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Apica vs Catchpoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Apica
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (17th), IT Operations Analytics (5th), Observability Pipeline Software (2nd)
Catchpoint
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
40th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (59th), Cloud Monitoring Software (31st), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Apica is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Catchpoint is 0.4%, up 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

Noorul Mustafa Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Validates content and perform login functionalities on front-end applications
First of all, it will depend on the type of application. If it's a web application, I would recommend implementing it in your lower environment first and checking for functionality. If you are satisfied, then push it to the higher environments. Apica has detected server-related issues and various web application-related issues promptly, alerting us in a timely manner. This allowed us to implement automation within our processes, ensuring comprehensive performance monitoring from failure detection to recovery. It was pretty easy to learn. I attended a couple of sessions with team members. They provided knowledge transfer, which took about a week. After that, I was able to onboard the company. However, for minor issues, I would still contact them. If you're a quick learner, it could take just a couple of weeks to get the hang of it. You can integrate Apica architect into your system because they provide APIs. With these APIs, you can utilize Apica where and when it's needed. For instance, you can create your own microservices to automate tasks or integrate it with tools like Postman. This flexibility allows you to embed Apica into various automation processes or any other functionalities you require. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Carl Funk - PeerSpot reviewer
The UI is well designed, so it's easy to get the visibility you want.
There's still too much manual involvement in getting customized test configurations out there. It's good, but it still takes a lot of effort. In other words, it's when you need to configure it to collect a specific variable and that kind of thing. The other issue is the cost. The more data you collect, the more expensive it becomes. You sell your organization by saying we can get this feature set, but then you have to walk that back because we'll need more money to run every test. This is something hard to get out in your initial scoping. You provide Catchpoint with a series of tests and get a cost estimate, not realizing all the data you might have to collect long term. That was a big deal for us because we partly switched on the promise of saving money.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the biggest advantages of moving to Apica is the ability get to a hybrid model with the architecture in the cloud and our agents on-prem. We also have access to Apica's cloud agent across the globe. That has changed the way that we have our load testing setup at this point. Previously, it was always internal. Now, with this change in the way it is implemented for load testing, we can test anywhere across the globe and from the list of agents available within Apica's cloud. If I don't have an agent available in a second location, it just takes an email to their customer support, then it is spun up within 24 hours. That flexibility has changed the way that we perceive our load tests, not just in the US, but globally."
"What I like the most is that Apica can simulate different browsers and different versions of desktop or mobile browsers."
"The solution captures all our requests and responses."
"The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integrate with other tools with a separate execution environment. The tool is also easy to use."
"APICa allows me to record APIs easily and enhances scripts through options like auto-correlation, enabling me to access dynamic fields."
"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."
"I like the transcript download feature. And with UI scripting, it's helpful that Apica handles a lot of the backend work automatically. I don't have to tag everything manually, though I can tag elements later if needed. It's really good at recording the steps."
"Apica allows me to record APIs easily and enhances scripts through options like auto-correlation, enabling me to access dynamic fields."
"Catchpoint's customer service and support are valuable."
"The thing I like most is the tech support in this company, because they have 24/7 chat support. We can chat immediately and ask them about an issue and they keep responding. They create tickets on our behalf and respond."
"One of the features, the scatter plot, is very useful. It shows red dots wherever there are issues."
"The most valuable features of Catchpoint are basically the transaction monitors on the API and UI."
"The drill-down feature of this product was very good. It allowed us to identify the exact page or area of the site that was causing our customers an issue."
"The solution offers three different ways of slicing data to look for abnormalities."
"The product's most valuable feature is the ability to identify and troubleshoot network issues."
"The best feature in Catchpoint is the alert or the notification my company gets frequently, in particular, every five minutes. It's the notification you get whenever a respective market has an issue. There's also a dashboard in Catchpoint that shows the markets you support, so all the markets will be highlighted graphically in the dashboard whenever there's downtime that could affect you. If there's no issue for a specific market, it will be in green, so in this way, anybody would be able to understand which market has issues and which market has no issues through Catchpoint. The tool is very useful for monitoring activities."
 

Cons

"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."
"Apica cannot perform endurance or scale-up tests independently."
"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."
"When it comes to the way the internal agent is installed, because you can install an application on a server, I would love to see the application Docker-ized. If you could install internal agents using Docker or using containers, it would be easier for us to manage them and spin up internal agents."
"If you are adding any input file, the tool fails to capture the path."
"Apica was a relatively new tool when I started using it. Although Apica had good documentation, it still felt less developed or advanced than a tool like LoadRunner."
"The accuracy of alerts can be improved a little bit. Right now, it's pretty good in terms of alerting pretty quickly about failures or changes in response times. However, what we have seen happen is the number of alerts that we are getting is very frequent, and we would like to tone down the number of alerts. That's the only trouble we have. Apica could tone down those settings because there is no option for us to tone it down to a level that would reduce the alerts to a minimum. As a platform, it does send us good alerts, but it could be improved a bit."
"The reporting part that we use for our executives needs a bit more customization capabilities. Right now, you can use only the three main templates for reporting. We would like to be able to customize them."
"The product could include global monitoring and predictive analytics to identify widespread issues and cyber threats."
"It would be great if Catchpoint could incorporate its alerting system instead of relying on separate tools like ServiceNow."
"Catchpoint can be improved by focusing solely on network monitoring."
"A room for improvement in Catchpoint is that it lacks an automated page updating feature. My company receives all the alerts and notifications it needs, but the page doesn't update automatically. You need to manually refresh the page, so every five minutes you need to refresh it to see the most updated information. If there's an automated page refresh feature, that would help my company. It's a feature that Grafana has. The page auto-refreshes in Grafana, so you don't have to manually refresh the page. If that feature is implemented in Catchpoint, it'll be useful for the users. Another area for improvement in the tool is you have to do a manual task, for example, when you have a notification for a market, you get a zip code that the user could have entered, but if the zip code is incorrect, you have to manually go into Catchpoint and update that parameter, so that manual step is another area in the tool that needs improvement."
"Trending needs improvement. Currently, out-of-the-box, they provide only seven days availability. So, we have to do queries and we have to go into a separate analysis module, we have to run lot of queries to long-term trends."
"We would like the script creation feature of this solution to be improved, as it currently requires a complicated manual process to update the scripts."
"As part of the improvement, there are certain categories, like for the China market, where we face issues."
"A large selection of nodes are available but it is a challenge to test reliably in China and the Middle East."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Apica is pretty cost-effective if you buy both solutions together: Synthetic and LoadTest. If you are going for one solution, the cost is on par with any tool in the market."
"I know Apica is an expensive solution, but it is worth the money for the service it provides."
"I am sure that Apica's price will be lower than LoadRunner."
"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."
"The pricing is very reasonable, but it is not cheap."
"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."
"The level of alerting accuracy has saved us time and money in operational costs. Overall, it has automated a lot of the 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."
"License management is another area that Apica could do better. We have already had these conversations with our account teams. This is something that they are looking at largely improving in upcoming releases. I believe that this is already on their roadmap."
"The price and licensing are very, very high. They have to come down on the pricing to match with the industry standard."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to the last tool we were using."
"The pricing is based on consumption and works on a point scale. For example, let's say I want to look at www.google.com, and I'm going to test it to see if it's there. It will bring back all this data that tells me how long it took to connect and how long it took to get the first byte. It will list all the resources on the page, showing that they all work and there are no broken links. It brings that data back. That test has an assigned point value depending on what you decide to extract from that test. If all I do is check to see whether it's available, it might be one point. I don't know the exact point values off-hand. This is just an example."
"In terms of licensing fees, I believe they were slightly higher."
"The solution's pricing varies based on services and licensing models."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Media Company
9%
Insurance Company
9%
Educational Organization
53%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apica Synthetic?
The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apica Synthetic?
I know Apica is an expensive solution, but it is worth the money for the service it provides.
What needs improvement with Apica Synthetic?
Apica cannot perform endurance or scale-up tests independently. It requires other tools like ALM. When editing scripts, only one can be accessed at a time, risking changes affecting other folders. ...
What do you like most about Catchpoint?
Catchpoint is very flexible and also provides logs for troubleshooting purposes. It helps us fix issues within the SLAs signed with the end users. The tool is easy to learn.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Catchpoint?
The solution's pricing varies based on services and licensing models. Clients typically see significant operational and cost efficiencies, with time savings estimated between 30% and 40%.
What needs improvement with Catchpoint?
As part of the improvement, there are certain categories, like for the China market, where we face issues. We are currently using an external tool, Splunk, for reporting. If we could receive simila...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Apica LoadTest, Apica Synthetic
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

HBO, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, Xander, EA Sports, Volvo
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Apica vs. Catchpoint and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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