AlertSite vs IBM Application Performance Management comparison

AlertSite vs. IBM Application Performance Management

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

AlertSite

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

37th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

API Monitoring Software (4th)

IBM Application Performance...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

51st

Average Rating

6.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AlertSite is 0.1%, down from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Application Performance Management is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

SandeepTarwe

Team lead at Tata Consultancy

Alerting capabilities have enabled timely escalation and resolution of issues

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

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Daniel Tamiru

Manager, Database & System Administration at Awash International Bank

A multi-functional solution but has poor stability and performance-related issues

We are using version 4 of IBM Application Performance Management, and it is deployed on-premises. We use it for internet banking and mainly for application performance on-site. For example, if we face performance-related issues in one of our software or managed services, we use this solution to…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The alerting capabilities were really helpful."

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

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

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

"The alerting capabilities of AlertSite were really helpful."

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

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

"The initial setup was straightforward and took minimal effort."

"The most valuable feature is the breakdown that it provides, such as a description of the fields for a particular transaction."

"It's easy to use."

"I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten."

"The transaction tracking feature from IBM is the most important feature for us. It is something that provides a terrific value for us and our clients. It has a lot of data sources and agents that are collectors. It is also stable."

"IBM Application Performance Management helped us increased our response time by 80% and cost 60% less."

"Because we have partnerships with other partners, I can share a bit about what I've noticed with IBM APM compared to other vendor solutions. Specifically, with IBM, the visibility into detailed process information is more tangible. On the OS level, APM displays all processes (or the top 10 processes) that are consuming CPU or resident memory. This is the most important thing that is not always available with other vendors."

Cons

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's still missing some platforms. For example, if you look to applications itself, it is missing the interface."

"Technical support can be slow and needs improvement."

"With APM, we noticed that the agent can cause a lot of issues for the application, making the agent very unreliable. Many issues are happening, and we've had to discuss it with support to try and get a fix. It affects application availability, and sometimes actions fail because of the agent, degrading the performance of the application."

"Its web user interface is a little bit old in comparison to other solutions, such as New Relic, and it should be improved. Its scalability and technical support should also be improved. Currently, it is scalable, but only in a vertical way. They provide good technical support, but the initial steps for a new case can be improved to fasten the resolution process."

"The stability is not great and should be better."

"The demo that was provided to us is not working very well. At times, there are errors."

"They should focus on potentially enhancing the dashboard to make it more contemporary and adding some customization options. Furthermore, there might be room for improvement in the pricing policy."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"The cost is high."

"As I previously indicated, I initiated the IBM and uncovered all its elements. Consequently, I'm not inclined towards a licensing approach."

"IBM APM is one of the cheaper products on the market, while everything necessary to get started is included in the license."

"The licensing fees can be paid every six months or on a yearly basis."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

16%

Real Estate/Law Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlertSite?

The pricing is reasonable.

What needs improvement with AlertSite?

When I last worked with AlertSite, everything was okay. However, we could make some changes to the UI. While it was user-friendly, making it a bit easier for new users to work on would be beneficial.

What is your primary use case for AlertSite?

What do you like most about IBM Application Performance Management?

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

What needs improvement with IBM Application Performance Management?

They should focus on potentially enhancing the dashboard to make it more contemporary and adding some customization options. Furthermore, there might be room for improvement in the pricing policy. ...

What is your primary use case for IBM Application Performance Management?

I monitor business applications for more than four end users.

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Product Reports

AlertSite

Download AlertSite product report

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Download IBM Application Performance Management product report

IBM Application Performance Management report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM APM

Overview

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

Here are AlertSite’s 6 use cases:

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

AlertSite Features

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

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

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

SmartBear

The IBM Application Performance Management portfolio provides visibility, control and automation of your mission-critical applications. It helps pinpoint the root cause of application's issue more quickly and resolve the problem. The integrated capabilities cover the five key areas: discovery, end-use experience, transaction tracking, enterprise diagnostics and analytics. It also easily monitors applications to ensure optimal performance to extend your hybrid management environment capabilities, to measure the customer experience from multiple locations and to further eliminate blind spots in your application environment.

IBM

Sample Customers

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

Mibtree, EatDrinkDeals.com, IT Performance Advisor

AlertSite vs. IBM Application Performance Management