Every business is incredibly dependent on software and ensuring that all of your organization’s mission-critical apps are functioning at their best is vital. While effective mobile application development is one cornerstone of building a robust business, application monitoring is equally vital and involves keeping a close watch on an application’s performance, availability and user experience to make sure it is operating as intended.

APM (application performance monitoring) tools help evaluate a potential issue or outage and provide the ability to identify the root cause of the application failure or latency and code deployment flaws. Developers and conventional IT operations have access to a variety of APM tools available in the market. Some of the top APM tools for mobile applications are listed below:

1. Logtail

Logtail is a ClickHouse-based (open-source database for real-time apps) framework for organized log management. It enables real-time log collection, analysis and visualization. It can collect data from the most well-known programming languages and frameworks including Python, Django, JavaScript, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, .NET and others. With its built-in collaborative tools, resource-saving ClickHouse and an attractive dark-mode UI, Logtail enables you to create software quickly.

Logtail creates a full observability solution along with incident management in collaboration with Better Uptime (a monitoring platform). You can easily alert team members to any issues with the application’s performance with just one click.

Cost:

Logtail has three different plans:

• Freelancer at $24 per month
• Small Team at $64 per month
• Business at $120 per month

Additionally, Logtail provides a free plan with limited features.

2. Splunk APM

Splunk’s APM provides an application performance monitoring and debugging solution for cloud-native, microservice-based programs. It guarantees 100% accuracy, reliability and AI abnormality recognition and mapping. Splunk APM provides open and vendor-neutral instrumentation for greater flexibility.

Cost:

Splunk APM offers a 14-day free trial where you can check its capabilities and understand whether it suits your requirements. Once you know what you’re going to get, Splunk builds a customized price for your business based on your needs.

3. The ELK Stack APM

ELK Stack is a widely used log management platform, which includes three open source products.

• Elasticsearch

A decentralized search and analytics engine, built on Apache Lucene (a database of free, open-source search engine software).

• Logstash

An open-source data ingestion tool that enables you to gather data from various sources, alter it and send it to the location you choose. It supports more than 200 plugins and comes with built-in filters.

• Kibana

A tool for log and time-series analytics, application monitoring and operational intelligence. It offers some useful and powerful features like histograms, line graphs, pie charts, heat maps and integrated geospatial support.

Cost:

The cost ranges from $95 per month to $175 per month, depending on the plan you choose.

4. Datadog

Datadog provides full-stack insight into your servers, cloud-based platforms and applications. With the help of Datadog’s strong user experience monitoring capabilities, you can monitor network timing and transactions. It also offers alerts for issues affecting the entire software stack.

Cost:

The cost ranges from $0 for up to 5 hosts to $31 per host per month. Annual, monthly and hourly plans are also available that enable you to customize your billing plans as per your needs.

5. AppDynamics 

AppDynamics provides incredibly high visibility, especially in complicated situations. The AI-powered approach for identifying performance issues and bottlenecks and swiftly resolving them are its notable characteristics. It offers advice and business insights by converting performance data into business results.

Cost:

It offers a free trial for 15 days after which pricing is available upon request.

6. New Relic

New Relic is one of the leaders in the application performance management sector that has promoted the idea of a SaaS-based (software as a service) APM. One of the finest advantages it provides is the crystal-clear image of your complete software stack. When you set up New Relic on a WordPress site, it offers a unique WordPress functionality that helps you easily keep a tab on WordPress hooks, plugins and themes.

Cost:

It offers a lifetime-free plan with some limitations and also many premium plans starting from $99 per month.

7. Instana

Instana APM is a monitoring solution by IBM. It uses automation for quick incident handling and performance monitoring. It proactively locates, maps and keeps track of interconnections throughout the infrastructure and also enables monitoring and influence analysis of software version changes.

Cost:

It offers custom pricing for its software and provides a free trial too.

8. Loupe

Loupe is primarily designed for commercial clients and IT specialists, but small businesses can benefit from it as well because it is easy to use and quick to set up. Automatic grouping of log events is one of the most practical alternatives that it offers, as it saves you from having to waste time looking for a problem’s root cause. It also has an impressive web client that allows you to access your information from any computer or device.

Cost:

• Basic – starting at $50 per month
• Professional – starting at $150 per month
• Enterprise – starting at $500 per month

9. Stackify Retrace

Stackify Retrace is built specifically for developers and is an easily scalable SaaS solution. It checks for errors and bottlenecks and then notifies you via your preferred channel, like SMS or Slack. One of its best features is that it lets you get a quick picture of how your app is performing.

Cost:

It offers you a 14-day free trial after which prices start at $99 a month ($79 if on an annual plan).

10. Stagemonitor

The Java-specific APM, Stagemonitor, is particularly intended for web applications. The browser widget enables you to track and gather analytics while you’re constructing the application. This ability helps you to easily review the code while working and is ideal for web developers.

Cost:

It is a free and open-source software. 

APM tools can be helpful when you’re attempting to simplify your IT budget, lessen the workload on your support staff or simply give your users the greatest experience possible. Many SaaS solutions come with simpler implementation and a 15–30 day trial period, allowing you to test them out and see what works best for you. On the other side, open-source solutions also offer a great deal of freedom and customizability.