Catchpoint is the Internet Resilience Company™. The top online retailers, Global2000, CDNs, cloud service providers, and xSPs in the world rely on Catchpoint to increase their resilience by catching any issues in the Internet Stack before they impact their business. Catchpoint’s Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) suite offers synthetics, RUM, performance optimization, high fidelity data and flexible visualizations with advanced analytics. It leverages thousands of global vantage points (including inside wireless networks, BGP, backbone, last mile, endpoint, enterprise, ISPs, and more) to provide unparalleled observability into anything that impacts your customers, workforce, networks, website performance, applications, and APIs.
Catchpoint's most valuable features are its customer service and support, as well as its ability to record sessions and test transaction types. The new user interface has also been praised for its numerous new features and functionalities.
The drill-down feature is highly effective in identifying specific issues on the site. The solution allows for data slicing in various ways, including metrics, time, and city. The creation of response headers and the ability to compare values to logs is also appreciated. The frequent alerts and notifications are a standout feature, providing valuable information about market issues.
The well-designed UI and external integration capabilities were major selling points.
Improvements needed for Catchpoint include focusing solely on network monitoring instead of trying to cover the full stack of other computers like Datadog, New Relic, and Dynatrace. The old process of providing a base point for monitoring is not cost-effective compared to more affordable options like pin down.
Catchpoint should assess its strategy and improve brand marketing to make customers more aware of the latest version. The placement of backbone nodes in different locations is beneficial, yet there should be notifications through API to automatically switch nodes when they go down.
The new user interface is less user-friendly and lacks certain features like resizing resolutions. The script creation feature should be simplified and made less complicated.
Testing reliability in China and the Middle East is challenging, and better documentation and online indexing, including ratings of different ISPs, would be helpful.
The online recorder add-on to Chrome for recording transaction tests could be improved to fix bugs.
Detailed waterfalls and robust metrics should be accessible through client links.
Catchpoint lacks an automated page updating feature, requiring manual refreshes every five minutes. There is too much manual involvement in configuring test setups, and the cost increases with more data collection. Catchpoint should improve the ability to display downtime on a status page and provide an API for creating monitors to facilitate automation.
The implementation of Catchpoint resulted in significant improvements and optimizations for the company. The transition from the previous solution and integration was viewed holistically, with the recognition that without these optimizations, problems would arise.
Catchpoint allowed for faster deployment of tests compared to previous solutions, with a 25% to 30% increase in speed. Although the test-writing language for complex cases needed improvement, it still surpassed what was previously available.
The ability to detect whether issues were caused by the provider or the company itself was invaluable, as it couldn't be automated before. This capability provided a considerable return on investment, allowing for efficient triaging and real-time troubleshooting. The ability to definitively determine if an issue was on the customer's end helped in resolving concerns. Additionally, the capacity to identify issues regionally, nationally, and globally was seen as an unbelievable return on investment.
The pricing for Catchpoint is on a point scale based on consumption. The cost is determined by the type and amount of data extracted from each test. The pricing model is transparent and there are no hidden fees. However, the pricing is considered expensive, especially for smaller contracts. Larger contracts receive volume discounts.
The licensing fees for Catchpoint are slightly higher compared to other tools that offer similar functionality at a lower cost. Catchpoint is positioned as a tool for large enterprises with a higher budget.
The primary use cases of Catchpoint include:
Catchpoint's customer service and support are very good. They have a professional service team that offers assistance with scripting and other functionalities. The network team provides dedicated support 24/7 for any issues related to geolocations or network problems. The integrated help desk chat is responsive, although it may lack expert knowledge.
Fast escalations to engineers are available when needed, and issues are resolved promptly. Users appreciate the separate team dedicated to addressing Catchpoint issues and their quick response. Users find Catchpoint support easy to work with and appreciate the direct communication channels, including with the CEO.
The initial setup for Catchpoint is described as easy, straightforward, and not complex. The availability of manuals and documentation makes it easy to set up. The scripting part is also mentioned to have all the necessary functionalities and development already provided.
The deployment process may vary, however, some users mention Catchpoint was up and running within a day.
Catchpoint is rated highly for ease of deployment.
The scalability of Catchpoint's solution is excellent. The solution is described as easy to scale and it is emphasized that Catchpoint is a scalable solution.
It is mentioned that Catchpoint has acquired a significant number of data centers across the United States, indicating its ability to handle a large volume of users.
However, there is a slight concern regarding scalability when deploying one's own node in their environment, as it requires manual configuration and load distribution may not be optimized.
Users consistently express positive opinions about the stability of the Catchpoint solution. They rate the stability highly. Users mention that they have been using the solution for a significant period of time, particularly the past year, and have found it to be stable and reliable.
They also appreciate the continuous updates and patches released by the company to address any concerns or difficulties encountered during testing, transactions, and API usage.
Learn more at: https://www.catchpoint.com/