In reality, a basic server check can hide multiple failed user logins, broken connections, or a myriad of data integrity issues that may not be uncovered until a customer calls with an issue. The following article explains the limitation of general uptime metrics in analyzing what is necessary to detect true software failure.
There are no single categories of SaaS monitoring tools that can be classified specifically for tracking the health of your software. Vendors utilize identical terms in their marketing materials to promote radically different offerings. Thus, if you acquire the wrong solution (or combination thereof), you are often paying for alerts that do not actually fix the underlying problem.
How to Pick the Right System
To identify an appropriate monitoring system, you must clearly understand what type of failure you will be looking to identify with respect to your system's health. If you are developing a modern web-based solution, you cannot rely solely on a basic "yes" or "no" server check to determine whether your software is up or down.
Instead, you need to account for multiple systems (payment processors, cloud-hosted servers, and user interfaces) that can all fail at the same time while your primary server continues to be live.
To provide you with the most accurate insight into the capacity of monitoring systems to perform the job that they were ultimately designed to perform, we will review the four distinct jobs that these systems provide:
Uptime Checks: simple tests used to determine if a URL (web address) is available and returning a basic connection status.
Synthetic Testing: simulate actual users and provide testing for the functionality of high-traffic user interfaces (UI) (i.e., login pages, shopping carts, search boxes).
Full-Stack Observability: These entire systems monitor and provide visibility into code, server logs, and databases to identify the exact line of code that is causing an issue.
Dependency Tracking: Monitors all 3rd-party services that your software requires in order to operate and notifies you when one of your business partners goes down.
Core SaaS Monitoring Tools Evaluated
1. StatusGator
Most of the time, when websites experience outages, it is not due to the quality of code within the website, but instead a third-party service provider's issues. As one of the top SaaS monitoring tools, StatusGator aims to tackle this issue specifically.
It aggregates all of the status pages provided by third-party services. This allows teams to get alerts on degraded performance of the third-party service they are using before it affects them.
Businesses that rely on third-party service providers are the biggest target for StatusGator. Businesses that use Amazon Web Services, Stripe, etc. are the largest segment of customers.
The pricing structure is difficult to understand because the vendor doesn't make this information available for each pricing tier. This requires potential customers to contact the vendor directly if they have enterprise-level needs.
The most important proof for StatusGator is its speed of detection. For example, on February 27th, 2025, there was a very significant outage with Square. StatusGator was able to notify their customers of the issue five minutes before Square made an official announcement.
StatusGator continuously tracks over 5,000 cloud applications. This allows support teams to focus on finding the root of the problem rather than spending time trying to determine whether the issue was caused by internal problems.
2. Datadog
Datadog is a higher-end solution in the full-stack observability category. It investigates deeply within your infrastructure, application coding, server logging, and security compliance. Datadog is not an ideal solution to check website status.
Datadog's target customers are typically large to medium-sized engineering teams, DevOps, and site reliability engineers (SRE). Datadog has a usage-based pricing model where you are charged for what you use.
For instance, if you need to run 10,000 synthetic API tests, you would pay $5 per month under an annual subscription. Datadog pricing can also vary based on how many records of data you store.
Datadog is integrated with over 600 systems, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Google Cloud. One of the main downsides of Datadog is its pricing structure does not support managing costs.
Small teams sometimes find that the billing model of the solution is complicated and the setup process is more extensive than necessary for their basic needs. It is typically beneficial to use this solution only if deep, code-level diagnostics are required by the team and their use will maximize their ability to monitor errors in their applications.
3. New Relic
New Relic has entered into direct competition with many other companies in the full-stack observability market space. It focuses primarily on application performance monitoring (APM) and software deployment visibility.
The company was developed to provide developers with a detailed view of how their code changes, both positive and negative, will impact the performance of their system.
Developers and DevOps teams searching for solutions to be able to identify complex errors that have arisen in their applications are the primary customers of New Relic. The vendor provides a free entry-level plan for the product, while additional synthetic checks can be purchased at a cost of $0.005 each.
This pricing model allows smaller teams to get started without having to pay a substantial amount upfront. According to the vendor, New Relic has integrations available for more than 780 software solutions.
The best use case for New Relic is to help developers understand what has gone wrong when they release a new version of their software. Similar to Datadog, however, to use this product effectively, it will require a dedicated engineering team or individual to implement and configure it correctly.
4. Better Stack
Better Stack is software that provides users with the ability to monitor and manage the uptime of their systems externally and internally. The application enables companies to consolidate many disparate alerting systems into a single, simple workflow.
The software supports the management of logs, error tracking, and providing users with a public status page. The software is best suited for startups or growing technology companies that would like a streamlined operational flow.
Pricing for Better Stack begins at a free plan that includes 10 monitors and three-minute checks, while paid options start at $29 per month. As noted in several independent case studies, Better Stack represents an extremely cost-effective solution for use in software monitoring.
The company Listen Notes was able to reduce its annual monitoring costs from approximately $3,500 to $348, or 90 percent. This was the result of switching from a combination of Datadog and PagerDuty to Better Stack. According to Better Stack, several dealers reported substantial cost reductions on a monthly basis averaging a decrease of over 75%.
5. UptimeRobot
UptimeRobot is the preferred solution for small, highly efficient teams that utilize modern digital applications. UptimeRobot is at the forefront of the entry-level market for basic uptime monitoring solutions.
The product is focused on providing one primary metric for uptime determination (if the website is operational). UptimeRobot can be used by small businesses, digital agencies, and freelance software developers.
The platform provides an exceptional free plan that covers up to 50 unique checks every 5 minutes based on the number of uptime monitors you need. There are also professional paid plans available which are priced between $7 and $9 per month for the purpose of offering an affordable option for the entry-level customer.
According to case study data gathered by the Stratosphere Lab, UptimeRobot resulted in an improvement of the service uptime rate for a vendor from less than 50% up to greater than 94%.
Although UptimeRobot is a widely popular monitoring solution, it does lack in the area of monitoring depth. Since UptimeRobot does not provide information regarding failed complex user experience journeys, it is not well suited as the sole monitoring solution for complex web application interfaces.
6. Sematext
Sematext acts as an alternative to both basic and sophisticated uptime monitoring platforms. Sematext provides an avenue to perform a comprehensive set of uptime monitoring tests for software application development teams and software application release teams.
This is in addition to server log and performance metrics monitoring. Sematext is suitable for system administrators, network administrators, and application development teams.
The pricing model for Sematext is very flexible. Individual HTTP monitors are priced at approximately $2 per month, with a minimum monthly total of approximately $5.
One of the key differentiators between Sematext and competing services is the integration of Sematext with software code deployment services such as GitHub. The Sematext service executes uptime monitoring tests prior to deploying new code to a live production environment.
This catches potential failures in real-time before they affect actual customers. As a result, Sematext is an effective tool for technical teams who perform API validation.
7. Pingdom
Pingdom focuses closely on the individual digital experiences of end-users. It is a SolarWinds-backed company that measures the exact pages around the world for load speed by pairing synthetic transaction testing with real user monitoring (RUM).
The target market of this platform includes digital marketing agencies, e-commerce teams, and site owners. There are no free plans available; pricing is based solely on the configuration requirements of a business.
Pingdom tests websites from over 100 locations around the world. Users can log in automatically, search for products, and test the checkout process. Retail businesses that lose revenue daily due to slow page loads will find this solution to be an ideal fit.
8. StatusCake
StatusCake provides a simple alerting tool and monitoring for small-scale companies. It monitors the availability of websites, page load speed, domain expiration, and security certificates.
It is targeted primarily at bloggers, small retail businesses, and start-ups. A free plan that offers three monitors with 15-minute checks is available. Paid plans start at $20.41 per month on a yearly option.
StatusCake's main advantage is that it offers a very wide alerting network, with connections to over 14 different alerting services. Paid tiers provide monitoring every 30 seconds. This service provides a practical and affordable option for teams that require widespread monitoring without complicated set-up.
9. Site24x7
Zoho Corporation created Site24x7 to provide extensive IT monitoring of all IT infrastructure, including servers, cloud, applications, security, and real user metrics, using a single platform.
IT departments and managed service providers benefit from the consolidation of their various software products.
10. Uptrends
Uptrends has been designed as a global digital experience monitoring tool that places heavy emphasis on monitoring complex transaction flows as well as monitoring API response times of different regions throughout the world.
Uptrends is widely used by site reliability engineers and product teams that are responsible for maintaining production services running on web servers. Pricing begins at $42 per month based on an annualized contract, and Uptrends does not offer a free ongoing plan.
With over 220 global checkpoint locations, Uptrends is able to determine if customers are experiencing slower response times than others based on their geographic location. The primary goal of Uptrends is to support serious testing of global customer journeys.
11. Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma takes a different approach by offering open-source SaaS monitoring tools through a self-hosted system that does not require any subscription or fee structure to use. Uptime Kuma allows users to monitor endpoints, perform security certificate checks, and create public status pages at no cost.
Uptime Kuma has a primary user base of privacy-conscious teams, system administrators, and highly technical small businesses. Additionally, Uptime Kuma may be useful to schools or non-profit organizations.
Operational overhead is an additional cost associated with Uptime Kuma, as users are responsible for providing their own server space and investing engineering time into maintaining the security of the system.
Users are able to monitor every 20 seconds on average with Uptime Kuma, and all data is controlled by the user within their server. However, the system must be managed by the user in order to maintain functionality and security.
12. HetrixTools
HetrixTools is a tool that includes typical uptime checks and IP reputation checking. It monitors servers to be sure they have not been added to any spam blacklists in the world.
The HetrixTools website supports various forms of hosting. Many website hosting companies and network administrators use HetrixTools to help them keep their email servers and web servers functioning smoothly.
There is a free version that is very accommodating, providing up to 15 uptime monitors and 32 blacklist monitors with subscriptions starting at $9.95/month.
HetrixTools is monitored from 12 different global locations, every minute, 24/7. If your organization has a large volume of email or provides web hosting to multiple clients, the detection of blacklists makes HetrixTools a very useful tool.
13. Atatus
A lighter-weight application performance monitor with a narrowed focus on application performance monitoring is Atatus. It identifies slow database queries, monitors software-related errors, and shows the length of time it takes for queries to complete.
Web-based developer teams and fast-moving software development organizations may use Atatus primarily to quickly diagnose application code errors. As the name suggests, Atatus monitors performance in real time and shows the responsive application code that is responsible for performance-related issues.
Atatus integrates seamlessly with popular issue tracker applications like Jira and messaging applications like Slack. When a performance problem arises, Atatus provides the developer with the specific slow database query that caused the performance problem.
This makes Atatus a valuable tool for developer teams that require in-depth visibility into their code but do not want to incur the high costs associated with older enterprise coding platforms.
14. LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor is a platform that offers hybrid infrastructure observability. By using predictive data analysis, LogicMonitor automatically maps your physical office infrastructure, as well as cloud database and network switch infrastructure.
Enterprise IT operations teams and hybrid-cloud teams leverage the LogicMonitor platform to monitor their many complex networks. LogicMonitor has the ability to view AWS, VMware, and Cisco systems at the same time through one platform.
The automated discovery capability of LogicMonitor provides organizations with an efficient method of discovering their physical and cloud-based infrastructures.
LogicMonitor monitors new servers or databases when they are connected to your network by dynamically tracking their health based on threshold values. It is primarily designed for large organizations that utilize a combination of legacy physical computers and cloud-based applications.
15. Nagios
Nagios is an established system for monitoring the infrastructure of many types of systems. It has an extensive community-created plug-in system that can be used to monitor servers, networks, and database systems.
The traditional system administrators and organizations with custom-built older technology systems make up the primary market for Nagios.
According to the vendor's website, Nagios has more than 5,000 available plug-ins. Therefore, Nagios can be configured to monitor virtually any type of hardware and/or software in existence.
However, it requires a manual process for installation, and the graphical user interface appears outdated when compared with modern cloud systems. It also requires a substantial amount of knowledge about technical details to set up.
16. AppDynamics
AppDynamics is a software performance-monitoring tool that connects the impact of technical software issues on revenue performance, such as transactions, with the corresponding technical database query that results in the issue.
AppDynamics is primarily used by large organizations and their application teams to precisely determine the financial loss associated with slow-performing servers.
For example, if an application programming interface for shopping carts is delayed two seconds, AppDynamics can provide a precise financial estimate of what the company would have lost within that time frame. AppDynamics also provides extensive integration with Kubernetes and complex microservices.
This service is a superbly powerful toolset that requires corporate-grade financial backing and dedicated staff members in order to fully realize its potential.
Final Thoughts on SaaS Monitoring Tools
Purchasing a piece of software solely due to its name recognition will lead to your demise as a buyer of SaaS monitoring tools.
SaaS monitoring is divided into two groups: 1) availability checkers (which simply identify if something is up and running), or 2) diagnostic monitoring platforms (which can assess both user experience and performance issues).
If you're running a basic web application, spending thousands of dollars on a full stack (observability of all system components) solution will create an endless stream of alerts and drain your financial capital.
The converse is true as well with the danger of using a free ping-checker for a complex web application. A single ping will provide you with a passing grade even if your entire payment gateway is down.
Engineers who practice due diligence to avoid throwing away money build layered applications that utilize at least one lightweight monitoring tool for a public status page, synthetic testing for users logging in, and targeted application monitoring to catch code issues early. To keep costs in check, only monitor the data points that have a direct impact on customer satisfaction.
Understanding the Truth About System Outages
What Happens to an Engineer's Trust When There Is a False Positive?
When a monitoring system falsely alerts engineers of an issue, they lose faith in the software. If a monitoring system continually generates false alerts for trivial issues (e.g., an alert for an internet outage at the monitoring server), engineers will begin to ignore all notifications generated by the monitoring system.
When a genuine critical failure occurs, the engineer will receive multiple alert notifications but will be overwhelmed with the number of false alerts they received prior to this event. Thus, they will be unlikely to notice the critical alert.
The result is catastrophic for customers, as they are left without service, and the engineer will ultimately incur lost revenue.
What Are the Consequences When a Third Party Fails While Using Internal Metrics?
Today, web applications are laid upon dozens of third-party services. Every application is built using various payment service providers (PSPs), email service providers (ESPs), and file storage service providers (FSPs).
When a service provider (e.g., email) fails, the server still records the server's metrics as healthy. The engineer will spend hours attempting to find the bug in their code while the root cause of the failure resides outside their control and belongs to the service provider.
At What Point Does a Basic Server Monitor Become a Business Risk?
Basic server monitoring provides very little insight into the customer experience. Basic monitoring will confirm server activity (running or failing), traffic flow, response time, and latency.
It will not verify any user experience or performance lending, nor will it verify any end-user action such as rendering of a button or payment processing database verification. If the checkout button is broken after a code deployment, a basic monitoring alert will still indicate 100% uptime of the server.
Using this false sense of security will result in your end-users discovering that your application is broken long before you have any knowledge of a problem occurring.
What Specific Data Points Indicate a Forthcoming Disaster to an End-User?
To determine the likelihood of a system failure, engineers must be able to correlate the health of the user experience with the condition of the server.
For instance, if the database query response increased from one second to four seconds, there is a good possibility the server will fail under increasing demand.
Similarly, synthetic tests will eventually inform you that a breakdown may occur before your server fails in a production environment by identifying sudden jumps in the number of code errors generated and tracking failed synthetic journeys.
