Server monitoring, APM (Application Performance Monitoring), and observability are all essential tools for maintaining a healthy infrastructure. But with so many options out there, it can be difficult to know which server monitoring tool is the best for your organization. This blog post will provide an overview of the 24 best server monitoring, APM, and observability tools available in 2023. We’ll also discuss how each solution works, what features to look for when selecting a server monitor tool, and how to evaluate if it’s the right fit for your organization.
In the ever-evolving world of technology, it’s no surprise that server monitoring and observability tools are a hot commodity. With the rise of cloud computing, distributed systems, and microservice architectures, it’s now more important than ever to have reliable and accurate server monitoring systems and solutions in place.
But with so many options out there, it can be hard to decide which tools are the best for your particular use case. That’s why we have compiled this list of 24 of the best top server monitoring software and APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools for 2023. You will find everything from open-source solutions to enterprise-grade tools that can help you get insights into your application performance and resolve any issues quickly. Let’s dive in!
24 Best Server Monitoring, APM and Observability Tools
There are many tools available for monitoring servers, applications windows server call, and network performance. But which ones are the best? In this blog post, we will take a look at the best server monitoring, APM, and observability tools for 2023.
We will start with server monitoring tools. These tools help you monitor the performance of your web servers, and make sure they are running properly. Some of the best server monitoring tools include:
1. Nagios
Nagios is an open-source server monitoring tool that allows you to monitor the health of your servers, applications network devices, and services. It provides real-time alerts and notifications when issues arise, allowing you to quickly address them.
Features include:
- Monitoring of servers, applications, and services
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Reports and performance graphs
- Plug-in architecture for extending functionality
- Distributed monitoring for scalability
Pricing:
Nagios Core is free, but there are enterprise editions available with additional features and support.
2. Zabbix
Zabbix is an enterprise-grade server monitoring tool that offers comprehensive monitoring of servers, networks, applications, and services. It is highly customizable and offers advanced features for large-scale deployments.
Features include:
- Monitoring of servers, networks, applications, and services
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Reports and performance graphs
- Intelligent baselines and anomaly detection
- Distributed monitoring for scalability
Pricing:
Zabbix is open source and free to use, but there are enterprise editions available with additional features and support.
3. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor servers are comprehensive server monitoring tool that offers real-time visibility into the performance and health of your virtual servers and applications. It provides detailed metrics and alerts to help you identify and address issues quickly.
Features include:
- Monitoring of servers, applications, and services
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Performance baselines and anomaly detection
- Reports and performance graphs
- Integration with other SolarWinds tools
Pricing: SolarWinds offers a free trial, and pricing is based on the number of nodes (servers) you need to monitor.
4. PRTG Network Monitor
PRTG Network Monitor is a server monitoring tool that provides real-time visibility into the health and performance of your servers, networks, and applications. It offers a user-friendly interface and customizable alerts and notifications to help you quickly identify and address issues.
Features include:
- Monitoring of servers, networks, and applications
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Performance baselines and anomaly detection
- Reports and performance graphs
- Mobile app for monitoring on-the-go
Pricing:
PRTG offers a free trial, and pricing is based on the number of sensors (monitored elements) you need to use.
5. Datadog
Datadog is a cloud-based server monitoring tool that provides real-time insights into the health and performance of your servers, applications, and services. It offers a wide range of integrations and customizable alerts to help you quickly identify and address issues.
Features include:
- Monitoring of servers, applications, and services
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Performance baselines and anomaly detection
- Real-time dashboards and visualizations
- Integration with other tools and platforms
Pricing:
Datadog offers a free trial, and pricing is based on the number of hosts (monitored elements) you need to use.
6. ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager is an on-premises server monitoring tool that provides comprehensive monitoring of servers, networks, applications, and services. It offers a user-friendly interface and customizable alerts and reports to help you quickly identify and address issues.
Features include:
- Monitoring of servers, networks, applications, and services
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Performance baselines and anomaly detection
- Reports and performance graphs
- Integration with other ManageEngine tools
Pricing:
ManageEngine OpManager offers a free trial, and pricing is based on the number of monitors (monitored elements) you need to use.
7. AppDynamics
AppDynamics is a cloud-based server monitoring tool that provides real-time insights into the performance and health of your applications and services. It offers advanced features for application performance management and customizable alerts to help you quickly identify and address issues.
Features include:
- Monitoring of applications and services
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Performance baselines and anomaly detection
- Real-time dashboards and visualizations
- Integration with other tools and platforms
Pricing: AppDynamics offers a free trial, and pricing is based on the number of hosts (monitored elements) you need to use.
8. Monitis
Monitis is a cloud-based server monitoring tool that provides comprehensive monitoring of servers, networks, and applications. It offers a user-friendly interface and customizable alerts and reports to help you quickly identify and address issues.
Features include:
- Monitoring of servers, networks, and applications
- Customizable alerts and notifications
- Performance baselines and anomaly detection
- Reports and performance graphs
- Integration with other tools and platforms
Pricing:
Monitis offers a free trial, and pricing is based on the number of monitors (monitored elements) you need to use.
9 New Relic:
New Relic is a cloud-based APM tool that provides real-time monitoring, troubleshooting system monitoring, and optimization for web applications, mobile applications, and servers.
Features:
- Real-time monitoring of web applications, mobile applications, and servers
- Performance metrics for all components of an application’s stack
- Troubleshooting tools for identifying and resolving issues
- Visualization and reporting tools to analyze performance trends and identify opportunities for optimization
- Support for multiple programming languages and frameworks
Pricing: New Relic offers a free Lite plan with limited features, and several paid plans starting at $99 per month per host.
10 Dynatrace:
Dynatrace is an AI-powered APM tool that provides end-to-end visibility into the performance of web applications, microservices, and containerized environments.
Features:
- End-to-end monitoring of web applications, microservices, and containerized environments
- AI-powered root cause analysis for identifying and resolving issues
- Automatic baselining of performance metrics for detecting anomalies
- Real-time performance metrics for all components of an application’s stack
- Visualization and reporting tools to analyze performance trends and identify opportunities for optimization
Pricing: Dynatrace offers several paid plans starting at $69 per month per host.
11. Checkmk:
Checkmk is an open-source IT monitoring solution that provides real-time monitoring and analysis of IT infrastructure and applications. It is designed to monitor everything from servers, network devices, and applications to cloud-based resources. With Checkmk, businesses can identify and fix issues before they become major problems, helping to maintain a high availability and optimal performance.
Features:
- Real-time monitoring of servers, network devices, applications, and cloud resources
- Automated discovery and inventory of IT assets
- Alerting and notifications for critical events and issues
- Comprehensive reporting and analytics
- Integration with popular IT service management tools like ServiceNow and Jira
- Multi-tenancy support for managed service providers
Pricing:
Checkmk offers a free open-source version, as well as two paid versions: Checkmk Enterprise and Checkmk Managed Services. Pricing for the paid versions is based on the number of monitored hosts and starts at $750 per year.
12. Site24x7:
Site24x7 is a cloud-based IT monitoring solution that provides comprehensive monitoring of websites, servers, network devices, and applications. It is designed to provide real-time insights into the performance of IT infrastructure and applications, helping businesses ensure uptime and optimize performance.
Features:
- Real-time monitoring of websites, servers, network devices, and applications
- End-user monitoring to track user experience and identify issues before they affect users
- Root cause analysis to quickly identify the cause of issues
- Comprehensive reporting and analytics
- Integration with popular IT service management tools like ServiceNow and Jira
- Multi-tenancy support for managed service providers
Pricing: Site24x7 offers a variety of pricing plans based on the number of monitors and the frequency of monitoring. Plans start at $9 per month and go up to $225 per month for the Enterprise plan, which includes advanced features like custom dashboards and advanced analytics. A 30-day free trial is available for all plans.
13. Stackify Retrace:
Stackify Retrace is an APM tool that provides end-to-end monitoring and troubleshooting for web applications, microservices, and servers.
Features:
- End-to-end monitoring of web applications, microservices, and servers
- Automatic baselining of performance metrics for detecting anomalies
- Root cause analysis for identifying and resolving issues
- Real-time performance metrics for all components of an application’s stack
- Visualization and reporting tools to analyze performance trends and identify opportunities for optimization
Pricing: Stackify Retrace offers several paid plans starting at $25 per month per server.
14 Raygun APM:
Raygun APM is a cloud-based APM tool that provides end-to-end monitoring and troubleshooting for web applications and servers.
Features:
- End-to-end monitoring of web applications and servers
- Distributed tracing for identifying and resolving issues across multiple services
- Automatic baselining of performance metrics for detecting anomalies
- Real-time performance metrics for all components of an application’s stack
- Visualization and reporting tools to analyze performance trends and identify opportunities for optimization
Pricing: Raygun APM offers several paid plans starting at $29 per month per host.
15 Instana:
Instana is an APM tool that provides end-to-end monitoring and troubleshooting for web applications, microservices, and containers.
Features:
- End-to-end monitoring of web applications, microservices, and containers
- Automatic discovery and mapping of application dependencies
- Real-time performance metrics for all components of an application’s stack
- Root cause analysis for identifying and resolving issues
- Visualization and reporting tools to analyze performance trends and identify opportunities for optimization
Pricing: Instana offers several paid plans starting at $8 per host per month.
16 Grafana Loki:
Grafana Loki is a horizontally-scalable, multi-tenant log aggregation system inspired by Prometheus. It is designed to be very cost-effective and easy to operate, as it does not index the contents of the logs themselves. Instead, it uses labels to organize log streams and allows users to search them using powerful regular expressions.
Features:
- Multi-tenant log aggregation
- Log stream organization using labels
- Search using regular expressions
- Support for various log formats
- Integration with the Grafana dashboard
Pricing: Grafana Loki offers a free, open-source version as well as a paid enterprise version. The enterprise version starts at $7,500 per year and includes additional features such as distributed tracing integration and support for multiple data sources. It includes in best infrastructure monitoring tools.
17 Jaeger:
Jaeger is an open-source, end-to-end distributed tracing system that helps users monitor and troubleshoot transactions in complex distributed systems. It supports various tracing formats and has an intuitive user interface that allows users to visualize their service architectures and diagnose performance issues.
Features:
- Distributed tracing for complex systems
- Support for various tracing formats
- Service dependency mapping
- User-friendly UI
- Integration with various systems
Pricing: Jaeger is open-source and available for free. However, there are commercial offerings from vendors such as Lightstep and DataDog that offer additional features and support.
18 Prometheus:
Prometheus is an open-source, metrics-based monitoring system that collects and aggregates metrics from various sources, such as applications, services, and infrastructure. It stores metrics in a time-series database and provides a flexible querying language that allows users to slice and dice the data in various ways.
Features:
- Metrics-based monitoring
- Time-series database
- Flexible querying language
- Alerting and notification
- Integration with various systems
Pricing: Prometheus is open-source and available for free. However, there are commercial offerings from vendors such as Sysdig and InfluxData that offer additional features and support.
19 Elastic Stack:
Elastic Stack is a set of open-source tools that provides users with a comprehensive platform for observability. It includes tools for collecting and analyzing logs, metrics, and traces, as well as powerful search engine and visualization tools.
Features:
- Log, metrics, and tracing collection and analysis
- Search engine and visualization tools
- Support for various data sources
- User-friendly UI
- Integration with various systems
Pricing: Elastic Stack is open-source and available for free. However, there are commercial offerings from Elastic that offer additional features and support. The pricing for the commercial offerings varies depending on the number of nodes and the features included.
20 Honeycomb:
Honeycomb is a distributed tracing platform that enables engineers to troubleshoot issues and understand how their systems are performing in real time. It offers rich data visualization capabilities, as well as powerful query and analysis tools that help engineers debug issues quickly.
Features:
- Distributed tracing
- Rich data visualization
- Advanced query and analysis tools
- Real-time alerting and notification
- Integration with various systems
Pricing: Honeycomb offers a free tier for up to 5GB of ingested data per month. For more data, pricing starts at $50/month for up to 50GB of ingested data and increases based on usage.
21 LightStep:
LightStep is an observability platform that provides end-to-end visibility across complex distributed systems. It offers distributed tracing, metrics, and logs in a single platform, as well as advanced anomaly detection and intelligent alerting.
Features:
- Distributed tracing, metrics, and logs
- Advanced anomaly detection
- Intelligent alerting
- Root cause analysis
- Integration with various systems
Pricing: LightStep offers a free trial, after which pricing is based on the number of traces ingested per month. Pricing starts at $100/month for up to 2.5 million traces and increases based on usage. There are also enterprise plans available with additional features and support.
22. Splunk:
Splunk is a highly advanced server monitoring tool that enables you to gain real-time insights into the performance of your servers, networks, and applications. It is a highly flexible tool that can monitor data from a wide range of sources, including log files, metrics, and events. Splunk offers powerful data visualization, alerting, and search capabilities, making it easy to identify and troubleshoot issues. It also supports integrations with a variety of third-party tools.
Features:
- Real-time data analysis: Splunk provides real-time analysis of data from a wide range of sources, including log files, metrics, and events. This allows you to quickly identify and troubleshoot issues as they arise.
- Data visualization: Splunk offers powerful data visualization tools that allow you to create customized dashboards and reports to monitor and analyze server performance. You can create visualizations such as charts, graphs, and heat maps to help identify trends and anomalies in your data.
- Alerting and notification: Splunk allows you to set up alerts and notifications to alert you when certain events occur, such as a server going down or a spike in traffic. You can customize alerts to be sent via email, SMS, or other channels.
- Integration with third-party tools: Splunk offers integrations with a wide range of third-party tools and platforms, making it easy to combine data from different sources and perform advanced analytics. This allows you to gain a comprehensive view of your system’s performance and quickly identify issues that may arise.
Prices: Splunk offers a free version with limited features, and paid plans start at $150/month.
23 Icinga:
Icinga is an open-source server monitoring tool that provides a flexible and customizable platform for remote monitoring of the performance and availability of servers, applications, and networks. It is a highly modular tool that supports a wide range of plugins and integrations, making it possible to monitor almost any aspect of your system. Icinga offers a web interface for real-time monitoring and alerting, as well as customizable dashboards and notifications. The core Icinga software is free to download and use, with enterprise support and plugins available for purchase.
Features:
- Flexibility and customization: Icinga is an open-source monitoring tool that provides a high degree of flexibility and customization. It supports a wide range of plugins and extensions, allowing you to monitor almost any aspect of your system. You can also customize dashboards, notifications, and other features to meet your specific needs.
- Real-time monitoring and alerting: Icinga offers real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities that allow you to quickly identify and respond to issues as they arise. You can set up customized alerts to be sent via email, SMS, or other channels, and configure escalation policies to ensure that critical issues are addressed promptly.
- Easy integration with other tools: Icinga integrates easily with other tools and platforms, allowing you to combine data from different sources and perform advanced analytics. It also offers a web-based interface that makes it easy to manage and monitor your system from anywhere.
- Comprehensive reporting and analytics: Icinga provides comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities, allowing you to gain insights into the performance of your system over time. You can create customized reports and visualizations, and use data to identify trends, track progress, and make informed decisions about system optimization and improvement.
24 Opsview:
Opsview is a comprehensive server monitoring tool that provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and availability of servers, networks, and applications. It offers customizable dashboards, alerting, and reporting capabilities, as well as support for a range of integrations and plugins. Opsview is available in both on-premises and cloud-based versions, making it easy to deploy and manage.
Features:
- Centralized monitoring: Opsview provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and availability of servers, networks, and applications. This makes it easy to manage and monitor your system from a single location and provides a comprehensive view of your system’s health.
- Customizable dashboards and reporting: Opsview offers customizable dashboards and reporting capabilities, allowing you to create tailored views of your system’s performance. You can create charts, graphs, and other visualizations to track trends and identify issues and create reports that provide detailed insights into system performance.
- Extensive plugin library: Opsview offers an extensive library of plugins and integrations, allowing you to monitor a wide range of systems and applications. This includes plugins for popular platforms like AWS, Azure, and Docker, as well as integrations with tools like Nagios, Puppet, and Ansible.
- Cloud and on-premises deployment: Opsview is available in both cloud and on-premises deployment models, making it easy to deploy and manage according to your specific needs. This provides flexibility and scalability, allowing you to monitor your system regardless of its size or complexity.
Pricing for Opsview starts at $2,500/year for up to 100 devices.
Conclusion
After reading through the article, we can see that there are a variety of different server monitoring, APM, and observability tools available. While some of these are paid tools, there are also a number of free and open-source options available. For those looking for a comprehensive server monitoring solution, however, it is worth considering one of the paid options. However, for those who are just starting out or who have more limited needs, there are some excellent free and open-source options available as well. In conclusion, there is a server monitoring, APM or observability tool available for just about any need and budget.
FAQs – Best Server Monitoring, APM, and Observability Tools
What is server monitoring?
Server monitoring is the process of continuously monitoring a server’s performance and availability to ensure it is operating efficiently and effectively. This is infrastructure monitoring includes tracking resource usage, identifying and resolving potential issues, and optimizing performance.
What is APM?
Application Performance Monitoring software (APM) is a software system that monitors and manages the performance and availability of an application. It provides real-time data about the application’s behavior, identifies issues, and helps optimize performance.
What is observability?
Observability refers to the ability to gain insights into the inner workings of a system through the collection and analysis of data. It involves tracking and monitoring data from multiple sources to gain a holistic understanding of how a system is behaving.
Why do businesses need these tools?
Businesses need server monitoring, APM, and observability tools to ensure the reliability, availability, and performance of their applications and systems. These tools enable businesses to proactively identify and see network traffic, resolve potential issues before they become problems, improve the user experience, and reduce downtime and costs associated with system failures. The server performance monitoring tool will be good and have the best operating systems.
How can these tools help businesses improve their operations?
By providing real-time data and insights into the performance and behavior of their applications and systems, these tools can help businesses improve their operations in several ways. They can identify and resolve issues quickly, optimize performance, improve the user experience, reduce downtime and costs associated with system failures, and make data-driven decisions about future investments and improvements.
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