Catchpoint vs. ControlUp

I like the synthetic test feature it has from the edge which mimics the real user - that for me is one of the best features. The certificate expiration, the API monitoring, the slowness breakdown to show where the slowdown happens, and more.

Incentivized

An environment where visibility of general performance metrics isn't currently done or is done with a system that is difficult to use (which was our case). An environment where resource allocation decisions need to be made (e.g. how much RAM and CPU to allocate to VM pools). An environment where a troubleshooting tool is needed (e.g. to answer the question, "Why is this person experiencing poor performance right now?")

• Our standard operating material documents Catchpoint’s breadth on HTTP/Browser, API, Streaming, DNS, FTP, TCP, SMTP, Ping, Traceroute, SSH with content validation and custom widgets/dashboards. This gives SREs and L0/L1 a single place to validate both page flows and the underlying network/application protocols.
• Product runbooks use Catchpoint to validate critical steps (for ex, login, overview dashboard, unit dashboards) and to detect DNS issues that break those journeys. so we catch experience regressions even when the backend looks healthy.
• We’ve standardized Catchpoint alert categories/templates with ITSM so L0 includes the right analysis in handoffs. This tightened “first message, best message” during incidents.
• Our operating procedures use Catchpoint for alwayson availability checks with email notifications and multi‑location verification when a site is down. This is useful for unambiguous “is it up/where is it failing” signals.

Incentivized

• The triggers are very flexible and can be configured to alert on things from events in sessions to hardware failures. Script actions are what they sound like. They are scripts that can be created and run on demand or tied to a trigger. One example is that if a hard drive is low on space we have a script to clean up certain things on the drive.
• Script actions are supported by the ControlUp community. Community members can submit scripts that are reviewed by ControlUp and approved. This means more script are added over time.
• ControlUp support and sales support has been great. Our sales engineer is always willing to jump on and help us with configuration issues and standard support is quick to respond and are good at resolving issues.

Incentivized

• Missing Functionality: For our organisation, we use multiple observability tools and what we miss in Catchpoint is its ability to display a list of muted monitors in the dashboard. This was a business requirement for our company where the business wanted to know at any given point of time, a list of monitors that were muted during an outage or a scheduled maintenance. This feature was unavailable in Catchpoint, however, we hope to see some enhancements in the future.

Incentivized

• It seems that there is a gradual transition occurring from one interface (a local program) to another (Web). This creates confusion at times.
• ScoutBees module has a problem with our version of Horizon, so we can't do a login test
• The local program for ControlUp uses a lot of resources
• The training session focus on very large environments, which we aren't. Might be good to offer SMB sessions separately.

The Catchpoint tool has now become an integral part of our DevOps toolkit due to its extensive range of capabilities, including application performance monitoring, network health tracking, DNS visibility, and edge performance analysis. Its seamless integration with our existing monitoring infrastructure has significantly enhanced our ability to detect potential issues proactively, analyze root causes in real time, and resolve incidents much faster, ultimately improving overall system reliability and user experience.

Incentivized

It's hard to find the functionalities that I am looking for in the application. Even if I did something in the past, after a time I have to re-learn again where the functionalities are. This is a powerful tool, but not user-friendly. Texts in the buttons and menus are not always meaningful or easily comprehensible.

Incentivized

The customer support is fantastic as they keep you updated and follow up even though we may not even follow up. Make sure they send a communication so that we remain updated. They value engineers who will get on a call with you to understand any requirement we have on any test, and they bring in the best developers on call.

Incentivized

very easy to implement as the product is user-friendly

Incentivized

Smart Bear Foglight Dynatrace CEM Catchpoint: I have used many synthetic monitoring products. Honestly, there are no big differences in features among all the products listed above or that I have used before. Probably, price and support might play big roles in selecting the products. I do not know the prices of these products.

Incentivized

I feel all these products are good and have their strengths but for me it came down to two categories. How easy is it to find issues and cost. It seemed to me that the easiest to use is ControlUp and eG. Price broke down to ControlUp and SysTrack being lower than Goliath and eG.

Incentivized

• Catchpoint is not the only monitoring tool we use for our web properties. The test alerts raised by Catchpoint serves as a confirmation of possible outages/problems with an application. This has helped to reduce false-positive alerts thus improving the response of the operations team; they don't have spend time chasing ghosts
• The unlimited scheduled tests we can run on the enterprise nodes has been a very cost effective solution compared to similar web monitoring tools
• The ability to quickly dive into the test result details help to get to the root cause of a test failure quickly

Incentivized

• its licensing cost is a bit on high

Incentivized