8 Best IT Monitoring Tools and Software of 2024 (Updated)

Monitoring tools, also known as observability solutions, are designed to track the status of critical IT applications, networks, infrastructures, websites and more. The best IT monitoring tools quickly detect problems in resources and alert the right respondents to resolve critical issues. Response teams use observability solutions to gain real-time insights into resource availability, stability and performance.

Infrastructure issues are inevitable, and teams must have the best IT monitoring tools to mitigate an incident’s impact. In this post, we’ll uncover leading observability software that response teams can use to streamline the incident detection-to-resolution process.

Characteristics of the Best IT Monitoring Tools

Advanced monitoring solutions are cost-effective and provide a single view into logs and metrics that help identify the root cause of an incident. They must seamlessly integrate with IT service alerting (ITSA) mobile applications to orchestrate and trigger alerts to the right on-call technician. Monitoring services can also be integrated with communication APIs to notify the right person via SMS, email and phone call.

The best IT monitoring tools observe critical resources 24/7. Regardless of the time or day, observability software always captures problems and immediately reports high-priority incidents. 

Incident response teams must recognize the scalability of monitoring solutions. As teams scale out or scale in their existing IT infrastructure, observability software needs to scale alongside these changes. Scalable monitoring tools ensure that all components of an IT environment are up and running.

Here, in no order, are eight leading monitoring tools of 2023:

1. CloudMonix
2. Middleware
3. Datadog
4. Dynatrace
5. LogDNA
6. New Relic One
7. Site24x7
8. Sumo Logic

1. CloudMonix

CloudMonix is a robust cloud monitoring and automation tool designed for IT professionals, such as cloud service providers (CSPs), managed service providers (MSPs) and DevOps engineers.

CloudMonix observes the performance of critical software systems and delivers real-time visualizations to provide more insight into system stability. Users can gain system-wide visibility into their resources through:

• Performance dashboards
• Status dashboards
• Alert dashboards
• Root cause analysis

What we liked:

• Ease of use and good customer support

What we didn’t like:

• Difficult to setup

2. Middleware

Middleware is a full-stack, cloud-native observability platform that supports IT monitoring because of its infrastructure monitoring capabilities. The tool helps identify issues and track down the root causes behind them across the entire IT infrastructure with traces, logs and more.

Middleware is a community-led tool that’s available free of charge for smaller deployments. With over 50+ integrations to enhance various workflows, it reduces the gap between frontend and backend data visible in a single integrated dashboard.

What we liked:

• Visibility into everything that matters on one unified dashboard

What we didn’t like:

• Free for a limited time for enterprise-level deployments

3. Datadog

Datadog is a SaaS-based data analytics platform that monitors servers, applications, databases, tools and services. The platform provides a full suite of monitoring capabilities, offering visibility across systems, apps and services at any scale.

The platform allows administrators to build complex alerting triggers, resulting in more actionable alerts and less false-positive notifications. Notifications are primarily sent via email. However, for comprehensive alerting, Datadog can be integrated with cutting-edge incident alert management systems such as OnPage.

What we liked:

• The company has multiple solutions under its wings, and might’ve have run into the risk of spreading themselves too thin

What we didn’t like:

• Pricing is on the higher end of the spectrum

4. Dynatrace

Dynatrace is a leading application performance management (APM) solution. It is designed to monitor and diagnose an organization’s cloud-based applications to ensure they function properly.

Dynatrace observes many cloud computing services including, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

What we liked:

• Integrates with a large range of technology solutions

What we didn’t like:

• The reporting functionality fails to hit the mark.

5. LogDNA

The LogDNA log management solution acts as a one-stop repository for DevOps teams, providing a singular view into all their system and application logs. It is a centralized log management solution that allows DevOps to manage technical complexity more efficiently while boosting their productivity levels.

The system allows teams to search logs with simple keywords and date ranges, filter log events, receive presence and absence alerts, and create powerful log graphing for easy log monitoring. LogDNA monitors logs and intelligently detects anomalies to help teams resolve issues promptly.

What we liked:

• The tool is intuitive and presents a user-friendly user interface

What we didn’t like: 

• Limited on graphing and alerting capabilities

6. New Relic One

New Relic One is a cloud-based observability platform that offers visibility into the health and performance of software environments. While conventional monitoring only provides high-level visibility into your entire estate, New Relic One’s all-in-one solution enables teams to pinpoint issues faster by consolidating all telemetry data into one view.

What we liked: 

• Their new and improved APM functionality places all infrastructure-related data in one place

What we didn’t like:

• The user interface is hard to navigate, and key functionalities are difficult to locate

7. Site24x7

Site24x7 is a website observability platform that monitors the health of your website and notifies you when an anomaly is detected. The comprehensive website monitoring solution observes the performance of services like domain name systems (DNS), file transfer protocols (FTP) and simple mail transfer protocols (SMTP).

Site24x7 tracks the health of your application’s SOAP and REST endpoints and detects malicious URLs. The platform provides IT teams with comprehensive visibility across all the resources involved in delivering services.

What we liked:

• Presents a wide range of monitoring capabilities

What we didn’t like:

• The user interface appears dated

8. Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic is an intelligent, cutting-edge machine data analytics solution. The system gathers log data from IT applications, on-premises software, cloud infrastructure and more. Large quantities of data are collected to streamline incident resolution processes.

The system also provides real-time visualizations and analytics to help IT teams make better decisions. Teams use Sumo Logic to increase system availability and improve infrastructure performance.

What we liked:

• The tool offers flexibility and integrations with almost all cloud providers

What we didn’t like:

• There’s a learning curve involved to become proficient in using the tool

OnPage Integrates With the Best IT Monitoring Tools

Attaching monitoring tools to OnPage’s critical alerting platform enables proactive engineering. IT teams can use webhook URLs and custom payloads to integrate their monitoring systems with OnPage. 

Following integration setup, monitoring tools will automatically trigger OnPage mobile alerts whenever anomalies are detected. OnPage notifies the right respondent in real time using alerting policies, routing rules and on-call schedules. OnPage alerts bypass the silent switch on all smartphones, and as a method of redundancy, alerts can also be sent as SMS, email and/or phone call.

In addition to the eight tools listed above, OnPage integrates with the following IT monitoring systems: 

• Amazon CloudWatch
• Kaseya
• Logz.io
• Nagios
• Opsview
• SolarWinds
• UptimeRobot

OnPage can integrate with any monitoring tool that sends email notifications. Teams simply select the service owner’s or group’s  OnPageID@OnPage.com address to notify them of critical IT incidents.

Through OnPage’s suite of monitoring integrations, IT response teams can:

• Greatly improve incident response management
• Rapidly detect critical, time-sensitive incidents
• Ensure critical IT applications are always up and running.

Conclusion

When monitoring software is used in tandem with alerting tools, IT teams can accelerate critical event detection and incident response management. Unifying the solutions ensures that time-sensitive incidents never impact important IT infrastructure environments.

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