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CTO at GreySnowPoker
Real User
Monitors every single touch point that can fail inside a user's journey
Pros and Cons
  • "It helps with releases because we monitor them in staging. We can tell if something is critically wrong before it gets into production, e.g., if it was load related or function related and also what was different in the dev stage. It then alerts us straightaway inside of our production monitors once it has been released. Therefore, it has improved how we run our systems since we monitor multiple environments."
  • "The initial screen on their dashboard could have a bit more data, but this is a small thing. It could have more data, so we do not need to drill down to a screen behind that initial information. I would like them to get a little better on the user interfaces that we need to go into."

What is our primary use case?

There are quite a few things that we use Synthetic for:

  • We use it for error checking and geo-protection checking because we are very regulated since we are in gaming. Basically, if it doesn't see X text on a page, the geo-protection is not firing properly for blocked areas. This checks all our maximized databases. 
  • We use it for timings in making sure the web page is optimal so we can tell if someone accidentally seeks a large image up through the CMS site. 
  • For the load test side, it is pretty much obvious what it does. It is load testing outside through journeys what we have through Synthetic. It checks the API back to the login services and so forth. 

That's a great overview of what we use it for. We use probably around 75 checks on Synthetic across our three verticals that we do per casino. 

How has it helped my organization?

Accuracy is probably around 98 percent. Sometimes, there is a false alert on one of their pops, where it is just loading slow from their architecture and that affects the timing involved. However, that is nothing major. The alerting is pretty accurate. It does show you the correct results. While it may have some false alerts, that is few and far between. If we do see a false alert, we just report it back to them and they fix it.

It helps with releases because we monitor them in staging. We can tell if something is critically wrong before it gets into production, e.g., if it was load related or function related and also what was different in the dev stage. It then alerts us straightaway inside of our production monitors once it has been released. Therefore, it has improved how we run our systems since we monitor multiple environments.

What is most valuable?

All their pops: They have locations all around the world. Having all the locations around the world is very useful, especially when you're in a license market.

Their alerting system: The way their systems alert you is top-notch. 

Its flexibility is pretty high. You have all your points of pops where you can go to Ireland, Sweden, or X location. I don't think they really need to improve on their flexibility. There are so many settings, different optimizations, and scripting options that you can do. 

The way you script Apica is probably the easiest way of working that you've ever seen. For a QA person, it is very easy because they have the understanding of the tools and what they have to offer. From the complexity side, it is very possible to do pretty much everything on Apica: down to logging in and up deposit, doing other processes inside your website, and loading slot machines to make sure external providers are loading correctly. Because in the world of gaming, you don't buy all your own slot machines. You have the likes of Pragmatic, Betsoft, NetEnt, where you have to make sure all their services are up as well.

What needs improvement?

The initial screen on their dashboard could have a bit more data, but this is a small thing. It could have more data, so we do not need to drill down to a screen behind that initial information. I would like them to get a little better on the user interfaces that we need to go into.

Buyer's Guide
Apica
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Apica. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

With PokerStars, I was using them for two years before I left. Since working with GraySnowPoker, I have used them for almost three years (coming up in October). In total, I have used them for around five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have never had a major problem, and there has never been a major outage at all. Your monitors are constantly monitoring. Stability-wise, the system is constantly up. It has few errors.  It is a very stable company with a very stable technical staff as well. You get the best of both worlds

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is huge. You can ask them technical queries, then they will adapt their scripts. There is scalability for having as many monitors as you like. Load test capabilities are there as well. As much as I've ever needed to load test our site, they have been able to assist with it. It pretty much has everything.

Three or four developers use it from the technical teams. On the reporting side of it, the management uses it. For errors, the QA team uses it. Everybody uses alerts because we all get mobile phones. There are probably about 10 to 15 people in our small organization who have touch points on Apica. It even sends alerts to my customer support people in their channels, saying, "We have a problem here. Be aware that if a customer rings up that we can say 'We're already working on it.'" There are multiple touch points around the company because of how the system reacts and how the system generates recalls and alerts. It covers a wide amount of groups who can use it. It doesn't have to just be techies.

At the minute, the solution is being 100 percent utilized. Unfortunately, with COVID-19, we were meant to go up to 180 checks this year. When my new budget comes out, we will have to stay at the same level because we own land based casinos that are in the USA. Our budgets are basically being taken down a little. Because we have no revenue coming through on land based casinos, even though its coming back, it's probably only at 50 percent of the revenue now. Expansion-wise, we would love to expand and sell more checks. From a money point of view during COVID-19, it is very hard to justify increasing checks, even though that actually gives you massive discounts. From a strategic point of view, we can't justify doing that at this point in time until the situation gets a bit more stable with America. It's unfortunate, but it's not very stable there at all, as you can read on the news.

How are customer service and support?

They are always adapting and improving the product. If you ask something from them, they will do a custom script for you. If you get stuck on any scraping for a specific check, they will jump in. Their support team will jump in, guide you through it, help you write the script, and so forth. The flexibility of their system and staff are huge. It's really good.

Don't be worried about asking your account manager for assistance because they will always be there to assist you. From the support side, I can ring my account manager up. My account manager will basically go to a technical contact who gets on the line straightaway (within reason). With another company or ESOP servicer providers, if you ring them up, then you have to set up a ticket. That ticket has to go through second line support, which probably goes through third line support and so forth.

Apica's gurus are very good at answering questions quickly. If you need to escalate to your account manager, they will go directly through to your technical leads. Your technical leads will then jump on the Slack group or phone. From a support and ease of use perspective, it's amazing.

The vendor has supported every need that we had, which is good. There are very few vendors who are able to do because they don't all support your needs, where Apica does. They go the extra mile as well. They are not just trying to take your money, as they're there to support you. They make that very clear in their ways of doing stuff and their support. They are pretty clear that these are good guys and they want to support you with whatever it takes. Especially during this COVID-19 time, they have been extra supportive and have really looked after us as a company. Many providers aren't doing that and just want your money every month.

In their tiered system of how they produce their areas, we know which ones are Tier 1 providers, etc. It is very clear from a technical level as to the ability of the company. I don't think they're going anywhere because they have a very good team. I have had the same case manager coming up on five years along with the same technical support. Thomas has been there from day one.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before I was at GreySnow, I was using NCC Group (now Eggplant Monitoring). We moved away from them because we saw the ability of Apica's product. I did quite a bit of research at the time. The main differences for NCC Group at the time was they didn't have different regional pops nor did they have the coverage that Apica has. 

Looking back at PokerStars, when we migrated from NCC to Apica, their support wrote all the scripts with Apica. They duplicated all the NCC scripts to Apica, which was a massive cost savings.

With my current company, we started off with Apica. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very straightforward. Ease of setup is amazing because they assign someone to you. From our point of view, it was less needed because I have been using them for quite a long time, but they even offered to help the likes of me if I get stuck. At the end of the day, due to the amount of times I've used them, I pretty much know how their systems work. If I was going to give it a scale, where one was very hard and 10 was very easy, I would say it was around an eight or nine. It's that simple to set up. You have multiple different contact points to go to. If you struggle, you'll be assigned an account manager and a technical contact. Those technical contacts can be invited into your site groups. They will use Slack and other mechanisms as well. It's pretty much spot on for setup. Everything is documented to a very high level, which is very good.

What about the implementation team?

They assign you with a support agent who can help you with scripts, etc. From the point of view of time consumption, it is time consuming to set up multiple scripts, but that is not a negative. It is to make sure you get the content for right journey and user flow.

You could do deployment and maintenance with a minimum of one person if you're talking about just writing the script. If you're talking about deploying one of their internal things, I would say two people. The whole point about monitoring in Apica is cutting down the resources you need. In general, we can get alerts back sometimes quicker than the provider can get alerts back because of the way the system is functioning.

What was our ROI?

The alerting saves a vast amount of money for us in gaming. Because when your site is down, it alerts you. If it is something that you can fix, or alert another team to fix, then the gaming sites are backup the quicker that it's fixed. There have been occasions where something has broken through a release that we weren't aware of. It shows you that issue. Then, you get a developer to fix that issue and you're back online. If you didn't have alerts then you would have to wait for the customer reports. If you wait for customer reports, then you could be waiting X amount of time because customers are very good about complaining when they are losing money, but they're not so good about complaining if the site is not up. They just go somewhere else and play, then come back later and play on our site. We will lose money in that instance. It saves thousands of pounds if you look at the rewards it has against its setup costs. It saves us more than the license.

You have our QA team implementing all the scripts to track everything, but this far outweighs the rewards because it's so cost effective and saves a lot of money if there are errors on the site. The alerting is definitely there for a good reason: To prewarn us if there are any problems that we can then get fixed quickly.

We use scripts to compliment Apica or write Selenium scripts to prove points to see exactly the job Apica is doing. This has definitely saved us resources. We have one person looking after Apica with inside our team. If we were self-scripting it or doing our own monitoring system, we would need multiple different servers or a dedicated team of Synthetic people to be able to generate exactly what Apica has produced. Staffing-wise, it will save you a couple of head counts. Therefore, you are looking at probably saving about 120,000 pounds a year in head counts for what it's doing.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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. 

We haven't actually had to pay any additional costs for anything. We fit into their model quite nicely.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have used multiple monitoring solutions throughout my career. Apica is one of the best. The Apica system is leaps and bounds above pretty much everything else out on the market, especially from Eggplant. The scripting tools at Apica are a lot easier than NCC Group (Eggplant) and their reporting is incredibly sophisticated in comparison. Also, their alerting system is more complete. It basically gives you alerts and shows you what asset has failed. It shows you timing for failing assets.

In general, you can do login routines with Apica. The deposit routine of a poker table (or many of our systems), we wouldn't be able to do with other monitoring systems. 

Apica is a complete package. You can monitor every single touch point that can fail inside a user's journey. With NCC, it was very hard to script the journey, point out different APIs, and different failures of suppliers. It would just alert on one individual thing, and it wouldn't really show you where the main error was. It would just show you there was an error with that journey. With Apica, it shows you exactly where the error is, even if it's a misloading asset like a Google Analytics tracking script. It will then show you that missing asset so your developers then don't have to worry because they can see that through Google. Obviously, we can't influence if Google or Google Fonts is up and down. It puts your mind at rest, showing exactly where the failure points are for many other systems.

I would recommend researching what is out there to see just how good Apica really is. Apica is top-notch and probably one of the best monitoring companies.

What other advice do I have?

There are multiple different things you can take off of the solution:

  • Your code is not correct. 
  • Your image optimizations are not correct. 
  • Your geo-blocking has a fault, which means you're in breach of your license.
  • How your system is working, e.g., the speed, performance, errors, and missing assets.

There is a lot of in-depth content.

They do meet our security requirements because we are not sharing any private data with them from a software-as-a-service point of view. With on-premise, we had one or two licenses that folks tell us that we could install on our platforms, monitor, prime routines, and so forth. However, from where I am now, the security is fine because you are not injecting anything. If we were injecting any usernames into it, they're test users and marked as test users within it because it's a back-end system.

Even if someone got our Apica password, it would be pointless anyway because we're not exposing player data. We have specific users set up for specific tasks that we monitor, and they're marked as test. They don't go on any revenue streams. 

From a simple point of view, their security is top-notch. They offer different security platforms for different use cases. If I was a bank, then I would have it on-premise and it would meet their security profiles as well. So, I am aware of their security and appreciate the efforts they're going to, but we are just fine with software-as-a-service because we're not declaring any personal information.

I would rate them five stars out of five.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
IT Director at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Gives an outside-in view, that really gives the same context that the end-user has but the documentation should be simplified
Pros and Cons
  • "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 having to install an application on your desktop to utilize something like ZebraTester is a little cumbersome. It would be nice to see that become a web-based application. Having the documentation a little more accessible, and easier to digest by people who are just learning how to use the framework, especially when it comes to more complex or more edge-based cases would be really helpful to have."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for monitoring. We've got a number of auto finance applications and hosted applications that my teams are supporting. Apica offers outside-in visibility of what a user would experience if they were actually logging into the platform. We noticed that we were missing that outside component. We had a lot of internal monitoring in place for making sure that the user experience was good, but when it came to being able to support our users and report back on issues our users might be experiencing, and work to remediate or identify and resolve issues that our users may be experiencing from the open internet connection that they've got into our hosted environment, it was just not sufficient. So Apica is what we're using that for today to actually give us an outside-in view of what the end-user would actually experience from the beginning to the end and from their overall use case experience for our hosted applications. 

We also use it to monitor the internal service platforms that we use to support our infrastructure, support our environments, and support our internal clients. We use it for monitoring port status and service statuses associated with network-based applications like FTP file transfer platforms, MQ platforms, shared services, SOA platforms, and a number of other internal platforms that we utilize the shared services across our application stacks to serve the service of our clients.

How has it helped my organization?

It gives us a clear line of sight into when we're actually having an external network event that's impacting our end users. Previously to implementing Apica, we would have to rely on our end users to tell us, "Hey, we can't get into the website." With Apica and regional monitoring that we have set up in our higher profile application stacks, we're able to tell if we've got a regional network issue, a national network issue, or some other network event that's occurring that may be an internal network issue that's being exposed as a manifestation of user login failures across our application stack. We didn't have that line of sight prior to implementing Apica and so it's really helpful there.

The other thing that it helps with, that is an indirect benefit of doing URL based monitoring with these types of frameworks is that we've actually caught a few expired certificates and we've also caught encryption changes that have impacted our users' ability to access the environment that maybe some service provider downstream to us has changed.

Prior to having Apica, we never really had a clear line of sight into either of those things, other than some automation that we had internally that were basically report based, and they weren't driven off of real-time data like Apica provides. When your cert expires, Apica comes back with an alert saying, "Hey, my check has failed. And the reason my check has failed is that I can't establish an SSL connection because the cert is invalid." That's a great benefit to reap from having that framework in place that wasn't anything that we ever thought of during the time that we were implementing it. Those things are really nice to have.

It's too early for me to actually give a definitive answer on whether or not it had addressed Edge because we haven't been able to build out sufficiently complex user scenarios in our synthetic monitoring areas with Apica. But from what we have set up, it will definitely give us more insight when we're dealing with a complex infrastructure-based failure event scenario. It gives us more insight as to where specific failures are occurring, because it's giving us a lot more data back that gives us detail into where the user experience is actually not functioning. From the diagnostic data that the synthetics that we do have set up from that diagnostic data that we get back because we have an incredibly complex application infrastructure and architecture for some of our apps, we are able to quickly narrow down where within that infrastructure we're actually having a problem with that diagnostic data from the synthetic logs that we get back from the alerts. I would say it does, but we don't really have really deep synthetics setup to the point where I can go to regression test my entire application stack for one of my apps. I just can't do that yet, but it's definitely something that we have in our roadmap of to-dos.

The fact that Apica offers multiple deployment options, like on-premise, hybrid, and managed cloud solutions definitely helps my company meet our security requirements. Some of the internal texts that we need to do require us to have on-premise infrastructure components. Having a hybrid option is definitely helpful. I think the other piece to that is the flexibility to be able to go entirely cloud with Apica is incredibly beneficial because then you get access to regions all around the world that you have a line of sight from that can help you with getting visibility into what's happening from a client use case perspective. For example, if I have a lot of clients in Canada because we do have application products in Canada, I could, in theory, have an Apica presence in a Canadian region that will give me a localized view of what the user experience is like in conjunction with other regional views to help me narrow down when I am seeing a problem; if it's a regional issue or if it's something that's more global in nature. That actually is usually beneficial for us.

We use its ability to use our own scripts. What we use Apica for right now has primarily been based on the importing of Selenium Flames groups that we've developed for mimicking our user transactions. We've also been working on utilizing their automation platform by a ZebraTester and we've been learning how to work with that so that we're still in the early stages with it. But we've been seeing a lot of additional potential from that ZebraTester framework as well. LoadRunner is something that we've been talking about but we haven't really explored that at this point in time.

What we've developed in Selenium is that we've been able to easily convert over into the native Apica workflow stuff for the synthetics that we have configured. Once those Selenium scripts are created, you use it once, and then it's in Apica. The results have been fantastic from that standpoint and the simplicity of being able to use something that's common and standard across the industry, in terms of using system Selenium to create your synthetic transaction scenario, makes it really easy and helpful to actually get into the platform and a little bit more of an in-depth way versus having to learn an entirely different scripting language or having to learn something new in order to do those types of things.

It's hard to say whether or not this scripting feature has saved us money or resources. Because of that flexibility, more people have been able to access that component than normally would be able to. From that standpoint, it has increased our adoption rate. It hasn't necessarily improved outside of that, but with an increased adoption rate, because it's easier to implement and easier to use by more people, we're getting more value out of the framework without having to have dedicated script or dedicated people writing automation for it. 

What is most valuable?

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 are good. Those three areas are primarily what my team's focused on in terms of usage from day to day.

The dashboard view tells you the health of the services that we have monitored, and how the health of the entire infrastructure is doing at a glance. My teams have given me a lot of good feedback that I just keep the dashboard up on my workstation during the day, and if we get an alert, I can immediately go and investigate if I'm in the dashboard. I can also sometimes catch an event as it's occurring so save myself a little bit of time and be able to get in and see what's going on more quickly as a result of that. From the alerting standpoint, that in conjunction with the dashboards that you get, really compliment each other because then you can drill down and actually get into what's happening from a transactional standpoint or transactional perspective, and see where within the transactions that we're monitoring, where what steps are failing, get more details on why those steps are failing and work to mitigate and resolve those issues based on that.

It's that visualization component that really ties everything together and the drill-down capabilities that you get starting from the dashboard that really makes Apica very useful from a day to day support standpoint.

There are a lot of capabilities that we're not really taking advantage of that we could. There are a lot of opportunities to grow in terms of how we're using the framework, especially when it comes to doing things that are more complex, like facilitating deeper checks via multi-protocol based scenarios that tie in with ZebraTester automations that get created or more advanced regression-based scenarios that we might want to set up in the synthetic checks. We're using around a third of all the capabilities that we have available to us so we definitely have a lot of room in terms of what Apica offers for growth and for expansion of our use cases.

The alerting is impressive. 98% of every alert I see come out of Apica is a valid alert. The other 2% of the time, we will get an alert or something will not be right which is because we overloaded our Apica infrastructure with something that we were doing. It was a self-inflicted thing. If you actually remove that from the equation, what you're really talking about is that it's nearly a 100% success ratio of events to real events. 

It's been fantastically accurate at identifying events. The sometimes frustrating part of that is convincing other people that what we're actually seeing, coming out of Apica is a real issue and it needs to be addressed because a lot of times people will just not be convinced by the data that they're seeing until well after the fact. As we've been using the platform more and more, there are more teams out there that are understanding that when a team member brings something up from Apica, it's not to be taken lightly.

From my perspective, I would say it has saved us costs involved in monitoring. It's enabled my resources to work more focused. It's enabled them to work more accurately. It's enabled them to work more authoritatively and it enabled them to work more adeptly. From an operational standpoint, I would say that it's at least improved our monitoring efficiency by 5% to 10%.

What needs improvement?

Having to install an application on your desktop to utilize something like ZebraTester is a little cumbersome. It would be nice to see that become a web-based application. 

Having the documentation a little more accessible, and easier to digest by people who are just learning how to use the framework, especially when it comes to more complex or more edge-based cases would be really helpful to have. That is really it, but I think the other thing that would be really nice to have, and it's not necessarily a big downside is when the browser agents need to be upgraded, it would be nice if that just happened automatically and it was transparent and seamless to us and to our infrastructure.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started using Apica around two years ago. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. We don't ever see any issues with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales well.

We have about 200 technical users and they're mainly technical support application development and infrastructure support teams.

We have a couple of dedicated resources for deployment and maintenance. Obviously, they share responsibilities across different application stacks, but we do have resources available. They're a monitoring infrastructure support team.

We have 200 users. We have 100 Synthetic and another 100 regular licenses, and we've got a lot of room to grow so that we plan on increasing usage quite a bit over the next couple of years.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was moderate. We have a moderately complex setup here in LA.

It was moderately complex because we've got the hybridized infrastructure for Apica. If we were entirely cloud-based, we would probably be a little more straightforward and simplified. But because we're using both on-premise and the cloud infrastructure, it just makes it a little more complex.

We've got a number of groups that we've got a center of excellence basically. The center of excellence is helping teams by enabling their use of the platform.

What about the implementation team?

We used their support during our migration. The vendor engagement with Apica is second to none. I've worked with some really big companies out there and I have been seriously impressed with our technical account team, with our support teams, and with our account executives for Apica. They are great partners to us and they listen and they help and they try to help, and they're just a fantastic group to work with.

The level of support reduced the time and costs involved with switching. It also is an ongoing, continual improvement type of strategy. It helps us to implement new solutions more quickly because they're accessible and again, always there to help so it's great.

They anticipated our needs during deployment. The adoption rate has been a little bit slower than what they were anticipating, but that's no fault of theirs.

I'd say it took us a good six months just to get everything set up the way that we wanted it.

What was our ROI?

We have absolutely seen ROI. The percentage of time saved that we've gotten from this platform has been helpful. That translates itself into client success stories as well.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It would be nice to see them have an enterprise license where an enterprise can just buy unlimited.

Professional services are at an additional cost, but it's very fair.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also evaluated AppDynamics. 

What other advice do I have?

I would highly encourage organizations that have external applications, web-based applications to definitely consider this platform if they're looking for something to give them an end to end view in the overall user experience.

Having that outside-in view, you don't really think about it at the time when you don't have it. But once you actually have that outside-in view, that really gives you that same context that the end-user has. It's kind of surprising how much more you actually learn about things that aren't necessarily within the infrastructure that might impact your clients and potentially impact us so it's been very revealing.

I would rate Apica a seven out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user

Thank you for great detailed review. Very much helpful. 

Buyer's Guide
Apica
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Apica. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sofonias Fiseha - PeerSpot reviewer
Application performance tester at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 5
User-friendly and has the best GUI compared to other products
Pros and Cons
  • "Anyone can understand the solution easily because it doesn't require a specific scripted language."
  • "Apica is costly, and there's no way to test mobile applications through Apica."

What is our primary use case?

I've been using Apica for performance testing, scripting our commission, and executions. The platform generally allows you to perform all performance testing cycles.

What is most valuable?

Anyone can understand the solution easily because it doesn't require a specific scripted language. Everything is on the graphic user interface. You can just click on what you want and proceed. That's the best part. Apica is very user-friendly and has the best GUI compared to other products.

What needs improvement?

Apica is costly, and there's no way to test mobile applications through Apica. You can test mobile applications through other platforms. However, Apica is only for APIs and applications.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Apica for almost two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven't faced any major breakdowns or stability issues with the solution. Apica has been consistent. Apica has around twelve powerful data centers worldwide, and I don't remember experiencing any hard blows.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution lets you have multiple virtual users. Although Apica claims to support millions of users, we haven't needed to scale to that level. We did not experience anything negative regarding the solution's scalability.

How are customer service and support?

Apica's technical support team is really fast and supportive. The solution was not picking up some scripts when we wanted multiple scripts for execution. We had 40 executable scripts, and the Apica portal was not picking some of them, leaving behind five or six of them. We had to reach out to their technical support team. They set up a working session with us and helped us resolve the issue quickly.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Setting up and configuring tests in Apica is easier than with any other tool I have experienced. It's really easy to understand for someone with no performance testing background. Understanding and using Apica is as simple as using any social media platform.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

For API, you usually have to pick the payload, like the role code. There's a place where you can paste it, and it delivers the results. The results are very clear to understand. You can use the solution to test all the APIs or any applications easily.

You can easily perform all the performance testing cycles on Apica, including script recording, script validations, script correlations, and parameterization. For correlation, you can easily correlate dynamic values by just picking up left boundaries and right boundaries to find and correlate them. The solution also facilitates the automatic parameterization of values. It's not complicated, and Apica has made it as simple as using any social media platform.

I would recommend the solution to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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PeerSpot user
Software Associate at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
Easy for beginners to understand and use
Pros and Cons
  • "It is easy for beginners to learn and use Apica."
  • "If you are adding any input file, the tool fails to capture the path."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution in my company for performance testing. As the tool is useful for performance testing, it is maintained in the cloud environment.

The product is useful to check the performance of applications and our company also integrates it with other tools since we have a good bandwidth as well. The tool is useful in areas associated with server-side metrics and client-side metrics. When you talk about the client-side metrics, the tool gathers information like whether it has a 90 percent response time and the average response time.

What is most valuable?

Compared to NeoLoad, JMeter, and LoadRunner, Apica offers many features. With Apica, our company gets to use some direct options. My company is planning to use the same features from Apica in other tools like NeoLoad or JMeter. It takes time when using the functionalities available in Apica in products like NeoLoad or JMeter. It is very easy in Apica to take care of the scripting and adding the input files.

What needs improvement?

At the moment, Apica is fine, and our company has not faced any issues with the tool. There are some kinds of improvements needed in the product. If you are adding any input file, the tool fails to capture the path. How to work in the scripts and update the path takes time, making it an area where improvements are required.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Apica for two and a half to three years. I am a user of Apica.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In Apica, once you are done with the scripting, you need to upload them into ALT. Generally, if you have around 100 or 200 scripts, sometimes it won't be able to capture all the scripts. My company has reported the aforementioned issue many times to Apica's vendor, but they have not been able to provide us with a proper solution. In our company, we work with around 200 web applications, and in some applications, we have more than 100 to 200 scripts. Though the 200 scripts get uploaded in ALT, the problems stem from the fact that Apica is not able to capture all the scripts.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a good solution in terms of scalability.

Most of the people in my company use Apica for different projects. In my team, around thirty people use the product for performance testing. Around ten people use Apica's synthetic monitoring capabilities.

How are customer service and support?

My company has contacted Apica's support team to notify them about the issue related to the product not being able to capture all the scripts. Though my company does consult the product's support team by scheduling the issues, the response provided by Apica does not match up with our expectations. My company has received a support email address from Apica, which is made exclusively available for my organization, and so we use it to contact the support team.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, my company used LoadRunner.

How was the initial setup?

Speaking about the setup phase, my company has integrated Apica with ZAPTEST. If you want to add any tools related to load testing, we can easily do so without any difficulty.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Though I am unsure about the exact price of the product, I am sure that Apica's price will be lower than LoadRunner.

What other advice do I have?

In Apica, debugging and other such areas are easy.

I would definitely recommend the product to those who plan to use it. Compared to the other tools in the market, Apica reduces the work time associated with scripting.

It is easy for beginners to learn and use Apica. With every tool, the concept remains the same, but the implementation may differ. With Apica, everything is easy to learn and implement.

Considering that it is a tool that makes it easy for everyone to deal with scripting, and since it reduces the manual effort required, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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reviewer1446309 - PeerSpot reviewer
Performance Synthetic Performance Monitoring and Autonomic IT solutions architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Automates a lot of manual efforts that have been more complex with some of our other scripting tools
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "Learning the tool has always been a little difficult from a scripting perspective because the framework is proprietary and unique. Once we became used to what it does and how to perform it, then it became easier for my team and me. I would like to see some of the testing steps be part of a more well-known language, like Java or Python. That would be a big improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We monitor various applications provided as dependent services. We also monitor internal applications that are required for different departments. Then, we have a wide variety of applications supporting different departments as well as clients. Whether it be a background transaction, front-end UI, or vendor application, we try to monitor the DNS with Apica

We have been using it both on-prem and off-prem recently. The Apica platform has its own external instance.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

It has centralized the monitoring into a single pane. With the wide variety of testing tools out there in the market, we have been able to streamline them more into a single, proactive dashboard that manages the scheduling, configuration, and alerting with a very robust API. Those big benefits really brought together our synthetic monitoring objectives.

They have given us a lot of flexibility in order to get past our security. Overall, they provide a wide range and customization, which helps us get through any issues, but there isn't one solution for every organization or a good wide-breadth of options.

Their platform does allow us to import JMeter on our files. That provides us some flexibilities, allowing us to use different tools. Their API is also very robust so we can do integrations quite easily by using their core product, synthetic monitoring, as a base. We use that as a trigger for other platforms that will compliment resolution. If the Apica platform continues to monitor successfully, then we can take that result and implement the next action with it.

It is very accurate. It certainly provides a lot of detail. The quality of the alert is based on the quality of your script and what you are monitoring. This does depend on the ability of the developer along with their strategy and design of the script to capture what they need to be able to monitor performance or availability. Overall, I think it provides a lot of details, if you script it to capture what you need it to.

What needs improvement?

We have been able to work with the different protocols. Some of them have been challenging to use inside of our network. Sometimes, we face some difficulties getting to a particular site or authentication. 

The scripting features are proprietary. I would like to see more enhancements where the core solution can take on more generally available open languages, like Python. While Apica does accept Java and some Python, I would like to see more of the ability to just execute external scripts for generally available languages out there in industry.

Learning the tool has always been a little difficult from a scripting perspective because the framework is proprietary and unique. Once we became used to what it does and how to perform it, then it became easier for my team and me. I would like to see some of the testing steps be part of a more well-known language, like Java or Python. That would be a big improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using it for two and a half to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a very stable platform. It is consistent, e.g., we have not had any outages nor many patches. There are mostly upgrades due to add-on services. Since the last upgrade from version 11 to 12, it has been very stable. They also continue to upgrade into the next version patch for 12. The upgrade process seems to have really improved.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

A lot of different groups across departments use it.

We are starting to see the benefits of its scalability at this point. Because we're trying to integrate it with other monitoring or alerting platforms, I do see in their own cloud instance that they have integrations with other tools, like AppDynamics. Therefore, they understand fundamentally that their tool is not a single solution that other industry tools covering critical areas, such as populations, make available. They have made an effort to design around the most common industry tools that have been adopted to create an integration. Thus, it's been very scalable for our operations teams.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their support post-deployment is very good. I have gotten to know some of the staff very well at different levels. There are agents in the US and in Europe. Overall, we have never had an issue as far as time zones and where the teams work. We have a global workforce, and they have a global workforce. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was right in the middle of being straightforward and complex. It wasn't that difficult compared to other things that can be very complex. There wasn't a single server. At the same time, it does require a couple of different servers overall to run the platform, from the web layer to the aspects layer. Other than that, I don't think it was too difficult. They did provide a lot of professional services to guide us. With that partnership, it was fairly easy to do.

Getting up to 150 checks took about a month and a half to two months. We were able to show the dashboard with synthetic checks running early on, which didn't make the biggest impact, but as we grew, our operations matured, and the platform was adopted, the scripts stabilized more. Then, we were able to show value more further along in having the platform adopted across different applications.

The implementation strategy is to engage the L1 command center team as well as the L2 teams who are the application owners. The L2 teams are various support group teams who adopt the pickup platform. We need to show them how to convert their current RFPs onto Apica, show them its value, what type of tool it is, and that we're migrating to this platform.

We centralized our development team to become experts within ZebraTester, showing them the output of the waterfall diagrams and continually ramp up into developing a lot more checks. We grew and matured the number of scripts, then we grew and matured operations and L2 to be able to interpret their check results, showing them the value of having it all in one place. That also shows the accuracy of the checks as they are happening.

What about the implementation team?

We received a very high level of support from their team. They want to always make sure that you are successful, providing you the guidance and partnership that you need. They're always offering additional help or suggestions to get you more acclimated and ramp you up quickly. I am very happy with the amount of effort that they put into ensuring you are successful.

Their level of support absolutely helped reduce the time and costs involved in switching. Their assistance to help establish our platform made us spend a lot less time managing the infrastructure and allowed us to focus on the actual synthetics, which help the business. That was really what made it successful. There was work involved to get the platform up and running, but we were able to really focus on the synthetics overall to bring the value in versus dealing with constant infrastructure issues.

They have worked with enough different companies to know the most common problems that other organizations have had with their product. Therefore, they were able to predict where we would have trouble with them. 

Also, their professional services teams are very experienced. They were able to bring us to production level very quickly.

What was our ROI?

If the monitoring is successful, then that will have a ROI value.

The level of alerting accuracy has saved us time and money in operational costs. Overall, it has automated a lot of manual efforts which have been more complex with some of our other scripting tools or monitors. So, it brings things together by doing things faster and saves us money.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated different products and chose the Apica platform over others. We looked at One UI, some on-prem solutions, and Dynatrace. Right now, we think Apica has been one of the products that has fulfilled most of our needs and requirements. Other platforms can perform some functions better than others. However, Apica's pricing and product abilities are just a better fit for us.

There are other tools which can perform similar tasks. At the web UI layer, other tools can do a good job. What Apica brings is they do provide a lot of good scripting flexibility within their own proprietary tool. Overall, Apica has been able to accomplish something very unique in our environment. We have used with a lot of different testing tools, but they haven't really brought together a consistent way of performing synthetics which Apica has for our operations team. Therefore, Apica did overcome some of our challenges, bringing together our command center and operations.

They offer a lot more on-prem than any other platform that we have adopted. For the external instance, they are very competitive with other tools from an external cloud-based solution standpoint. For the on-premise, we can take on a different strategy if we want to. For example, if we chose to go hybrid, onto the cloud, or just keep it on-prem, that's a choice for us, which is a very good option to have.

We have other tools besides Apica and they all live side-by-side. We will never have just one tool nor invest in just one platform.

What other advice do I have?

Organize your operations and App Dev teams to get onboard quickly. That is probably one of the most successful factors that you'll have. If your teams really buy into the framework and understand your objective, then you'll have better success criteria. This is because you really need to have everyone onboard from the lower lanes to the production level in order to continuously be able to get your synthetics updated with each release so you can reduce false alerts. Then, you can continually have monitoring in your applications.

We certainly have more room to grow. We continuously develop new applications and cycle through changes. Right now, Apica has probably been one of the most popular synthetic monitoring platforms that we use. We do have other testing platforms. Apica is not the only platform that we use. However, for production operations, it is one of our more primary platforms to monitor the health of production applications. While we still have several monitoring tools that we use, Apica has been one of our go-to tools for synthetics.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Information Systems Engineer III at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Offers us the unique capability to see what the customer is seeing but the audit log system needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "Alerting needs improvement. It's a little noisy. It needs some better options. Currently, they have an issue, when you set up a synthetic monitor, you can set up where it's monitoring from, a data center that Apica owns."

What is our primary use case?

We're a banking software company, so we use it for Synthetic logins to test how one of our end users would log into our product for a customer, how long it would take, what loads, and then log them out. Then we test how long it takes to do that entire process.

On the Synthetic side, we only use it SaaS-based. We actually put it through an SSO. We use Okta for an SSO. That's how we're securing our connections there. Security-wise, Apica's got a couple of things in the works that are going to help them out, but they're not there now. In particular, they're coming out with a key chain that allows us to save. You can hash passwords and users, they don't have that right now. Passwords and logins are set in plain text.

How has it helped my organization?

Before we had this particular product we were using SolarWinds to do something like this. The problem with that, however, was that was an internal check, which means it was coming from our network. With Apica, we could do the same type of check, and then we could also make a scenario script that would go and click the things we wanted to click, but it would come from an external source that we did not control. That would give us a better baseline for what the customer sees, as opposed to what we expect to see from our network.

What is most valuable?

We like the scripting features and the scenarios. It allows us to set up exactly how a customer would log in, what they would type in, where they would click on the screen, and then takes screenshots of it so that we can actually see it happen and see what they see at that time.

We also use it for up-down checks for a lot of our websites that we make ourselves for our customers to make sure the sites are up or down. It's not part of the Synthetic side of it, but we also use the ZebraTester. We're actually implementing various homemade tools on our site as well by API.

We use ZebraTester for some of the sites and other things before they even become into the Synthetic side.

It is highly flexible when it comes to websites. There are a few things that it does fall down on, but for the most part for logging into a website to check to make sure elements are loaded on the screen, it's highly flexible. If I don't want a certain element to load, I can block it or I can ask it to ignore it. If I need to check for a certain element, I can do that as well.

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.

Apica is indispensable in a few things that we do. It currently is the only one that we have that catches CDN outages. We have many tools that monitor our customer sites, but a lot of those are API logins. If we had a CDN outage and the site didn't load all of its elements, we wouldn't be able to tell that. Apica can tell that because it's looking for particular elements on the screen. Indispensable may be a strong word, but we do highly rely on it for some things.

We use Selenium scripts and we were able to do more specific checks, so it makes it feel like we're actually a customer logging into one of our sites, checking their accounts, and logging out.

The scripting feature has kind of saved money and resources. When we first got it set up, it was a pain because we didn't have the script set up before, but now we have it setup and it's running on multiple checks. Multiple checks, meaning, our Synthetic login checks range around five to 550 checks. Now when we have scripts set up to make the Selenium check, I can pump out new Selenium scripts for one of our online banking customers in five minutes.

Alerts are always accurate, but they might not always be useful. Apica alerts on two different things: one, when an element that is in the script cannot load, and two, when a part of what's loaded comes up with a certain internet error code, a 500 or 402 or something like that. It's always accurate because those things are always not doing that, or they're getting the errors, but it may not actually be as useful. To deal with that, we generally either have to block the URL that's throwing the error code or whatnot, or we have to verify the elements.

It's very accurate but sometimes not useful. It's also noisy. When Apica alerts, it does not have a pull-in time or anything else like that, unless for elements or error codes. It does for SLA times and variances, but not for the other ones. It could be that it's a one-time blip and something didn't load on the screen, it alerts immediately right then. If it loads the next time, it's not going to alert. If it's still set up, it alerts. It can be noisy.

This level of alerting accuracy has saved us time and money in operational costs. With CDN issues, it lets us know, for instance, that we have a homemade monitoring system for our products as well that monitors to make sure that things that should be there are there, but it doesn't actually take into account if the webpage itself is loading. A number of times we've had major CDN outages where our homemade monitoring tool is fine because everything is loaded by an API, but the webpages are not. When that happens, Apica tends to go alert hard and that lets us know that "Hey, we need to go check over here as opposed to over here." That saves us time and money on troubleshooting.

We have two different approximations in terms of how much it's saving us. The way that we do our major incidents, is that we do it per customer. If we have five customers down for five minutes, that's 25 minutes of downtime. I don't have an exact number. I know that things like that when it affects our entire environment are pretty substantial.

It has also saved costs involved in managing monitoring. It has at least saved us in the cost of that it gives us one pane of glass to go to for Synthetic monitoring. I can actually send one of our analysts to go look and if they want to know if a page loaded, they don't actually have to go log in, they just have to log into Apica and check to make sure Apica's running well. That saves time, which saves them money.

What needs improvement?

Alerting needs improvement. It's a little noisy. It needs some better options. Currently, they have an issue, when you set up a Synthetic monitor, you can set up where it's monitoring from a data center that Apica owns. However, for each data center that you attach to a monitor, that's considered an extra license. That's a bit iffy. They're usually behind on the version of Chrome that they're using for the Synthetic monitors. Currently, they're using Chrome 85, they're 11 iterations out of date. They're trying to get that fixed up with something called Evergreen, which will basically be a Chrome browser that'll stay constantly up to date, but it hasn't been implemented yet. 

The problem with that is that we generally test our product with the newest versions of Chrome and everything like that, so sometimes we've run into issues. Also, when they updated to Chrome 74, we lost some monitoring capabilities that we had before that did not transfer over with this new version of Chrome.

I'd like easier access to the API. Their API, it's not bad, it's just bulky. It's a little unwieldy in the way it has to be used. One of our app developers is currently working with them and he wanted to do a number of calls to the API, and he was not able to do that. They had to make special changes to our API to make the number of calls he wanted to make. It didn't seem to be scaling as well as we thought it would. But they worked with us to actually get it to do that. That's a plus point.

I'd like to see more abilities to do mass changes to checks in the GUI, in the interface. Things like setting a mass amount of blocks for checking a bunch of checks and saying, "Make sure that this URL is blocked on all these checks." Currently, we can only do that through the API, and last time we had to do that, we actually had to use Apica support to do it. 

Finally, they have an audit log system called Journal. However, it can only check, if I remember right, two weeks at a time. That becomes really difficult when you need to check on something that you need to go back multiple times and you don't know the exact dates of the thing that changed. For example, I had a user who got changed in one of my checks and I needed to find out when it got changed. It ended up being three months ago, but I had to go back in two-week increments until I could find it. Their Journal, their auditing system, needs a little bit of work.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've had Apica for five years. 

We are using the SaaS portal.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is not bad. We've never actually had an issue with Apica, the product. The alerting really comes back down to how this thing alerts, how the alerts are sometimes not useful. That's the worst I could say about the stability. We can turn them off or we could filter them through a third-party.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

From what it does, it scales pretty well. I can easily go in, pull on a check, assign a scenario to it and boom, I'm done. I've done that many times. A couple of weeks ago I spent the day creating very specific Selenium checks for very specific parts of a customer's website to make sure that they load properly. It handles it quite well.

We have roughly 100 users using this solution.

We take Apica data and we send it to our data warehouse so that we can do SLAs for our customers. There's me who sets up all the monitoring in there. And then we have our NOC, who will go in there and they use it to actually make sure sites are up and everything. It's used throughout the company in all ways: business side, maintenance, and monitoring.

I do the maintenance of Apica. 

I have 683 checks. For the Synthetic login, the checks, it's 400 checks. Those are the ones that we mimic the login like a customer would log in. For the VT checks, which are basically just up and down checks, we have 112 of those. That's not just our customer sites, we also use this product for our site as well for corporate sites.

We do have plans to increase usage. When a new customer gets added in, they get a check as well. Every customer gets a check.

How are customer service and technical support?

Support has never been a problem. Their support is top-notch. We either email or get our client experience manager on the line. They have been top-notch, willing to help, willing to go the distance. I have very minimal complaints about support. The one complaint I did have, they actually addressed it very quickly.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We started with SolarWinds, and after that, we moved to Apica. We then got rid of our SolarWinds integration and went to LogicMonitor. LogicMonitor has its own website monitoring tools. However, the problem with LogicMonitor's website monitoring tools is that it's very hard to set up a script the way that Apica does. They also don't provide screenshots of what happens. We've looked at a number of other vendors as well. The problem always comes down to it doesn't do the things that Apica does.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very complex. I wasn't even part of the initial setup, but I know it was very complex because we needed an external source for our checks, but we needed to be able to mimic logging in like the customer did. This was back in December of 2014. I have a feeling nowadays though, they probably have this down to a fine science of how to get people implemented and their stuff up and running.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI. We use it for all of our customers and it does help us. A lot of times it can catch things that happened to the site, but don't happen to the API. We've seen a good return on that.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing is based upon not so much users, but the number of checks you're going to create. Make sure when you set up an account with this, to request more licenses for checks, for any type of check, than you actually need. This will save in the long run. They're really good about setting this up and getting you more licenses but there's always a cost with that.

If you think you're going to need 100 checks, make sure you get 110 licenses. Then remember if you want to do multiple-site checks, not just one-site checks, you're going to get a license for each site.

With all companies, you get the base product, but the base product's not all that you want. You want it with a whole bunch of other stuff with it. We can safely assume that there are probably other costs to add things. Things like additional integrations with other products are not included in the standard license. 

What other advice do I have?

The biggest lesson I have learned from this solution is the sheer number of sites that can load when you load one website. We do online banking, but when you load online banking, it also loads 50 other URLs as it loads through there. That might include Google, Facebook plugins, or things like that. It has really opened my eyes to how many things load when you just open up a single webpage, even if there's that much on the webpage itself. It's very comprehensive when it comes to website monitoring.

I would rate Apica Synthetic a seven out of ten. We've had our problems with it and we're still waiting on some add-ons and features, but for the most part, it's never wrong. It's just sometimes noisy and feels old. The UI is very basic. It's not bad, it's not ugly, but it's basic. It uses old browsers. 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Mohammad AlShbou - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
MSP
Detects any issue on any website or any API, makes it easy to determine and identify the issue – where the issue is
Pros and Cons
  • "It is easy to set up and configure."
  • "The customer service and support were a little slow to respond. The browser sometimes checks alerts on unknown issues like latency from Apica's side."

What is our primary use case?

I used Apica for monitoring browser synthetic checks, like websites and URLs. And I also used it to monitor API collections – specifically mobile APIs for iOS and Android. It was a comprehensive monitoring tool.

How has it helped my organization?

I have two applications, one on the iOS platform and another on Android. I used to monitor those applications' APIs, such as the login API, where I'd input the username and password, and APIs for making calls between them, and so on.

I integrated Apica with another ticketing tool. Any failure with any of the response codes, whether a 404 or 500 internal server error, would alert the other tool I have integrated with it.

What is most valuable?

I prefer using Apica for API monitoring better than for browser synthetic checks, like websites.

What needs improvement?

The API thing... because initially, I used it for browser checks only. Then, after a year, I used it for APIs. So, the API monitoring could be improved.

Another area of improvement is customer service and support. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I used it for two and a half years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I never had any issues with the stability of the solution. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. 

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and support were a little slow to respond. The browser sometimes checks alerts on unknown issues like latency from Apica's side.

I wish the support team worked twenty-four hours all week. On the weekend, if we have an issue, there is no answer or reply. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

It is easy to set up and configure. 

We sent our servers to Apica to access them on their site, and that's it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

I would recommend using it. It's a great tool to detect any issue on any website or any API. I didn't try any other tools, but Apica makes it easy to determine and identify the issue – where the issue is.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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PeerSpot user
Senior APM Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Enabled us to set up business logic on the availability of our services, with multiple criteria to trigger an alert
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "There are some components of the user interface that are not up to date. Just to give you an idea, today we have web applications that are called single-page applications that are much faster than the old style of web application. If we can move faster into the flow of the graphic user interface, and in a more effective way, it will save us a lot of time."

What is our primary use case?

Apica is used to perform availability checks of our IT services. We put what we call synthetic checks in place, and these are mainly used to check if a specific application is running correctly, or if it is not available.

How has it helped my organization?

Because it is a platform that allows us to check the availability of our services, we have a process in our company that allows us to open an incident when we receive an alert that is raised by Apica. It is really critical in our company to have a tool like Apica, because every time we have an alert we know that there's a real problem in our system and we can forward the problem to our internal team so that they can take charge of the problem and solve it as soon as possible.

We are very satisfied with the flexibility that is offered by Apica. In our opinion it is much greater than in other products, even more expensive products. We found a good balance between the cost, after our spending review, and the features that it offers. The alerting is very reactive as well as very accurate. We are really confident in the alerts that we receive from Apica. The alerting accuracy has absolutely saved us time because we can minimize false positives and that means that we don't have to spend the time dealing with them. On a monthly basis it is saving us about 20 hours of work. That is the amount of work we did on false positives that we received before adopting Apica. That might seem like a low number, but trust me, when we have a critical issue, 24 hours are a lot.

We decided to move from another provider to Apica because it offers, from our perspective, more features and more advanced use case coverage. For example, it has a feature that allows us to set up business logic on the availability of our services. We can apply multiple criteria to trigger an alert. We have availability checks that allow us to check two different services at the same time and, to trigger an alert, both of them have to be down. One of the very difficult things with this kind of product is the possibility of false positives. Thanks to the flexibility that Apica provides, we are able to minimize the false positives, and that means that when we take charge of a problem opened by Apica, we are very confident that it is a real problem.

We are also using some JMeter scripts. At the moment, the platform itself is not using JMeter scripts, but they provide a converter that allows you to convert a Jmeter script into another language called ZebraTester. Thanks to that, we are using our JMeter scripts without any problems. And that means we can implement automation in the scripting and, obviously, that adds up to spending less time and effort on these automated activities. It's quite critical to have a tool that provides you this kind of automation. Apica also provides public APIs that allow us to run these kinds of scripts on demand. That is a good thing when you have to develop some automation to achieve very specific needs and tasks that are very frequently executed.

Overall, Apica has definitely saved us costs involved in managing monitoring, although I can't put a number on it.

What is most valuable?

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.

There is also the ease of use. The user interface it provides is really advanced, but at the same time, it is really easy to use. That's a really good feature when it comes to daily use and our daily processes on the platform.

It is also very good in terms of the range of protocols it can monitor. Even if, at the moment, we are only using the HTTP protocol and browser synthetic checks—it's mainly the emulation of the end user browser—they also provide other protocols, such as DNS verification.

What needs improvement?

The first thing that I would suggest they improve is the user interface. Not from the point of view of how to access the features, but how they are presented. The user interface is very clear, but there are some components of the user interface that are not up to date. Just to give you an idea, today we have web applications that are called single-page applications that are much faster than the old style of web application. If we can move faster into the flow of the graphic user interface, and in a more effective way, it will save us a lot of time.

Another feature they can improve is related to how easy it is to set up what they call on-premises locations. Apica offers locations all over the world, but they also offer a manual to install a location on-premises to check the availability of services that are not public. This process, at the moment, is not so easy to achieve. The last time we did it, we were forced to contact their support to set it up. The automation of this kind of setup is not good. It should be something that does not require human involvement to follow the deployment. The possibility of being totally independent in installing and using an on-premises location would be much better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Apica Synthetic for about one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is absolutely excellent. We haven't had any issues so far. And when there was some kind of unavailability of the service, because no software is perfect, they advised us before or, if not before, as soon as possible, to let us know about the problem. This is definitely a good approach since if you tell us the platform is under maintenance for a problem, we can change our internal processes to take the unavailability into account.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's very flexible in terms of scalability. At the moment we have about 2,000 scripts running on the platform without any problem. It's absolutely critical, since we are quite a big company, and moving from a software that is quite famous—because CA Technologies is a famous vendor—to another vendor, Apica, that is smaller, could be a risk. But after the PoC, we really trusted the Apica product. We are very happy that the platform is reliable and very scalable.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used CA Nimsoft Monitor and Dynatrace Synthetic.

How was the initial setup?

We were migrating from another product to Apica, so the main task that we performed was to migrate all the scripts that we were using on the old platform to the new one. We were able to do that thanks to the professional services support that Apica provided us. They offered us exceptional help in performing this task. It was mostly implemented using the APIs that Apica offers, since migrating data from a platform to another one requires some automation. You couldn't think about doing it manually. The Apica platform was made ready for our use cases because they provided the API that we needed to perform the migration.

The second task that I performed internally was to let the company know about the new processes to be implemented using Apica. The technology is the "engine," but then you need to build the "car" around the engine. That meant we needed to develop processes to let the people who were interested in using the platform know how to do so.

In summary, the first technical task was to migrate all the scripts from the old solution to the new one and the second step was to develop new processes, based on how Apica works.

Overall, our deployment took one year. But the level of support we received from Apica during our deployment helped reduce the time and costs involved in switching to their product. Without them, it would have taken double the time. Thanks to them, the time needed was reduced by a factor of half. They anticipated our needs, meaning that every time we asked them something specific, they replied right away, "We can do that. Don't worry."

What was our ROI?

It's not possible to provide ROI numbers for a simple reason. Last year we only performed the migration of the platform from CA to the new platform, so we have only been using Apica officially starting this year. We need more time to collect this kind of number. But the perception that we have after the assessment that we performed at the very beginning, is that it will halve our cost and double the performance of the processes that are related to the adoption of Apica.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We checked the new Dynatrace Synthetic platform. We decided to dismiss that and move to Apica after we performed the PoC, since we found that Apica was much more flexible than Dynatrace Synthetic.

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. 

There is also the support and the innovation that they bring. One of the reasons we decided to leave CA and Dynatrace is that they are bigger companies, but they are slower when it comes to solving a problem or when it comes to implementing a feature that we request. Apica is smaller, but being smaller means that you are even more flexible and more available when it comes to solving a problem. For example, Apica provided us with a totally new feature that we requested, before we moved to them. That feature was not in the Apica platform and it was critical for us. In about one month, they were able to develop that specific feature for us.

What other advice do I have?

If you are looking for a product that offers a huge technology modernization, and quick support, you should take Apica into consideration, for sure. It is a small company compared to others, but they are really quick in answering your needs and providing you modern technology. If your company is growing and is looking to add new monitoring that is up to date, I would warmly suggest Apica.

We decided to use the SaaS version because we are trying to change the model of services that we are using in our company. We are trying to minimize the on-premises products because we don't want to be in charge of the management of the infrastructure of things that are on-premises. We are absolutely confident that Apica respects our security needs and that we can use Apica safely.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Buyer's Guide
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Updated: November 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Apica Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.