AlertSite vs Apica comparison

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AlertSite

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

AlertSite and Apica are both powerful website monitoring solutions. Apica generally has the upper hand for its robust feature set, whereas AlertSite is noted for being more user-friendly and accessible.

Features: AlertSite offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, straightforward reporting tools, and user-friendly interfaces. Apica provides extensive customization options, in-depth analytics, and detailed monitoring features.

Room for Improvement: AlertSite needs better alerting mechanisms, enhanced mobile access, and more customization options. Apica requires improved integration capabilities, a more intuitive setup process, and faster customer service responses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AlertSite is known for quick deployment and responsive customer support. Apica is more complex to deploy and has slower customer service response times.

Pricing and ROI: AlertSite is generally considered cost-effective with a good return on investment. Apica is pricier, but many users feel its advanced features justify the cost.

To learn more, read our detailed AlertSite vs. Apica Report (Updated: April 2025).

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AlertSite vs. Apica

April 2025

Helped 851,604 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

AlertSite

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

37th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

API Monitoring Software (4th)

Apica

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

17th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (17th), IT Operations Analytics (5th), Observability Pipeline Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AlertSite is 0.1%, down from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apica is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

SandeepTarwe

Team lead at Tata Consultancy

Alerting capabilities have enabled timely escalation and resolution of issues

In AlertSite, I was monitoring the kiosks and servers for JetBlue Airlines. The servers would trigger alerts if there were any outages or issues with any of the kiosks, servers, or the ticketing tool. I monitored these alerts and escalated them to the concerned team to rectify them at the earliest…

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Noorul Mustafa Khan

Senior Associate Vice President at Wells Fargo

Validates content and perform login functionalities on front-end applications

First of all, it will depend on the type of application. If it's a web application, I would recommend implementing it in your lower environment first and checking for functionality. If you are satisfied, then push it to the higher environments. Apica has detected server-related issues and various web application-related issues promptly, alerting us in a timely manner. This allowed us to implement automation within our processes, ensuring comprehensive performance monitoring from failure detection to recovery. It was pretty easy to learn. I attended a couple of sessions with team members. They provided knowledge transfer, which took about a week. After that, I was able to onboard the company. However, for minor issues, I would still contact them. If you're a quick learner, it could take just a couple of weeks to get the hang of it. You can integrate Apica architect into your system because they provide APIs. With these APIs, you can utilize Apica where and when it's needed. For instance, you can create your own microservices to automate tasks or integrate it with tools like Postman. This flexibility allows you to embed Apica into various automation processes or any other functionalities you require. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"This solution has numerous advantages. It's extremely simple to configure. Either digital monitors or single-URL monitors are simple to configure and build."

"The alerting capabilities of AlertSite were really helpful."

"The alerting capabilities were really helpful."

"I highly recommend AlertSite to other users."

"I found multiple features in AlertSite that I like. One is data monitoring history, for example, a history of the blackouts and the data. Sometimes, there's a glitch in the application that AlertSite can capture, and the tool notifies you about that glitch. It also identifies issues that could happen in the future. AlertSite is also a fast tool that you can use to monitor on-premise servers, internal applications, and even global applications. The data is available on a single UI in AlertSite, so there's no need to monitor and click on different applications or URLs. I also love that the tool is quite user-friendly, apart from being fast."

"There are custom reports available along with the inbuilt reports."

"The best feature of AlertSite is that it shows you a visual graph and also sends you notifications about errors, so you get immediate notifications about errors which means that your support team can start taking steps and more quickly make sure the site is up and that customer experience isn't interrupted in terms of using your system and your products. AlertSite is a very good tool. It's user-friendly, and you can see everything on the dashboard. Configuring it is also easy."

"If there are any issues, it triggers an alert within 30 seconds. When it triggers the alert, we go ahead and check it immediately. The alert is triggered on a real-time basis."

"What I like the most is that Apica can simulate different browsers and different versions of desktop or mobile browsers."

"There are several features that are really good. The first one is the flexibility and the advanced configuration that Apica offers when it comes to configuring synthetic checks. It provides the ability to customize how the check should be performed and it is very flexible in the number of synthetic locations that it can use. It allows us to run scripts from different locations all over the world, and they have a really good number of these locations."

"You can tell from the operational space of people who are using and consuming this data that they are more integrated. It is not dependent on one team anymore. It saves a lot of time by capturing and pinpointing the exact problem that is happening quickly. We have moved from getting escalations manually to getting escalations synthetically."

"As always, within the IT industry, everybody's always looking to upgrade and update everything else like that. Apica has been one of those things but it's really hard to replace because it offers us the unique capability to see what the customer is seeing. A lot of other ones can do Selenium script and things like that, but there's a lot in Apica that we use right now. We utilize a lot of the scenario options in Apica right now, and there's a lot of other ones that do parts of it, but it doesn't do everything that Apica does."

"One of the biggest advantages of moving to Apica is the ability get to a hybrid model with the architecture in the cloud and our agents on-prem. We also have access to Apica's cloud agent across the globe. That has changed the way that we have our load testing setup at this point. Previously, it was always internal. Now, with this change in the way it is implemented for load testing, we can test anywhere across the globe and from the list of agents available within Apica's cloud. If I don't have an agent available in a second location, it just takes an email to their customer support, then it is spun up within 24 hours. That flexibility has changed the way that we perceive our load tests, not just in the US, but globally."

"From our standpoint, there are a number of valuable features. The WebHooks are obviously really great. The alert framework is really good and then the reporting and visualizations that you get from the dashboards is good. Those three areas are primarily what my team's focused on in terms of usage from day to day."

"The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integrate with other tools with a separate execution environment. The tool is also easy to use."

"Our application SREs do script checks in such a way that closely mimic our customers' actions using the platform. Because there are so many different ways and options to be able to configure checks to closely mirror your applications' capabilities, it provides a lot of optionality for teams to create the right type of check that can notify when there are any issues. At the end of the day, we want our monitoring tools to be able to catch any outage before our customers do. This is where Apica Synthetic does a great job."

More Apica pros

Cons

"One area that needs improvement in AlertSite is the slow UI. I'm using the classic UI because it's quite user-friendly, or in human-readable format, but it's a little slow. It takes time to load all the monitors, so if that could be sped up, that would be helpful. The AlertSite support team also needs improvement in terms of availability. Most of the agents in the team aren't available 24 x 7, so if there's something you need to discuss, you need to tell the support team ahead of time to schedule it. Multiple times, when a case comes up during weekends or whenever my team is doing an update, support needs improvement, availability-wise. I use AlertSite for synthetic monitoring, so whatever is available right now is okay, but if I want to request a new feature on a website, currently, the UI refreshes automatically. I would like to have the option on AlertSite to configure that manually. The UI auto-updates every few minutes, so if I can control that manually, that would be helpful."

"I would like the ability to get more data points with regard to some of the unique requirements that we have."

"It is not compatible with all of the product platforms that we use."

"AlertSite sometimes triggers false alerts or fake alerts, which needs to be rectified. When we see an alert and go ahead and run certain tests on it, the test always passes. However, on the main screen, it shows up as critical. Therefore, the false alert needs to be fixed."

"Additionally, support from AlertSite is not at an enterprise level since it is not offered 24/7."

"I could use a few changes to the user interface."

"What needs improvement in AlertSite is the documentation, particularly the lack of documentation. If there's a specific activity you want to do, you can't even find information on how to do it, so you have to contact the AlertSite support team to assist you, and only then would the issue be resolved. At the moment, it's not easy to find or get full documentation on how to deal with different issues. You always have to go back to AlertSite support and get help. The documentation for AlertSite could be improved and it's what I'd like to see in the next release of the tool because at the moment, the documentation isn't complete, so you'll have to contact support, but contacting support isn't an issue because the team responds to you quickly."

"We have been focused on reducing polling times for synthetic checks. We have gone from 10 minutes down to five minutes for a pretty broad swath, but there is some appetite to reduce that further, which could be an improvement."

"The reporting part that we use for our executives needs a bit more customization capabilities. Right now, you can use only the three main templates for reporting. We would like to be able to customize them."

"When it comes to the way the internal agent is installed, because you can install an application on a server, I would love to see the application Docker-ized. If you could install internal agents using Docker or using containers, it would be easier for us to manage them and spin up internal agents."

"It is difficult to create a script using ZebraTester."

"Apica cannot perform endurance or scale-up tests independently."

"We could use more detailed information in the request and response sections."

"The accuracy of alerts can be improved a little bit. Right now, it's pretty good in terms of alerting pretty quickly about failures or changes in response times. However, what we have seen happen is the number of alerts that we are getting is very frequent, and we would like to tone down the number of alerts. That's the only trouble we have. Apica could tone down those settings because there is no option for us to tone it down to a level that would reduce the alerts to a minimum. As a platform, it does send us good alerts, but it could be improved a bit."

"If you are adding any input file, the tool fails to capture the path."

More Apica cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased the license once and had the option of selecting the number of user licenses."

"My company pays to use AlertSite, but I'm unsure of the exact costs because it depends on how many monitors you have."

"The cost is high."

"Another main difference between Apica and the other products was the cost. We really thought that the balance in Apica between the features and costs was the best among all the products on which we did a PoC."

"The product is less expensive compared to LoadRunner."

"License management is another area that Apica could do better. We have already had these conversations with our account teams. This is something that they are looking at largely improving in upcoming releases. I believe that this is already on their roadmap."

"I am sure that Apica's price will be lower than LoadRunner."

"The pricing is fair. It is neither too cheap nor too expensive."

"The solution's pricing is not cheap, but it is in the midrange."

"The pricing is very reasonable, but it is not cheap."

"The pricing and licensing are very reasonable. At the end of the day, you are using their technology/software and getting X amount of checks for a very decent value. As for discounts, they try to meet your budgets as much as they can. For example, if you need 100 checks and you have X amount of budget for it, then they will try and get down to that price. Costing-wise, it is a reasonably cost product. They will always try and come down to your price if you need them to come down to it by knocking off certain areas."

More Apica pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

18%

Real Estate/Law Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

34%

Computer Software Company

11%

Media Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlertSite?

I would rate the pricing aspects of AlertSite as nine out of ten, indicating it is good or low-priced.

What needs improvement with AlertSite?

SmartBear, as a vendor, is focusing more on API management and testing rather than monitoring. AlertSite could benefit from more future-focused innovation, especially with competencies in generativ...

What is your primary use case for AlertSite?

I have been working with the AlertSite ( /products/alertsite-reviews ) product since 2019. Within our organization, specifically one service unit at one of the Big Four firms, this product has been...

What do you like most about Apica Synthetic?

The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integr...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apica Synthetic?

I know Apica is an expensive solution, but it is worth the money for the service it provides.

What needs improvement with Apica Synthetic?

Apica cannot perform endurance or scale-up tests independently. It requires other tools like ALM. When editing scripts, only one can be accessed at a time, risking changes affecting other folders. ...

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Compared 17% of the time

Grafana vs Apica

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Product Reports

Download AlertSite product report

AlertSite

May 2025

Download Apica product report

May 2025

Also Known As

No data available

Apica LoadTest, Apica Synthetic

Overview

SmartBear's AlertSite is an application performance management and system monitoring software. AlertSite is an early warning system that users can rely on to monitor their websites, web apps, and APIs from any physical location as well as from within their private networks. It offers real-time alerting with root-cause analytics and robust reporting. AlertSite allows you to proactively monitor from an independent network of over 350 monitoring nodes worldwide.

Here are AlertSite’s 6 use cases:

Monitor web: AlertSite monitors beyond availability to detect performance anomalies and notify the appropriate people when deviations occur, whether it's online apps or websites.
Monitor APIs: Check to see that your internal, external, and third-party APIs are working properly, returning the correct content, and performing as expected.
Monitor apps: With nearly any action, monitor your online sites and applications using actual browsers, just like a consumer. There is no need for scripting.
Monitor mobile: Monitor your mobile-friendly websites, native mobile apps, carrier-based nodes, and network speeds with real devices (3G, 4G LTE).
Monitor SLAs: Make sure you're meeting service-level agreements' requirements. SLA requirements are monitored and reported on by AlertSite.
Monitor cloud: Monitor your cloud-based applications to improve mobility. AlertSite monitors your apps across public and private clouds, giving you complete visibility into their status.

AlertSite Features

AlertSite has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Enables a comprehensive view of UI and API performance.
Monitoring coverage from 350+ worldwide nodes and private networks.
Integrates with DevOps and Ops tool stacks.
Displays availability and performance data that assist in determining the root cause of performance problems.
With AlertSite's Single Sign-On (SSO) support, you can assist your authentication procedures.
Free training and assistance. AlertSite’s responsive team is always there to assist you, from the initial rollout through day-to-day support.
Eliminates the stress of false alerts using these key features:
- Tracks the performance of your apps, APIs, and websites.
- Sets up monitor and alarm schedules, as well as blackout periods and retry choices.
- Sets alert thresholds that are both static and dynamic.
- Calculates the number of failures needed to set off an alarm.
- After the first failure, retries logic.
- Based on error code, sends an alert to recipients and group routing.
- Tests from over 85 different locations across the world, with internal and external monitoring.
- Defines assertions and validations.
- Integrates with PagerDuty, Slack, Splunk, VictorOps, and more.

Easy configuration with help from these key features:
- DejaClick is an intuitive, seamless plug-in for documenting web transactions and user journeys.
- Use the point-and-click script creation for website, web, and mobile monitor scripts.
- Benefit from using native API monitor creation.
- Scripts for functional tests can be reused.
- Automate monitor creation by using Swagger Specs or OpenAPI Specification files.

SmartBear

Apica offers a unified platform to remove complexity and cost associated with data management. You collect, control, store, and observe your data and can quickly identify and resolve performance issues before they impact the end-user. Apica Ascent swiftly analyzes telemetry data in real-time, enabling prompt issue resolution, while automated root cause analysis, powered by machine learning, streamlines troubleshooting in complex distributed systems. The platform simplifies data collection by automating and managing agents through the platform’s Fleet product. Its Flow product simplifies and optimizes pipeline control with AI and ML to help you easily understand complex workflows. Its Store component allows you to never run out of storage space while you index and store machine data centrally on one platform and reduce costs, and remediate faster. Observe offers modern observability data management, helping you with MELT data, effortless dashboarding, and seamless integration of synthetic and real data.

Experience the Apica Ascent Platform

Sample Customers

JetBlue, Payless ShoeSource, Hilton Inc., StubHub, Symantec, Newegg, Sapient, AstraZeneca, Dell, Quest Diagnostics

HBO, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, Xander, EA Sports, Volvo