AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring Reviews

Our use case depends on whether the client has revenue on their primary revenue-generating websites. For example, we previously implemented for Aviva Financial, and their primary revenue-generating website was their Aviva website. They primarily do home, medical, motor, and car insurance and use this solution to download insurance quotes. This solution is also used to monitor the end-user activity, website speed, product details and quotes.

We use the solution for end-user performance monitoring to monitor customers' browsers, like Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. So we're able to get details, and each transaction gets monitored, and the information gets captured and presented to management.

The management observes the end-user activity, which helps get quotes signed and monitor the payment system gateways.

It has a lot of features, and it provides a lot of data, so it helps businesses identify their user base, business parameters and key business metrics.

The solution is very scalable, and you can get the performance data from the end users. So it provides a proper way to analyze data from different regions. Most of the users download the data, which helps them understand the business strengths and monitor traffic from each region and maximum users.

A problem with App Dynamics is that they do not have robust documentation, making it difficult for start-up organizations who may need guidance. In addition, their documentation is complex and not easy to understand.

Another problem with AppDynamics is the agents of division. There is no central distribution system to update all the endpoints, so we need patch mechanism updates to do those activities. It is cumbersome, and it's not easy, so they lag in that area.

We have been using this solution for the past six months. It's a SaaS product only, and AppDynamics is according to the agent version. It is on cloud.

The initial setup was very easy. Deployment depends on how many applications you need to monitor. Initial data collection can take up to two to three weeks. Then, like any end-user application, it will be implemented in a test environment. Once the test environment is a success, it moves to production, which takes one to two months.

The support and management team primarily have access to the data, and we collect the story at the back end. For example, we do this for Aviva, which has an approximately 300,000 user base. So the information on whoever visits Aviva's website is passed on to AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring.

They have licenses. Technically, AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is a Cisco product. When using this application, we need to install the agents on each server, and there is a transaction cost. End-user monitoring requires purchasing millions of transaction licenses, but infrastructure monitoring costs are based on the agent. So everything is licensed, and it's a costly solution.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. We decided to use this solution because they are market leaders. Appdynamics and Dynatrace are the main application performance monitoring solutions and have been for the last five to six years.

I would recommend this solution. First, you need to analyze multiple tools in the market based on your requirements. For example, if you need an enterprise monitoring system, go for AppDynamics or Dynatrace, but if you have fewer applications, you can choose other end-user monitoring solutions like Site24x7.

What we are looking at is the real-time user experience. We are a retail business and the customer walks in, he places an order for the material. We would like that to be efficient, the order to be processed, and it should immediately get delivered. The performance is a key factor for us. We are a franchising business and the application is deployed in the cloud. Most of the time, the users complain about the slow performance. For us, it's very important to track down where exactly the problem is; for example, in which geographical region is there a problem. Then, we nail it down and find out what session is causing a problem there. That's the whole idea. That's where we're seeing that AppDynamics is able to help us.

We have been able to identify the application issues or the user experience issues. We are able to address that. If the user has been complaining that they are experiencing a problem, we get to know that proactively. We are able to find out which geographic region, what store is having an issue with it so that we can monitor it; it comes as an alert, we try to diagnose it, and try to fix the issue.

We've not been able to get one answer to all of our problems; for example, if there is anything else happening on the networking side. I'm pretty excited to learn about the infrastructure monitoring.

One thing that is missing is the desktop monitoring. The desktop monitoring is not there. A lot of times, the problems are created or caused by some other applications, which is blocking or causing an issue with the application.

These kinds of things I still see as missing pieces in AppDynamics, and that’s the reason for my rating.

I just started using the database side. I haven't gone through that. At a recent conference, I was looking forward to participating in one of the sessions so that I could learn more about the product. I started to see some valuable things. I was especially excited to see Business iQ. I need to learn about that. I see there is potential for being more productive and helpful to the business. But, it's too early for me to comment on that.

We haven't used AppDynamics very extensively. If I had to rate its stability, I would say that AppDynamics is about 8/10. There is a little room for improvement. Sometimes, we do have performance issues on AppDynamics. The metrics take a long time to load. I raised this point when I was in one of the sessions at the conference.

It is scalable. The good part is that we can add as many nodes as needed. We can do that. We can add as many clients as we need; we can do that. I don't see an issue with scalability. That seems to be good.

They have been pretty good with technical support. In fact, one of the technical support persons helped me in terms of doing the proof of concept. I've been able to get that support. They're very good. In fact, the day before I provided this review I pointed out a problem and I see some communication going on there; they're pretty good. They're very good.

The ERP system that we have used has partnered with AppDynamics. They suggested this. We weren’t really looking for evaluating solutions; it just came along with that. Then, as we started to use that ERP application more and more, we encountered performance issues. The need arose to find one tool that can help us and that could give us end-to-end monitoring.

There are many tools available, but they cover only one segment of that. The good part with AppDynamics is that you get all three layers, even though there still are some missing links. Looking at the vision and listening to them at the conference, I'm very positive and optimistic that AppDynamics is going to come forward with new ideas and new solutions that can help us.

We had some initial setup challenges because our application is different than regular web-based applications. I had to engage with our application vendor to have that issue resolved. After some initial hiccups, everything went smooth. The support has been very active. Whenever I needed it, I want to have a call, a joint session, it was there. That was support.

There are some other monitoring tools, such as SolarWinds, ExtraHop, and so on, but they are for different verticals. There are also open-source database monitoring tools out there. There are many tools out there. It becomes really hard to focus.

We already had the AppDynamics license, which we got when we acquired the ERP system. We got a license with that because AppDynamics was partnered with our ERP system. That basically gave us an advantage, and it's a good tool. I did some reviews on it, and found that they're doing very well.

As I started looking into other products, such as end-user monitoring, AppDynamics was really good with that and the database side. If there is an application available which basically gives you end-to-end visibility, why not go with that one?

Performance is a real challenge for any application. It's very hard to get a single solution that gives us complete visibility. I would certainly recommend looking at AppDynamics, that kind of a tool, that basically provides complete visibility.

I use Browser Real-User Monitoring with AppDynamics’ Database Monitoring and Java Application Monitoring products.

The main uses of this solution are dependent on our clients needs. They are mainly in the banking sector, and use the product to measure user experience, or for analytical, business IQ purposes.

The feature we find most valuable, is that the solution creates a unified platform making it really easy to pinpoint a problem, and then drill down into a transaction to resolve the issue.

We would like to be able to easily use this solution to monitor our Java script based browsers, which are currently blocked by the security settings.

We have been working with this solution for more than 10 years.

We have found this to be a very stable solution.

This solution is very easily scalable.

The global technical support for this solution is really good. They have two different service types; standard and premier. The premier level of support has a higher cost, but better SLA's for fixing issues. We have found both of them to be good quality, and customer focused.

Positive

We found the initial setup of this solution to be very easy, and the deployment only took 10 minutes. The deployment can be carried out automatically as long as it is suitable for your client's application.

We implemented the solution using our in-house team.

We have two different licensing models for this solution. One of them is the agent based model, which requires payment per agent. The other is an infrastructure based model, where the price is based on the CPU core. For the infrastructure model wholesale level pricing applies. All of the up to date licensing prices for this product are available on the manufacturers website.

We would recommend that organizations looking at this solution ensure that the hosting version meets their countries regulations. The product is available as both cloud-based and on-premises, but this choice may be geographically limited.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

It is very useful to monitor user behavior and see the user experience.

It has helped us to address issues well. For example, if the application is being used worldwide, it's possible that the application is performing well when accessed from the US but that it has issues when accessed from other countries, such as China. So, AppDynamics can clearly show you which users are having issues when accessing your application, and this helps you address it.

It is a stable solution. I have found the features that help me see the user experience to be valuable. For example, it will tell you all the visual screens on the mobile application that a user has been visiting. It will also show you how long they have been visiting this particular screen and all the actions the user has taken on the browser.

We can view the end-user experience and end-user response time. For example, if your application is performing well but the users are still complaining, then you will be able to investigate whether it is a network issue or a connection issue. 

AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring will give you these types of details. It will tell you from which part of the world your application is being accessed, it will give you the page rendering time, how the page is behaving, and when it is being accessed from different parts of the world.

If you have a single URL and all the operations are coming in as part of the header, you will not be able to segregate them for different actions. I think this could be improved.

There are different things which can be achieved using Core Change, but it cannot be easily done using the configuration change on the controller.

Also, functionality could be increased on the End-User Monitoring side.

I have been using this solution for the last five years.

It is stable.

I think that it is scalable.

Their technical support is good, but there's room for improvement. The way the technical support staff handle the user could be improved.

Also, technical support staff could be faster and more knowledgeable. They need staff who are more technical. Most often, they ask a standard set of questions, even if they are not relevant to the particular case that has been raised. This could be changed.

The installation is pretty simple. It is a Core Change. For example, if you have to implement End-User Monitoring for a particular browser application, then you will need to inject the JavaScript Agent on the code. This usually takes about one or two hours.

We implemented it ourselves.

AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring does have licensing cost associated with it. We currently have a yearly license.

There are very few products which use End-User Monitoring, and I would rate AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring at seven on a scale from one to ten.

We like being able to actually see how long it actually took. You can look at the back end, and you know how long the server thinks it took, but you really don't know how long to render. We've caught a lot of problems with ads, third-party content and other things, where we were serving up the page in a normal amount of time, but it wasn't rendering right and it was broken for our users. Now we have insight into that. We can raise the alarm, and try to fix it.

We've had a lot of issues with third-party ads. We were able to get them to clean up their act after we could show them the data that it was broken.

Instead of guessing, we have real data. That's really improved. Instead of saying, "Hey, everybody fire up your browser and see if we can reproduce this issue," we can just look. That's really been helpful.

Things mostly work well. I would think maybe more integration; pull things together more; integrate this analytics with this dashboard, with that analytics; and so on. Just kind of tie everything in one spot.

I have not encountered any stability or scalability issues. I'm not sure how many page views we're doing at this point, but we haven't had any issues with it, and it's a lot. It's a lot of page views. I know it is.

We use technical support from time to time; nothing serious, just some questions; things like that. They've always been really responsive; definitely quick in getting you the answer in a timely manner.

I think they also looked at Dynatrace. I guess I know how that went, because here we are, with AppDynamics.

In general, when I’m selecting a vendor to work with, the most important thing I look for is the ability to get the job done and actually perform.

We also use AppDynamics APM, and we use the database monitoring a little bit. We’re definitely happy with them.

We are a reseller and AppDynamics is one of the products that we sell to our customers.

Our customers use it to gain insight into performance.

The most valuable feature is the end-user monitoring.

I would like to see support for mobile testing and mobile monitoring.

The cost is something that can be improved.

We have been working with AppDynamics for almost 10 years.

We have not had any issues with stability.

Scalability has not been a problem.

We provide in-house technical support for our clients. We have found that AppDynamics is pretty selective when it comes to providing technical support.

The initial setup is not very straightforward, so it takes some time to complete.

Implementing this solution will require some help.

This price of this product is expensive.

Some of our customers are making the transition to cloud-based deployment, which is something that we are helping them with.

Overall, this is a good product and it is one of our top recommendations.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.