Top 10 Real User Monitoring (RUM) Tools to Enhance Website Performance

Published on: August 27, 2023

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18 min read

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For German Version

In today's digital age, website performance is important for enterprise success. A gradual-loading or poorly functioning website can lead to annoyed users and an excessive bounce rate that can have a terrible impact on your work. Real User Monitoring (RUM) tools help owners analyze and monitor user behavior on their page or application, figuring out parts for development optimization and personalization. These tools offer crucial information into how users engage with your internet page, permitting you to pick out areas where overall performance can be stepped forward like slow-loading pages. When deciding on a RUM solution, it's vital to remember your precise wishes and targets, in addition to the extraordinary stakeholders who could be using the tool. This article presents the top 10 RUM tools that can contribute to website owners tracking and analyzing the usage and performance of their products like a web page or application. If you're looking for a way to improve the performance and user experience of your website, RUM tools are a great option. With so many different tools on the market, it's important to do your research and choose the right solution for your needs.

The following topics are going to be covered in this article;

• Why is Real User Monitoring (RUM) important?
• What are the key features to look for in RUM tools?
• Which RUM tools are popular on the market?
  1. Datadog
  2. New Relic
  3. Elastic APM
  4. Splunk
  5. Akamai
  6. Pingdom
  7. Sentry
  8. AppDynamics
  9. Raygun
  10. Dynatrace

Why is Real User Monitoring (RUM) Important?

Real User Monitoring (RUM) is a powerful tool that helps you improve the performance of your website. RUM provides insights into actual user experiences, identifies performance bottlenecks, and helps optimize web applications. It gives you a real-time view of how users interact with your website including their navigation patterns, clickstream behavior, and end-of-the-day experience. This information helps you understand how users perceive your website, identify areas of friction, and make improvements.

RUM tools collect data on various performance metrics like page load times, response times, and error rates. Performance bottlenecks and optimization parts are found with this information. For example, if you notice that a particular page takes too long to load, you can investigate the cause and implement optimizations to improve its load time. You can continuously monitor your web application's performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize it using these tools. By analyzing user behavior and performance metrics, you can identify opportunities to improve the application's speed, scalability, and reliability.

RUM tools detect issues that might impact website availability, such as server downtime, network congestion, and other infrastructure problems

By monitoring these issues in real time, you can quickly identify and resolve them, ensuring that your website is always available to users. They help identify security threats and vulnerabilities like DDoS attacks, malware, and unauthorized access.

By monitoring user behavior and detecting anomalies, you can take proactive measures to protect your website and ensure the privacy and security of your users. By understanding how users interact with your website, you make data-driven decisions that enhance the user experience and drive business success. RUM provides actionable insights that inform decisions related to product development, marketing strategies, and customer support.

RUM is a valuable tool that helps you improve the performance of your website in a number of ways including continuously monitoring your website's performance, identifying areas for improvement, and making data-driven decisions that enhance the user experience and drive total workplace achievements.

Using RUM tools can help to perform the following tasks:

• Identify performance bottlenecks by identifying the root causes of efficiency issues.
• Improve the user experience by making improvements like reducing page load times, easier navigation, and more responsive pages.
• Reduce bounce rate by identifying the reasons. High bounce rates are related to users not finding what they are looking for on a page.
• Increase conversion rate, which could mean making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a white paper.

What are the Key Features to Look for in RUM Tools?

When comparing Real User Monitoring (RUM) tools, there are numerous key functions to look for to make sure you choose a reliable and powerful help for monitoring your internet site or application's efficiency. Here are some of the critical features to take into account and what a usable RUM tool is to be able to offer:

1. Real-time data collection: Provides real-time information including data on page load times, response times, error rates, and other performance metrics.
2. Tracking user sessions: Provides detailed information on how users interact with your website or application over time, including data on navigation patterns, clickstream behavior, and other user actions.
3. Performance metrics: Various performance metrics, including page load times, response times, error rates, and other key performance indicators (KPIs), are better shown in a clear and intuitive way, making it easy to identify parts to make better.
4. Error monitoring: Log errors occurring in your application or website during end-user interactions, allowing you to quickly identify and troubleshoot bugs including error types and rates.
5. Integration capabilities: Integrate with a wide range of technologies and platforms, including web servers, application servers, and third-party services which helps to monitor the entire technology stack and gain a comprehensive view of your users' experiences.
6. Customizable dashboards: RUM tools should provide customizable dashboards that allow you to display the data that matters most to you. The RUM tools mentioned in this article in general, offer several features that allow users to customize dashboards according to their specific needs to empower users to create personalized monitoring views that align with their specific monitoring goals and preferences including;
   • Custom views to focus on the metrics and data that are most relevant to their monitoring needs.
   • Adding/removing metrics from their dashboards, enabling them to tailor the displayed information to their requirements.
   • Users have the flexibility to adjust the layout of their dashboards, arranging the visualizations and widgets in a way that suits their preferences and enhances data visibility.
7. Mobile and Multi-Channel Support: Monitor mobile devices and applications, providing information about how users interact with your website or application on mobile devices. RUM tools should be able to monitor multiple channels, including web, mobile, and API traffic, allowing you to gain a broad view of your customer experiences across all channels.
8. Scalability and Ease of use: Scaling the growing traffic and user numbers, while providing the same level of efficiency. RUM tools should be easy to use and intuitive, with a user-friendly interface to navigate and analyze including filter options and drag-and-drop dashboards and interfaces.

By considering these key features when evaluating RUM tools, you can ensure you select a solution that meets your needs and provides you with the insights you need to optimize your website's or application's performance.

Which RUM Tools are Popular on the Market?

Some of the well-known RUM tools given below are widely used by companies to monitor and analyze website performance, track user behavior, and optimization. However, it's important to note that the popularity of RUM tools varies depending on the specific needs and preferences of different company structures and focuses. It's better to consider different RUM tools based on their features, scalability, ease of implementation, and cost-effectiveness to find the best fit for your organization.

Each of these tools has its own unique selling points, such as real-time data collection, user session tracking, and advanced data visualization capabilities. Some tools offer integration with other tools and systems, while others offer post-launch support services. By considering these factors, you can choose the best RUM tool for your organization's needs and improve your user experience and performance. The room tools provided in the article are going to be discussed in terms of the key aspects they should have, which were mentioned in the previous section.

Datadog

Datadog will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: Datadog RUM Tool ensures real-time data collection by leveraging the following mechanisms:
  • RUM JavaScript SDK: The tool utilizes a JavaScript SDK that is embedded in web pages or mobile applications which collects data.
  • Beacon API: The RUM JavaScript SDK uses the Beacon API to send collected data asynchronously to Datadog's server, which allows efficient and non-blocking data transmission, ensuring minimal impact on the user experience.
  • Sampling: To manage the volume of data collected, it employs sampling techniques like not capturing every user interaction but a representative sample.
• User session tracking: Datadog RUM Tool tracks individual user sessions by associating unique identifiers with each user's interactions. This session identification approach allows for the aggregation and analysis of data specific to each session. The tool provides user journey tracking, by capturing the pages visited by end-users, along with the telemetry. The tool offers a Session Replay feature that allows users to capture and visually replay the web browsing experience of their users.
• Performance metrics: Datadog RUM Tool offers various performance metrics that can help identify areas for improvement, including page load times, server response times, error rates, and core web vitals which is a set of indicators that gauges how well web pages work for users, such as how quickly they load, how interactive they are, and how stable they are in terms of visuality.
• Error monitoring: In terms of stability of web applications, Datadog RUM Tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions and provides RUM Error Dashboards and Session Replay features to help users quickly identify and troubleshoot bugs, by capturing error-related data such as error rates for each user session. It captures browser errors such as handled exceptions and promise rejections.
• Integration capabilities: Datadog RUM Tool has a wide range of integration capabilities that enable it to smoothly integrate with various technologies, servers, and third-party services. Some of the integration capabilities of Datadog RUM Tool are given below:
  • Infrastructure: Datadog RUM Tool can integrate with infrastructure technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, Amazon ECS, and AWS Fargate.
  • Application Performance Monitoring (APM): It can integrate with APM technologies such as tracing libraries, OpenTelemetry, and OpenTracing.
  • Database Monitoring*: Datadog RUM Tool can integrate with database technologies such as Postgres, MySQL, and SQL Server.
  • Session Replay: It can integrate with the RUM Browser SDK to provide a Session Replay feature that allows users to capture and visually replay the web browsing experience of their users.
• Mobile support: Datadog RUM Tool extends its monitoring capabilities to include mobile devices and applications by providing a Mobile RUM feature that captures performance data and user interactions on mobile devices and applications. It captures mobile vitals, a set of metrics that measure the user experience of mobile applications, including loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. The tool provides a mobile app performance dashboard that gives an overview of RUM mobile applications, displaying mobile vitals for all screens.
• Multi-channel support: Datadog RUM Tool enables monitoring across multiple channels, such as web, mobile, and API traffic, providing a holistic view of user experiences by leveraging the RUM JavaScript SDK. The tool provides API monitoring capabilities that capture performance data and user interactions on API traffic.
• Scalability: Datadog RUM Tool addresses scalability, accommodating growing traffic and user bases including data sampling techniques, and customizable data retention policies to retain data for as long as necessary while managing storage costs and scalable infrastructure.
• Ease of use: In terms of navigation flexibility and efficiency, Datadog RUM Tool offers and prioritizes various user-friendly features including drag-and-drop widgets to customize their dashboards, metric filtering options, and usability enhancements such as tooltips, data highlighting, and zooming capabilities.

New Relic

New Relic will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: New Relic RUM tool ensures real-time data collection web page load time, whether a page has errors, and how long AJAX and HTTP requests take. It is a core feature of application performance monitoring (APM) and is sometimes known as browser monitoring because the end-user experience happens in the browser.

• User session tracking: New Relic RUM tool allows for a better understanding of how users interact with websites as it tracks individual user sessions by measuring speed and performance as end users navigate across various web browsers, gadgets, operating systems, and networks to a website. Browser monitoring goes beyond providing information about the initial page load and measures full page life cycle data.

• Performance metrics: New Relic RUM tool offers a range of performance metrics, including page load times, response times, error rates, and targeted alerts, allowing for the identification of issues before they impact overall performance. The tool allows for precise measurement of user engagement by filtering by geography and type of device, and it provides insights into how faster page speeds reduce bounce rate.

• Error monitoring: The New Relic RUM tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions. It provides error analytics and allows users to review stack traces, logs, and other details related to errors. Users can share error information with charts and dashboards, report new errors using instrumentation, prevent certain errors from being reported, and filter out noisy errors using expected errors. Error-related data captured includes information about the type of error, the time it occurred, the affected user session, and any associated stack traces or logs. The New Relic RUM tool offers error profiles, which automatically compare sets of events to identify trends and significant differences in the frequency of error events for an application.

• Integration capabilities: The New Relic RUM tool has strong integration capabilities and can seamlessly integrate with various technologies, servers, web browsers, devices, operating systems, networks, and third-party services for additional data. The tool allows for integration with other New Relic products, such as application performance monitoring (APM), to provide a comprehensive view of an application's performance.

• Customizable dashboards: New Relic RUM tool provides features that allow users to customize dashboards, to create custom views by selecting, adding, deleting, and arranging the metrics they want to monitor on their dashboards to focus on the most relevant data and adjust the layout of the dashboard to optimize visibility and organization.

• Mobile support: The New Relic RUM tool extends its monitoring capabilities to include mobile devices and applications. It provides end-to-end visibility into mobile apps, how to analyze Android and iOS application performance and troubleshoots crashes, including frontend and backend metrics in context, HTTP and other network performance in real-time, and immediate insights into crashes, handled exceptions, network failures, and their customers' overall digital experience.

• Multi-channel support: The New Relic RUM tool enables monitoring across multiple channels, such as web, mobile, and API traffic through different web browsers, devices, operating systems, and networks. It allows users to gain a comprehensive understanding of their application's performance across different platforms and channels.

• Scalability: New Relic RUM tool addresses scalability by accommodating growing traffic and user bases while maintaining insightful performance monitoring.The tool can handle high volumes of data and traffic, and it provides automatic scaling to ensure that users can monitor their applications effectively. It offers a scalable and flexible pricing model that allows users to pay only for what they use, making it easy to scale up or down as needed.

• Ease of use: The New Relic RUM tool provides a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop interfaces, filter options, and other usability enhancements including custom views and filter options to allow users to quickly and easily access the information they need.

Elastic APM

Elastic APM will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: Elastic APM RUM tool ensures real-time data collection. The real-world user experiences and interactions with your client-facing software are tracked by the JavaScript agent. The RUM agent can be installed as a project dependency via a package manager such as npm or included via the HTML script tag. The Elastic APM server is needed to get started with RUM. RUM allows you to track metrics like "Time to First Byte", "domInteractive", and "domComplete," which can help you identify issues with your client-side application as well as problems that relate to the latency of your server-side application which could affect the entire system.
• User session tracking: Elastic APM RUM tool tracks individual user sessions and provides a detailed view of the "real user experience". The RUM JavaScript agent can be used with any front-end JavaScript application as it is framework-independent.
• Performance metrics: Elastic APM RUM tool offers a range of performance metrics, including page load times, response times, and error rates. Breakdown metrics help visualize where your application is spending the majority of its time. With Elastic Real User Monitoring (RUM) integrated with Elastic APM, real user monitoring transactions can easily be isolated. The breakdownMetrics config controls whether metrics should be broken down by URL, HTTP method, or user agent. You can analyze data by URL, operating system, browser, and location to truly understand how your application performs on end-user systems.
• Error monitoring: Elastic APM RUM tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions by capturing errors that occur in the client-side application.The JavaScript agent provides detailed performance metrics and error tracking of your web applications. It captures JavaScript errors and network errors, which are sent as events to the APM server. You can view error rates and error details, including the error message, stack trace, and source code snippet. The RUM agent can be configured to capture custom errors.
• Integration capabilities: Elastic APM RUM integrates with various technologies, servers, and third-party services. The RUM agent is framework-agnostic, which means it can be used with any front-end JavaScript application.The tool can be integrated with Elastic Observability to provide full visibility into user interaction and performance. It can be linked with Elastic APM to offer transactions that can be quickly isolated while real users are being monitored. It can be integrated with Fleet to configure and customize Fleet-managed APM settings directly in Kibana.
• Customizable dashboards: Elastic APM RUM tool allows users to customize dashboards by creating custom views, adding/removing metrics, drag/drop panels, and adjusting the layout. The breakdownMetrics config controls whether metrics should be broken down by URL, HTTP method, or user agent.
• Mobile support: Elastic APM RUM tool extends its monitoring capabilities to include mobile devices and applications by launching its application performance monitoring (APM) agent for Android applications. Because the agent is framework-independent, it may be used with any JavaScript front-end application, including those for mobile devices.
• Multi-channel support: Elastic APM RUM tool enables monitoring across multiple channels, such as web, mobile, and API traffic. The tool can be integrated with Elastic Observability to provide full visibility into user interaction and performance across multiple channels. It can be integrated with Elastic APM to provide real user monitoring transactions that can easily be isolated across multiple channels.
• Scalability: Elastic APM RUM tool accommodates growing traffic and user bases. The agent is lightweight and designed to minimize the impact on the client-side application. It can be deployed in a distributed environment to handle high traffic volumes.
• Ease of use: Elastic APM RUM tool's interface is user-friendly and includes drag-and-drop interfaces, filter options, and other usability enhancements including custom views and dashboards.

Splunk

Splink will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: Splunk RUM tool ensures real-time data collection by continuously monitoring user interactions with web applications and collecting performance metrics, web vitals, errors, and other forms of data for every user session. This data is collected in real-time and provides up-to-the-minute insights into users' experiences. Splunk RUM can collect a wide range of data types, including front-end performance, client-side errors, and more. This real-time data collection enables organizations to quickly detect and respond to issues that impact user experience.
• User session tracking: Splunk RUM tool tracks individual user sessions by collecting data on user interactions with web applications. This data includes performance metrics, web vitals, errors, and other forms of data for every user session. In order to provide total insight throughout every user session, Splunk RUM may correlate frontend traces from RUM with backend traces from Application Performance Management (APM).
• Performance metrics: Splunk RUM tool offers a range of performance metrics like page load times, application response times, and error rates. It can automatically measure Web Vital metrics, which are a set of user-centric metrics that measure key aspects of the user experience, such as page load speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
• Error monitoring: Splunk RUM tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions. The Browser RUM agent collects errors as spans with a duration of zero and carries a timestamp based on when the error occurred. By default, the instrumentations collect errors from various sources, including uncaught and unhandled errors from the "error" event listener, unhandled promise rejections, and error events from failing to load resources. The Browser RUM agent collects console errors, but it's important to check the stack trace to confirm whether the error is caused by Splunk RUM or by console error calls generated by the application being instrumented.
• Integration capabilities: Splunk RUM tool has robust integration capabilities that can integrate with Splunk RUM so that Web Vital metrics can be automatically measured against run results. It correlates backend traces from Application Performance Management (APM) with frontend traces from RUM, providing complete visibility across every user session.
• Mobile support: Splunk RUM tool extends its monitoring capabilities to include mobile devices and applications by providing a mobile RUM agent that can be used to instrument mobile applications. For each user session, the agent gathers performance indicators, web vitals, errors, and other types of information.
• Multi-channel support: Splunk RUM tool enables monitoring across web, mobile, and API traffic and can correlate backend traces from Application Performance Management (APM) with frontend traces from RUM.
• Scalability: Splunk RUM tool can handle high traffic volumes and can scale horizontally to accommodate growing user bases.
• Ease of use: Splunk RUM tool's interface is user-friendly and provides several features that make Splunk RUM tool's interface intuitive and enhance usability, including drag-and-drop interfaces, filter options like time range, user agent, and more, and usability enhancements like auto-complete search queries and keyboard shortcuts to streamline the monitoring experience.

Akamai

Akamai will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: Akamai's RUM (Real User Monitoring) tool ensures real-time data collection including metrics such as page load times, response times, and error rates. The tool collects statistics to provide real-time insights and actionable metrics to track trends, identify patterns, and make informed decisions based on the most recent data available.
• User session tracking: Akamai's RUM tool tracks individual user sessions and provides insights into user interactions over time. The tool assigns a unique identifier to each user session, allowing for accurate tracking and analysis of individual user experiences. This identifier helps differentiate between different users. It captures user interactions such as clicks, scrolls, and form submissions including session durations to identify areas of improvement, and optimize user flows.
• Performance metrics: Akamai's RUM tool offers a range of performance metrics including response times, page load times, and error rates, that provide valuable insights into website performance, easier and smoother browsing experience and analysis, and reducing bounce rates.
• Error monitoring: Akamai's RUM tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions. The tool captures error messages and logs them in real time including a range of error-related data, including error rates, error messages, and error codes. It provides a detailed error analysis.
• Integration capabilities: Akamai's RUM tool has integration capabilities with various technologies, servers, and third-party services to provide power, monitor across platforms, and valuable statistics and patterns.The tool provides an API that allows businesses to integrate it with other tools and services. It can be integrated with various servers, including Apache, NGINX, and IIS. It can be integrated with third-party services such as Google Analytics.
• Mobile support: Akamai's RUM tool extends its monitoring capabilities to include mobile devices and applications. The RUM tool provides real-time monitoring of mobile devices and applications, capturing data on page load times, response times, and error rates. It measures the user experience on mobile devices, providing insights into how users interact with mobile websites and applications.The tool helps protect mobile devices and applications from threats such as malware and DDoS attacks for secure browsing for mobile users.
• Multi-channel support: Akamai's RUM tool enables monitoring across multiple channels, such as web, mobile, and API traffic monitoring for a comprehensive view of user experiences, error identification, and correction.
• Scalability: Akamai's RUM tool addresses scalability by accommodating growing traffic and user bases while maintaining insightful performance monitoring.The RUM tool is built on a cloud-based architecture that can scale to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes and stores data roughly up to more than a year for historical analysis and comparison over time.
• Ease of use: Akamai's RUM tool provides a user-friendly interface that includes drag-and-drop interfaces, filter options, and other usability enhancements such as tooltips and help menus. It provides customizing their dashboards and views, and filtering options to optimize their website and application performance.

Pingdom

Pingdom will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: Pingdom RUM tool ensures real-time data collection by using an event-based solution that monitors millions of pageviews without compromising the fidelity of historical data. It offers fast and accurate client-side problem identification and resolution, with visual geographic hot spots with live mapping, insights into user behaviors and platforms, and granular visibility with advanced filtering.
• User session tracking: The tool uses local storage to track visitors on the website, including session IDs, session start times, session interaction steps, and returning visitors using a JavaScript snippet. The session ID is randomly generated and unique for the domain the script is loaded on, and it is regenerated if the next page load occurs after more than 30 minutes. The tool can track returning visitors by looking for an expired session and setting the returning visitor value to 1.
• Performance metrics: Pingdom RUM tool offers a range of performance metrics, including page. The tool provides a summary of key performance and usage metrics like load times, response times, and error rates, which allows users to understand how their visitors experience their website in real-time and in time. With Pingdom RUM, users can set performance levels for what's acceptable and be alerted immediately if a website hosted by their service is unavailable, slow, or not functioning as expected.
• Error monitoring: Pingdom RUM tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions by capturing error-related data such as error messages, error types, and error rates, by giving detailed information about the errors, including the number of occurrences, the affected pages, and the affected users.
• Integration capabilities: Pingdom RUM tool works with various technologies, servers, and third-party services, making it easy to use with existing infrastructure. The tool can integrate with popular platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, and Magento, as well as with content delivery networks (CDNs) such as Cloudflare and Akamai. To provide a complete monitoring solution it works with SolarWinds products, such as AppOptics and Loggly.
• Mobile support: Pingdom RUM tool uses a JavaScript snippet that is added to the monitored website to track mobile devices and applications by collecting performance data such as load times, response times, and error rates.
• Multi-channel support: It collects performance data from all channels such as web, mobile, and API traffic, and provides a summary of key performance and usage metrics to provide a vast view for users.
• Scalability: The tool uses a scalable and easy-to-use solution that monitors millions of pageviews without compromising the fidelity of historical data. It offers fast and accurate client-side problem identification and resolution, with visual geographic hot spots with live mapping, insights into user behaviors and platforms, and granular visibility with advanced filtering.
• Ease of use: Pingdom RUM tool's interface is user-friendly, with drag-and-drop interfaces, filter options, and other usability enhancements. Users can easily create custom views, add or remove metrics from the dashboard, and adjust the layout of the dashboard to suit their needs. It provides a summary of key performance and usage metrics.

Sentry

Sentry RUM tool will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: Sentry RUM tool ensures real-time data collection by tracking user interactions with web applications in real-time using JavaScript. It captures and analyzes user behavior, network requests, and browser performance data allowing developers to identify and troubleshoot issues as they occur, rather than waiting for users to report them.
• User session tracking: Sentry RUM tool tracks individual user sessions by assigning a unique identifier to each session which is stored in a cookie on the user's browser. It captures and analyzes user behavior data, such as page views, clicks, and form submissions. The tool makes itself useful for developers to identify patterns and trends in user behavior and optimize the user experience accordingly and insights into user behaviors in time.
• Performance metrics: Sentry RUM tool offers various performance metrics to monitor and optimize web application performance by capturing and analyzing the metrics in real-time such as;
  • Page load times in the user's browser, including network requests and rendering time.
  • The time it takes for the web application to respond to user requests, including server-side processing time and network latency.
  • The frequency and severity of errors that occur in the web application, including JavaScript errors, network errors, and server-side errors.
• Error monitoring: Sentry RUM tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions. It captures various types of error-related data, including JavaScript errors, network errors, and server-side errors, providing detailed error reports, including stack traces, error messages, and contextual information.
• Integration capabilities: Sentry RUM tool seamlessly integrates with various technologies, servers, and third-party services including popular web frameworks, such as React, Angular, and Vue.js. It integrates with popular DevOps tools such as GitHub, GitLab, and Jenkins, allowing developers to easily incorporate Sentry RUM tools into their existing workflows and toolchains.
• Mobile and Multi-channel support: Sentry RUM tool extends its monitoring capabilities like mobile error monitoring and crash reporting. It provides insights into user interactions on mobile platforms, such as long app start times, janky frame rendering, and slow HTTP requests. Developers can closely track version adoption, percentage of crash-free users, and session data in real-time, correlating errors with releases, tags, and devices with real-time notifications. It enables monitoring across web, mobile, and API traffic helping in correlating errors and performance metrics across different channels.
• Scalability and Ease of use: Sentry RUM tool is designed to handle high volumes of data and traffic without compromising on performance. It scales horizontally to handle increased load and can be deployed in a distributed manner to handle large-scale applications. It provides efficient data storage and retrieval mechanisms, ensuring that performance monitoring remains accurate and actionable. Sentry RUM tool offers user-friendly features in its interface to enhance usability including arrangeable dashboards, filter options intuitive navigation, and clear visualizations.

AppDynamics

AppDynamics RUM tool will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection and User session tracking: The tool captures data from network requests by tracking user sessions, and crash events among other sources, to provide a comprehensive view of web application performance.The tool captures data on user actions, such as clicks and page views, as well as performance metrics like page load times and response times.
• Error monitoring and Performance metrics: AppDynamics RUM tool captures data on HTTP error codes, custom error events, and code-level exceptions, among other sources. It captures network and server errors including the frequency and duration of these errors, as well as the specific pages and user sessions where they occur. This data is then logged and displayed. The performance metrics offered by the tool include network latency, server response times, and browser rendering times, page load times, response times, and error rates.
• Integration capabilities: The tool can work with WordPress and Drupal, as well as with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. It supports integration with third-party services like Slack, PagerDuty, and Zapier.
• Mobile and Multi-channel support: AppDynamics RUM tool tracks the page load time, network latencies, server time, and other performance metrics specific to mobile devices. It provides visibility into the entire user session across screen views and down to the granularity of individual business transactions. The tool captures data on user interactions with native iOS, Android, Xamarin, Cordova-based, or React Native mobile applications. The tool enables monitoring across multiple channels, including web, mobile, and API traffic by capturing data across these channels and aggregating it. The tool captures data from network requests, user sessions, and crash events across different channels. Customizable dashboards, custom views are other options provided by the tool.
• Scalability and Ease of Use: AppDynamics RUM tool solves scalability issues by accommodating growing traffic and user bases while maintaining high volumes of data. The tool can scale horizontally by adding more nodes to the monitoring infrastructure, allowing it to handle increasing traffic and user loads. Additionally, the tool can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, providing flexibility in scaling to meet changing needs. Its interface offers user-friendly features that provide a range of other usability enhancements, such as intuitive navigation, clear visualizations, and easy-to-understand reports, making it easy for users to navigate and interpret the data. These are drag-and-drop metrics options to create a layout, applying filters to focus on specific data or segments of their website or application, allowing them to drill down into specific areas of interest. The interface includes features like alerts and notifications to keep users informed of critical issues.

Raygun

Raygun RUM tool will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: Raygun RUM tool ensures real-time data collection by using a JavaScript agent that is embedded in the user's browser. This agent collects data on user interactions, such as page views, clicks, and form submissions, and sends this data to Raygun's servers in real-time. This allows Raygun to provide up-to-the-minute insights into users' experiences, including information on performance, errors, and user behavior.
• User session tracking and Performance metrics: Raygun RUM tool tracks individual user sessions by using a unique session ID that is generated for each user. This ID is stored in a cookie on the user's browser and is used to track the user's interactions with the website over time. Raygun captures information on user behavior, such as page views, clicks, and form submissions, which is associated with the user's session ID. The tool offers a range of performance metrics to help identify and diagnose issues with website performance such as; Page load times including images, scripts, and stylesheets, application and server response times, and the percentage of user sessions that result in errors, such as 404 errors or server errors. It's crucial to identify the root cause of issues and recommendations for optimization.
• Error monitoring: Raygun RUM tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions by integrating a small SDK and setting up a few lines of code. This SDK captures detailed diagnostics for each error occurrence. Raygun captures information on the user's browser, device, and location.Types of error-related data captured are JavaScript errors or server error. The error message provides a detailed description of the error that occurred, including information on the line of code where the error occurred. Stack trace provides a detailed list of the function calls that led up to the error, which can help identify the root cause of the issue.
• Integration capabilities: Raygun RUM tool integrates with various technologies, servers, and third-party services and web frameworks such as React, Angular, and Vue.js, and cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure. Raygun offers integrations with popular DevOps tools such as Jira, Slack, and GitHub, which can help streamline the error resolution process. It provides an API that allows developers to integrate custom data sources into their Raygun dashboards.
• Mobile support: Raygun RUM tool JavaScript agent that can be embedded in mobile applications. This agent collects data on user interactions, such as screen views, taps, and gestures, and sends this data to Raygun's servers in real-time.
• Multi-channel support: Raygun RUM tool enables monitoring across multiple channels, including web, mobile, and API traffic, capturing data from various sources and aggregating it into a single dashboard.
• Scalability and Ease of Use: Raygun's infrastructure is built to handle large amounts of data and can automatically scale resources as needed to ensure that performance monitoring remains accurate and insightful parallel to the growth in traffic as well as user numbers. The tool offers drag-and-drop interfaces, filter options such as time range, error type, or user session, and draggable widgets. It is designed with a focus on usability, providing a clean and intuitive interface that makes it easy for users to navigate and access the information they need.

Dynatrace

Dynatrace RUM tool will be evaluated based on the following aspects:

• Real-time data collection: Dynatrace RUM ensures real-time data collection to provide It captures all user actions taken and how these actions impact performance. It tracks user sessions of web, mobile, and custom applications.The tool can also trace the activity of a single user across different devices, providing a comprehensive view of their interactions and up-to-the-minute insights into users' experiences and context over time.
• User session tracking: A user session in Dynatrace is essentially a "user visit" performed in your application. It captures user sessions of web, mobile, and custom applications, which can span multiple applications. It can trace the activity of a single user along different devices.
• Performance metrics: Dynatrace RUM offers a comprehensive range and set of performance metrics to help you monitor and optimize your digital business and solve technical issues , including page load times, server response times, and error rates. Additionally, it calculates various user action metrics, including core web vitals such as largest contentful paint, cumulative layout shift, and first input delay. These metrics enable you to select the ideal user experience metric for each of your applications.
• Error monitoring: Dynatrace RUM tool assists in monitoring and logging errors during end-user interactions, providing valuable insights into the types of error-related data it captures. It helps you to be proactive and identify, analyze, and resolve front-end errors quickly, ensuring a smooth and error-free user experience. It captures and tracks errors that occur during user interactions with web, mobile, and custom applications. It provides out-of-the-box error count charting, allowing you to visualize and analyze the frequency of errors. The tool offers granular alerting for individual errors, enabling you to set up tailored alerts for specific error types. Improved user interface, additional links and flows to switch between Dynatrace entities, and extended error information are other features it offers.
• Integration capabilities: Dynatrace RUM tool has robust integration capabilities, allowing it to seamlessly integrate with various technologies, servers, databases, and third-party services, providing a comprehensive view of your application ecosystem. With its integration capabilities regardless of the underlying infrastructure, the tool ensures that you have a holistic understanding of your application's performance and can identify and resolve issues across your entire technology stack.
• Mobile support: Dynatrace RUM tool extends its monitoring capabilities to include mobile devices and applications to provide a comprehensive mobile support. It allows you to monitor and analyze mobile user experiences across customer segments, app versions, and device types. It delivers omnichannel experiences, ensuring every application is available, functional, fast, and efficient across every channel. The tool enables you to immediately reproduce crashes and view exactly what a user did with Session Replay in movie-like quality.
• Multi-channel support: With its multi-channel support, Dynatrace RUM ensures that you have a comprehensive understanding of your user experience across all channels and can identify and resolve issues proactively. The tool enables monitoring across multiple channels, such as web, mobile, and API traffic, to provide a holistic view of user experiences. It seamlessly ties mobile app monitoring to all applications, improving collaboration across multi-channel teams responsible for web, mobile, API, and edge device channels.
• Scalability: Dynatrace RUM tool addresses scalability by accommodating growing traffic and user bases. It provides full observability regardless of the underlying infrastructure. The tool offers real-time monitoring visibility including potential bottlenecks. The tool can handle large amounts of data and traffic, ensuring that you have the necessary resources as your user base grows.
• Ease of use: Dynatrace RUM tool offers a user-friendly interface with several features that enhance usability including customizable drag-and-drop dashboards, data filtering options, and usability enhancements such as improved labels for consistency, additional links and flows to switch between entities, and extended error information.

Comparison Chart of RUM Tools

The Unique capabilities of each RUM software are listed in the following table for comparison:

RUM Tool	Unique Features
Datadog	Unified monitoring platform for logs, metrics, and traces; integration with cloud platforms.
New Relic	High data density, customizable dashboards, integration of APM and RUM data.
Elastic APM	Seamless integration with Elastic Stack, powerful analytics and visualization capabilities.
Splunk	Advanced log analysis, real-time monitoring, extensive integration options.
Akamai	Content delivery optimization, security features, global server network.
Pingdom	Quick response time and page load monitoring, user-friendly interface.
Sentry	Real-time error tracking, integrations with DevOps tools, customizable dashboards.
AppDynamics	Mobile error monitoring, integration with various technologies and platforms.
Raygun	Real-time JavaScript error capture, wide range of integrations, real user session tracking.
Dynatrace	Detailed user session tracking across devices, monitoring of Core Web Vitals, integrations.