. ManageEngine OpManager is a bit more narrowly focused on networking than the other apps on this list. But if that’s just what you need, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better tool for keeping up with even the most complicated of networks than ManageEngine OpManager.
Scout
Scout is an established name in application performance management. Scout lets you monitor Web and cloud-based apps, services, and other metrics. With Scout, you can also script your own custom plugins to help you track or overlay various metrics. Scout is great for troubleshooting bottlenecks, load-balancing servers, and charting performance. Scout offers a full suite of alert options, too.
Raygun
RaygunRaygun is there for you when things go wrong. When an app crashes, Raygun gathers the data and sends an alert. It’s just that simple. Raygun also has comprehensive search functions to help you pinpoint and fix bugs and glitches that emerge under pressure from certain circumstances. if you just need to hammer out the kinks in your network, Raygun is a solid choice.
Do you need more choices for application performance management?
The apps on this list have been selected for their ability to track even the most complex stacks of apps and monitor vast networks. If you don’t see the tool for you on this list, or your IT department has specialized needs, be sure to check out GetApp’s complete list of application performance management tools.