9 Best Software to Monitor Your Web Application [Self-hosted and Cloud-based]

Hello there! As a fellow technology geek, I know how crucial it is to monitor your web applications in today‘s digital landscape. After all, web apps are the frontend to your business – if they are slow, error-prone or frequently down, you will lose customers.

So in this guide, I‘ll provide my insights as a data analyst and GPT expert on the best web application monitoring tools out there. Whether you are a developer, IT admin or business owner, you‘ll find this useful.

Let‘s get started!

Why You Absolutely Need Web Application Monitoring

You‘ve built a great web application. But how do you know if it‘s fast all the time? Or even up and running? The ugly truth is you can‘t tell until your customers start complaining on social media.

Web application monitoring is like having your own personal 24/7 watchman who keeps an eye on your web app and alerts you the moment something goes wrong.

Here are 3 key reasons why web application monitoring is an absolute must-have:

1. Improve Customer Experience

According to Forrester, a 100ms delay in website load time can cause a 7% loss in conversions. Your web app‘s performance directly impacts sales and revenue. Monitoring tools help you detect slowdowns and fix them before customers notice.

2. Achieve Higher Uptime

A Pingdom study shows that a single hour of downtime can cost small businesses up to $300,000 in lost revenue. Ouch! With proactive monitoring, you can minimize costly downtime by catching issues ahead of time.

3. Reduce Customer Churn

According to Aberdeen Group, a 1-second delay in page load time increases customer churn by 16%. Frequent slowdowns and crashes will drive away users. Monitoring tools help maximize app performance and retention.

Clearly, web application monitoring is mission-critical. Now let‘s look at how it works.

How Web Application Monitoring Works

Modern web application monitoring tools use a mix of synthetic monitoring, real user monitoring and application performance monitoring (APM) to keep tabs on your web app‘s health 24/7.

Synthetic Monitoring

This uses automated scripts and simulations to check web pages and transactions continuously from worldwide locations. It catches issues before they impact real users.

For instance, you can set up a script to run a test checkout transaction every 5 minutes on your ecommerce site from New York, San Francisco and London. If the test fails in one region, you get proactively alerted about a potential issue.

Real User Monitoring

Also called passive monitoring, this tracks actual user sessions on your live web app to measure real-world performance and diagnose issues. RUM gives you the customer‘s perspective.

For example, RUM tools capture JavaScript errors and slow page loads happening on real customer sessions, giving you visibility into problems customers face.

Application Performance Monitoring

APM tools instrument your web app code to monitor application performance. They trace transactions through application tiers – from browser to web server to database. This helps isolate root cause of issues.

With APM, you can see which line of code or database query is causing slowdowns. APM requires embedding agents in your app during development.

Now let‘s look at the top web monitoring tools available.

The 9 Best Web Application Monitoring Tools

1. Datadog

Datadog is my top recommendation due to its seamless end-to-end monitoring capabilities. Its dashboard gives you incredible visibility at a glance.

Datadog lets you:

• Run synthetic tests from 50+ global locations to continuously monitor web transactions like login flows, checkouts etc.

• Embed real user monitoring code in your web app to analyze how actual users experience your site.

• Enable APM by installing their agents to trace transactions across app tiers.

• Leverage anomaly detection algorithms to identify performance deviations.

• Create custom dashboards to monitor 300+ app metrics in real-time.

Datadog is a highly scalable platform. Engineers love it too for its integration with popular DevOps tools. It starts at $15 per host per month. They offer a free trial too.

2. New Relic

New Relic is another industry leader in web monitoring. Here are some standout features:

• Set up availability monitoring for critical pages and get instant email/Slack notifications if they go down.

• Insert JS agent in your web app code to capture real user data like page load times, requests etc.

• Track vital web vitals like Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift etc.

• Embed agents for full-stack transaction tracing from frontend to backends.

• Out-of-the-box dashboards provide visibility into web app performance.

• Powerful alerting capabilities, tight integration with PagerDuty and VictorOps incident management.

New Relic starts at $99 per month and offers a free tier.

3. Pingdom

Pingdom is a cost-effective monitoring solution perfect for small businesses.

Notable features:

• Website monitoring from 100+ global locations that replicates real user traffic.

• Multi-step transaction monitoring is available in higher plans.

• Real browser testing provides accurate performance metrics.

• Flexible alerts via email, SMS, Slack, Teams etc.

• Public status pages keep users informed about downtimes.

• Affordable plans starting at $15 per month.

Pingdom offers a free website monitoring plan with 100 page checks per month.

4. AppDynamics

AppDynamics is optimized for monitoring cloud-native and microservices-based apps.

Key capabilities:

• Set up synthetic transactions to simulate user journeys across services.

• Distributed transaction tracing maps transactions across microservices.

• Out-of-the-box dashboards provide application visibility.

• Anomaly detection alerts you about abnormal performance deviations.

• Seamless integration with CI/CD workflows.

• Comes in different editions based on app complexity, starting at $3,560 per year.

They offer a free 15-day trial to test it out.

5. Catchpoint

Catchpoint simplifies monitoring of complex web apps and services.

Notable features:

• Real user monitoring captures visitor experience and web vitals like TTFB.

• Transaction tracing provides code-level visibility into bottlenecks.

• Outage survivor analysis shows availability by region.

• Monitor third-party services like CDNs, DNS etc.

• Integrations with PagerDuty, Splunk, Datadog etc.

• Customizable dashboards and over 150+ metrics.

Pricing starts at $14/month for startups and small teams. Free 14-day trial available.

6. ThousandEyes

ThousandEyes shines in monitoring web app delivery over networks and the internet.

Key features:

• Test web app availability and performance from enterprise vantage points.

• Waterfall diagrams visualize dependencies that impact web apps.

• Monitor third-party web services like CDNs, APIs, DNS resolvers.

• Agent-based monitoring for internal apps.

• Internet Insights reports highlight global and regional network outages.

• Powerful analytics and visualization capabilities.

ThousandEyes starts at around $1,500 per year. Offers free demo.

7. Uptrends

Uptrends provide affordable and straightforward web monitoring.

Notable capabilities:

• Monitor response time, transactions, SSL certificates etc.

• Alerts via email, SMS, Teams, Slack etc.

• Custom status pages keep users updated about outages.

• Scalable distributed monitoring from global locations.

• Browser-based synthetic monitoring for accuracy.

• Basic multi-step web transaction monitoring.

• Plans start at $29 per month for up to 10 monitors.

They offer a 7-day free trial to test drive the product.

8. SolarWinds Pingdom

Pingdom by SolarWinds is a cost-effective option for uptime monitoring.

Key features:

• Website monitoring from 80+ global regions.

• Real browser testing provides accurate metrics.

• Basic transaction checks capability available.

• Flexible webhook and SMS alert integration.

• Public status pages.

• Plenty of integrations with tools like Splunk, Jira etc.

Plans start at $14.95 per month for 20Website checks. Free 30-day trial provided.

9. Nagios

Nagios is an open-source monitoring solution with powerful capabilities.

Notable features:

• Monitor website and web transactions.

• Open-source core with paid plugins.

• Real browser testing for accurate data.

• Customizable dashboards and reporting.

• Robust alerting capabilities.

• Ability to monitor other IT infrastructure as well.

Being open-source, Nagios doesn‘t have fixed pricing. Paid plugins and support plans are available.

So these are my top recommendations for web application monitoring in 2023. Monitor your web apps before customers start complaining!

Key Factors to Choose a Web Monitoring Tool

Here are some key criteria to select the right web monitoring tool for your needs:

Budget – Tool pricing can range from free open-source to thousands of dollars per year for enterprise platforms. Choose based on your budget needs.

App Complexity – If your app uses microservices, distributed tracing capability is a must. For simple monoliths, basic synthetic monitoring should suffice.

Team Skillsets – Some tools like Datadog require DevOps expertise. Others like Pingdom are designed for ease of use.

Integrations – Tool integrations with existing incident management and collaboration tools expands capabilities.

Scalability – As your web app and traffic grows, ensure the tool can easily scale up monitoring.

Ease of Setup – Look for tools with simple setup so you can start monitoring faster without complex deployments.

Support – Factor in the vendor‘s reputation for support. You want prompt help when issues arise.

Final Thoughts

I hope this detailed guide gives you clarity in choosing the right web application monitoring tool for your needs. My personal favorites are Datadog for enterprise teams and Pingdom for SMBs.

The most important thing is to start monitoring your web apps proactively. Even a basic tool that gives you uptime alerts and performance visibility is better than flying blind.

Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions! I‘m always happy to help fellow geeks out.