Helpful Summary

Overview: In this article, we look at the top observability tools available on the market.

Why you can trust us: With a successful track record of working with organizations like AskWave, Looped, and Herukan, we’ve got the technical know-how to know what you should be looking for in observability tools.  

Why it matters: Observability tools help you detect and resolve system issues before they escalate to keep your infrastructure stable and operational. 

Action points: To find the right observability tool for your needs, start by assessing the specific requirements of your infrastructure. Evaluate the tools based on their ease of use, quality of features, and monitoring capabilities. 

Further research: After exploring the best observability tools, consider taking advantage of Instatus’s free trial to experience the capabilities of a top-tier observability tool at no cost. Additionally, visit our blog for insights and detailed information on our tools and platform to learn more.

Need Help Finding an Observability Tool?

Observability is essential for maintaining the health, performance, and reliability of your IT systems. Observability tools provide insights into system behavior and performance, helping you detect and resolve issues quickly.

In this Instatus article, we will cover everything you need to know about observability tools, including their benefits, key features to look for, and detailed reviews of the top tools available in the market. The information in this guide will help you find the right observability solution for your needs.

Let’s begin.

Why Listen To Us?

At Instatus, we specialize in real-time system status tracking and have developed one of the leading status page tools available. Our expertise extends beyond just status pages; we are well-versed in evaluating observability tools to help you maintain optimal system performance.

Clients like Vidyard and Dovetail rely on Instatus for clear, user-friendly status updates. We provide transparent and regular updates about the health of your systems, which reduces the number of support inquires and fosters trust in your customers.

With our dedicated tool and deep industry knowledge, Instatus is your go-to source for reliable observability insights and solutions.

What is an Observability Tool?

Observability tools enable rapid issue resolution and system optimization. They are the next step beyond monitoring dashboards, which can’t assist engineering teams in quickly identifying the root causes of performance problems.

Modern software systems are complex and comprised of numerous interacting components. It’s not always clear where to find specific information you’ll need to troubleshoot an issue. This is where observability tools come in handy.

Observability tools provide deep insights into your system’s behavior, allowing you to answer any questions during debugging. 

Typically, these tools monitor three key signals: metrics, traces, and logs. Metrics provide quantitative data on system performance, traces follow the path of requests through your system, and logs capture detailed records of events and errors. 

Together, these signals give a birds-eye view of your system’s health to help you efficiently diagnose and resolve issues.

Benefits of Using Observability Tools

Early Detection and Resolution of Issues

By enabling proactive monitoring, observability tools allow for the early detection of anomalies and issues. This helps teams address problems before they escalate, reducing downtime and service disruptions.

Security Insights

Observability tools help detect security threats by monitoring for unusual patterns and unauthorized activities within the system. This helps in identifying breaches and other security incidents early.

Faster Troubleshooting

Insights provided by observability tools speed up the troubleshooting process. Teams can quickly identify root causes and implement corrective actions, minimizing the impact of issues on the system.

Enhanced Collaboration

These tools facilitate improved collaboration among development, operations, and other teams. Shared insights and contextual data enhance communication, leading to better problem-solving and coordination.

Enhanced System Reliability

Observability tools improve system reliability by showing how different components are performing. This helps identify and address potential bottlenecks and weaknesses, leading to greater system stability.

Data-Driven Decision Making

These tools provide valuable data-driven insights that inform decision-making. Whether scaling resources, planning upgrades, or optimizing architecture, these insights enhance the quality of technical decisions.

Efficient Resource Management

Real-time monitoring of resource consumption (CPU, memory, network) enables efficient resource allocation. This prevents over-provisioning and ensures optimal use of available resources.

Reduced Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR)

Access to a large amount of data helps teams quickly diagnose and resolve issues since they have all the data they need to properly problem solve. This results in a shorter mean time to resolution and improved system availability.

Better User Experience

Observability tools lead to a smoother user experience by enabling rapid identification and resolution of issues. This minimizes user frustration, maintains customer satisfaction, and ensures seamless interactions.

Continuous Improvement

Observability tools support a culture of continuous improvement by providing ongoing analysis of system behavior and performance. Teams can iteratively refine their applications and infrastructure to enhance overall efficiency.

Things to Consider When Choosing an Observability Tool

Anomaly Detection

Observability tools should prioritize anomaly detection by leveraging AI/ML capabilities trained on vast datasets to identify unusual behaviors. This feature is vital for scaling systems, as it aids in quick troubleshooting and helps reduce operational costs.

Customizable Dashboards

Customizable dashboards let you efficiently sift through vast amounts of telemetry data. Pre-built dashboards tailored to your needs will save time and provide fast insights without extensive configuration.

Distributed Tracing

Distributed tracing is a must-have for those managing applications with microservices architectures. It offers an in-depth view of request execution and latency sources, enabling you to pinpoint the root causes of failures and performance issues quickly.

Active Alerting

A strong alerting system is essential, continuously scanning telemetry data and notifying you of critical events. The alerts should be customizable to meet your business needs and delivered through various channels to ensure timely responses.

Cost Control

Observability expenses can escalate quickly and you want to keep your costs under control.  Opt for tools that offer automated data optimization to quickly manage data volumes and focus on essential data to avoid unnecessary expenses.

Service Instrumentation

Service instrumentation is vital to properly setting up your observability tools. Automated features like service discovery and streamlined data collection ensure that logs, metrics, and traces are exposed with minimal effort.

Data Correlation

Seamless data correlation is vital, particularly in microservices environments. The ability to correlate data from various components efficiently will enhance your troubleshooting processes, helping you isolate and resolve issues faster.

Residency and Compliance Regulations

Data residency and compliance regulations are major considerations on a regional and industry-specific level when choosing an observability tool. Several nations and industries have stringent rules about storing and handling sensitive data. Failure to comply with these rules can result in severe legal and financial consequences. The observability tool you choose must operate within these regulations to maintain data integrity and avoid legal complications.

Learning Curve

The learning curve associated with observability tools can be steep. You should be prepared to invest time and resources into training. Tools that offer in-depth manuals and interactive support can significantly reduce the learning curve. A shorter learning curve means quicker deployment, faster insights, and fewer operational disruptions. 

User Interface

Lastly, the tool you choose should have a user-friendly and feature-rich interface. This greatly impacts how your teams collaborate and make decisions. You may want to consider a demo or trial if your team isn’t familiar with the UI of a particular tool.

7 Best Observability Tools

Now that you have a guide on how to pick the right observability tool for your needs, let’s run through your options. 

• Instatus: Best for users looking for a versatile and affordable tool with real-time observability capabilities, alerting features, and uptime monitoring.

• IBM Instana: Great for real-time observability and monitoring of data and issues across DevOps, SRE, and ITOps environments.

• Honeycomb: Ideal for engineering teams requiring visibility to diagnose issues in distributed systems.

• Grafana: Best suited for users needing customizable dashboards and data visualizations, with tensive plugin support for several data sources.

• LogicMonitor: Excellent for enterprises seeking a tool that combines network, infrastructure, and cloud monitoring with strong automation features. 

• New Relic: Awesome for users who require robust application performance monitoring (APM) with AI-driven anomaly detection and real-time user monitoring.

• SolarWinds: Perfect for IT service providers and in-house IT teams needing advanced diagnostics and real-time monitoring of network performance with customizable dashboards.

1. Instatus

Instatus is a platform that aims to improve communication during service disruptions. Our platform is equipped with a wide array of features that maintain transparency and deliver real-time updates to users. 

A key strength of Instatus is generating incident histories, which provide stakeholders with detailed records that bolster trust and accountability. We also support extensive customization, including CSS and JavaScript modifications, making it an ideal solution for global applications with diverse needs.

Key Features

• Automated Updates via REST API Integrations: Seamlessly integrates with monitoring tools to automate status updates and always provide current information. nt.

• Rapidly Loading Static Status Pages: Offers quick-loading static pages that guarantee swift delivery of critical information during incidents.

• Customizable Incident Templates and Messaging: Provides pre-configured templates for incident communication, allowing for quickly and easily customized messages.

• Historical Data and Uptime Monitoring: Displays both historical uptime data and real-time statistics to keep stakeholders informed of system reliability.

• Maintenance Scheduling and Component Management: Facilitates the scheduling of maintenance updates and enables the grouping of components for more efficient management.

Pros.

• User-friendly setup and administration
• Real-time notifications and status updates.
• Extensive integration capabilities with various monitoring tools.
• Unlimited team member support.
• Suitable for both large-scale and smaller organizations.

Cons

• Primarily tailored for web services and may not fully meet the needs of complex enterprise IT environments.

Pricing

Instatus offers a free starter plan, with premium plans beginning at $20 per month.

2. IBM Instana

IBM Instana is a leading solution in real-time observability, created to monitor data and resolve issues efficiently across DevOps, SRE, and ITOps environments. It provides a thorough and contextualized view of performance data, enabling rapid identification and resolution of potential issues across diverse platforms such as mobile, web, applications, and infrastructure. 

Key Features

• Full-stack APM: Offers Application Performance Management (APM) benefits such as distributed tracing without sampling. It monitors your entire application stack, including browser and mobile apps, databases, and even down to specific lines of code.
• Automatic Discovery and Monitoring: Continuously identifies all components within an application and graphically maps the application's topology. 
• Real-time Monitoring and Alerting: Provides real-time monitoring of application performance with updates every second, and alerts IT teams within three seconds when any performance issues are detected to ensure a rapid response.
• Distributed Tracing: Tracks transactions across various application components, offering deep insights into the performance of each element and their interactions within the system.
• Unbounded Analytics: Uses analytics and reporting tools that let IT teams monitor application performance trends over time, aiding in capacity planning and infrastructure optimization.
• Root Cause Analysis: Automatically identifies changes, issues, and incidents, significantly reducing the time required to investigate and determine the root cause of service disruptions.

Pros 

• Easy-to-use dashboard.
• Seamless integration with backend systems via node agent.
• Better call tracing.
• Fast and available 24/7 customer service.

Cons

• Lacks customization option on the dashboard.
• Can only export to Excel.

Pricing

Pricing starts at $20. A 14-day trial is available. 

3. Honeycomb

Honeycomb is a cloud-based observability tool created to give engineering teams the visibility they need to diagnose and resolve issues in distributed systems. If your code lacks instrumentation, Honeycomb's instrumentation agent, known as "Honeycomb Beelines," can handle the process seamlessly. 

Key Features

• High-Resolution Data Capture: Specializes in capturing detailed performance data, offering users precise insights into system behavior.
• Dynamic Sampling: Adjusts data collection using adaptive sampling, optimizing resource use while maintaining valuable insights.
• Collaborative Debugging: Provides shared workspaces that enhance team collaboration, speeding up the troubleshooting and resolution process.
• Customizable Dashboards: Lets users design personalized dashboards to visualize the data most relevant to their needs, ensuring a tailored observability experience.
• Integration Hub: Offers broad native integrations with leading DevOps and cloud platforms, simplifying data collection and analysis.
• Query Language: Helps users quickly uncover critical insights by using an expressive query language that enables deep data exploration.
• Machine Learning-Powered Alerts: Uses machine learning to generate accurate alerts, minimizing false positives and reducing alert fatigue.
• Live Observability: Monitors system behavior in real-time, allowing for immediate responses to issues and enhancing system reliability.
• Role-Based Access Control: Provides strong access controls, ensuring that only authorized personnel can view and manage sensitive data.
• Historical Data Analysis: Supports extensive data retention, facilitating the analysis of historical trends for long-term strategic decisions.

Pros

• Captures highly detailed data, enabling precise troubleshooting and deep insights.
• Adaptive sampling optimizes data collection, balancing efficiency with cost-effectiveness.
• Shared workspaces facilitate team collaboration, accelerating the resolution of issues.

Cons

• Users new to observability concepts may find it requires a bit of a learning curve.
• Its integration options, while useful, may not be as extensive as some competitors.
• Pricing can become a concern for teams with significant data volumes.

Pricing

Honeycomb offers tiered pricing, starting at $0 per user for the free plan. The Pro plan is available at $130 per user per month, while the enterprise plan is available on request.

4. Grafana

Grafana provides a unified platform for the exploration and visualization of metrics, logs, and traces. It features robust alerting capabilities and tools to transform time series data into detailed graphs and visualizations. 

Key Features

• Extensive Plugin Library: Offers a wide range of data source, app, and panel plugins, allowing users to import data, customize monitoring, and enhance visualizations.
• Agent-Based Monitoring: Includes a telemetry agent that collects and transmits metrics, logs, and traces to Grafana’s cloud-based observability platform.
• Unified Alert Management: Provides a central interface for creating, managing, and integrating alerting rules.
• Automated Reporting: Generates and emails PDF reports based on dashboards. This feature is available in Pro, Advanced, and Enterprise plans.
• Custom Dashboards: Users can build and customize dashboards with specific queries and display settings, with options to share or publish them.
• Usage Insights: Advanced plans offer detailed insights into system usage patterns and user interactions, providing valuable data for optimization.
• Security and Compliance: Ensures security with features like administrative controls and compliance certifications, with enhanced options in Pro and Enterprise plans.
• Advanced Visualizations: Provides a variety of built-in visualizations and plugins for creating detailed and specific application monitors.
• Load Testing with Grafana K6: Facilitates load testing to simulate real-world usage scenarios, helping to assess and improve system performance before deployment.
• Machine Learning Capabilities: Available in Pro and Advanced plans, enables predictive monitoring and adaptive alerts based on machine learning models.
• On-Call Management: Simplifies on-call management with streamlined workflows and interfaces.

Pros

• Integrates seamlessly with Prometheus and Graphite data sources.
• An extensive plugin library supports a wide range of storage systems and operating environments.
• Available as a free, open-source tool with optional Pro and Advanced plans for additional features.
• Highly customizable, allowing modifications to alerts, data sources, dashboards, and notifications.
• Exceptional at visualizing metrics from any data source through various graphing options.
• Capable of sending alerts and notifications to various collaboration channels.

Cons

• High customizability can lead to a steep learning curve and initial setup challenges.
• Lacks built-in data storage; requires a separate solution for retaining historical data.
• Advanced usage necessitates proficiency in programming languages like JSON and SQL.

Pricing

Grafana offers three pricing tiers; Free, Pro (using a pay-as-you-go model), and Advanced starting at $299 per month.

5. LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor is an observability solution made to oversee and manage IT infrastructure, applications, and services. It delivers real-time visibility into system performance, availability, and health, enabling organizations to maintain optimal operations and swiftly resolve issues.

Key features 

• Network Monitoring: Integrates network, server, and cloud infrastructure monitoring into a unified platform.
• Infrastructure Monitoring: Delivers an all-encompassing view of IT infrastructure to help users quickly identify and resolve issues.
• Alerts Management: Includes built-in alerting for session counts with customizable thresholds for notifications.
• Automation: Enhances scalability by automating processes to eliminate redundancies.
• Cloud Computing: Facilitates cloud monitoring with visibility into AWS infrastructure performance and health.
• SaaS Application Monitoring: Provides extensive monitoring features, including application performance management (APM), infrastructure oversight, and log management.
• Enterprise Observability: Helps enterprises preemptively address potential issues and improve overall end-user experience.
• Change Log: Tracks updates and changes made to the environment you’re monitoring.  

Pros

• Cloud-based service with agentless operation.
• Offers an in-depth and user-friendly interface.

Cons

• Requires an internet connection for full functionality.
• Alerts may not cover local network actions.

Pricing

LogicMonitor provides a free 14-day trial and their pricing starts at $3.

6. New Relic

New Relic is an all-encompassing observability tool built to assist organizations in monitoring, diagnosing, and enhancing application and infrastructure performance. It offers a suite of tools for gathering, analyzing, and visualizing data from multiple sources, delivering real-time insights into application performance.

Key Features

• Application Performance Monitoring: Provides in-depth application performance tracking through automatic agents or OpenTelemetry, offering real-time insights into key metrics and dependencies. 
• Infrastructure Monitoring: Integrates APM and infrastructure data to reveal relationships and expedite root cause analysis with features like error tracking, change monitoring, and AIOps. 
• Network Performance Monitoring: Observes network performance capabilities by integrating with external tools that provide the context of performance issues. This helps you properly allocate resources at the correct stack layer and more quickly resolve the issue.   
• Real User Monitoring (RUM): Offers real-time insights into user interactions with applications, helping optimize user experiences and identify areas needing improvement.

Pros

• Excels in Application Performance Monitoring, delivering deep insights into application behavior.
• Uses AI to identify unusual system behavior, providing early warnings of potential issues.
• Presents metrics, logs, and traces on its dashboard, making system health easily understandable.

Cons

• Can be challenging for newcomers, requiring considerable time to master.
• Can be demanding on resources, particularly in smaller deployments.
• Integration options are fewer compared to some competitors, limiting third-party tool compatibility.

Pricing

New Relic implements a usage-based pricing model, where customers are charged based on the volume of data ingested and the number of billable users. 

7. SolarWinds

SolarWinds is a sophisticated monitoring solution with a suite of monitoring and management tools that track metrics from network devices such as routers, access points, and endpoints. It is optimized for multiple operating systems, including Windows. 

Key features 

• Application Performance Monitoring: Provides real-time monitoring and troubleshooting through interactive dashboards, enhancing visibility into application performance.
• Log Collection: Offers flexible integration for logs and infrastructure applications.
• Network Monitoring: Assesses the performance of internal wireless networks and detects external connectivity issues for optimal network oversight.  
• Data Analysis: Leverages data to gain insights into various environments and technologies, facilitating prompt issue identification and resolution.
• Infrastructure Monitoring: Supports IT and DevOps teams in monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting, and resolving issues across on-premises, hybrid, and SaaS environments.
• Ease of Use: Built for simplicity, featuring auto-instrumentation, quick installation, and user-friendly operation.
• Real-Time Alerting: Provides real-time alerts that detail the severity and location of issues, delivering timely notifications directly to users' inboxes.
• Intelligent Alerting: Allows for proactive issue notification, helping managers address potential problems before they affect end users.

Pros

• Provides diagnostic tools for quick identification and resolution of network issues.
• Delivers real-time notifications for network inconsistencies, facilitating prompt troubleshooting.
• Allows for highly customizable dashboards, improving data visibility based on user preferences.

Cons

• Has a steep learning curve, which may be challenging for new users.
• Can be demanding on system resources, potentially impacting the performance of other applications.
• May lack compatibility with some newer third-party tools despite its extensive feature set.

Pricing

You’ll need to request a quote from SolarWinds to get their pricing.

Conclusion

Leveraging observability tools can greatly boost the operational reliability and efficiency of your systems. These tools enhance security, uptime, and performance, leading to a superior user experience through proactive management.

Instatus, with its robust monitoring solutions, ensures that your applications and infrastructure remain accessible and safeguarded against potential issues. Investing in Instatus helps maintain uninterrupted service and optimize your system’s performance.

Ready to upgrade? Try our free trial to experience how Instatus can seamlessly integrate with your existing setup, streamline your observability efforts, and drive your success.