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AlertSite vs Runscope comparison

SmartBear and Broadcom are both solutions in the API Monitoring Software category. SmartBear is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #3. SmartBear holds a 8.8% mindshare in AMS, compared to Broadcom’s 14.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of SmartBear users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.
AlertSite
Read 7 AlertSite reviews
  • 56 Views
  • 39 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
Runscope
Read 11 Runscope reviews
  • 193 Views
  • 62 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary
We performed a comparison between AlertSite and Runscope based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two API Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

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To learn more, read our detailed AlertSite vs. Runscope Report (Updated: April 2025).
Buyer's Guide
AlertSite vs. Runscope
April 2025
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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

AlertSite
Ranking in API Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (37th)
Runscope
Ranking in API Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of AlertSite is 8.8%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Runscope is 14.9%, down from 20.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

SandeepTarwe - PeerSpot reviewer
Alerting capabilities have enabled timely escalation and resolution of issues
In AlertSite, I was monitoring the kiosks and servers for JetBlue Airlines. The servers would trigger alerts if there were any outages or issues with any of the kiosks, servers, or the ticketing tool. I monitored these alerts and escalated them to the concerned team to rectify them at the earliest…
Read full review
QualityA876f - PeerSpot reviewer
Enabled us to set up automatic regression tests that cover everything we need to monitor
We would like to be able to select the actual time a test will run automatically. It appears that you can set up the automatic schedule, but the test runs based on the last time it ran and not a time you select. Since we want these tests to run in the middle of the night, it would be nice to be able to select that. Also, it would be nice to be able to generate API documentation.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The alerting capabilities of AlertSite were really helpful."
"If there are any issues, it triggers an alert within 30 seconds. When it triggers the alert, we go ahead and check it immediately. The alert is triggered on a real-time basis."
"The best feature of AlertSite is that it shows you a visual graph and also sends you notifications about errors, so you get immediate notifications about errors which means that your support team can start taking steps and more quickly make sure the site is up and that customer experience isn't interrupted in terms of using your system and your products. AlertSite is a very good tool. It's user-friendly, and you can see everything on the dashboard. Configuring it is also easy."
"This solution has numerous advantages. It's extremely simple to configure. Either digital monitors or single-URL monitors are simple to configure and build."
"I highly recommend AlertSite to other users."
"I found multiple features in AlertSite that I like. One is data monitoring history, for example, a history of the blackouts and the data. Sometimes, there's a glitch in the application that AlertSite can capture, and the tool notifies you about that glitch. It also identifies issues that could happen in the future. AlertSite is also a fast tool that you can use to monitor on-premise servers, internal applications, and even global applications. The data is available on a single UI in AlertSite, so there's no need to monitor and click on different applications or URLs. I also love that the tool is quite user-friendly, apart from being fast."
"The alerting capabilities were really helpful."
"There are custom reports available along with the inbuilt reports."
"We utilize modular tests based on environment variables. These have saved QA a lot of time when setting up our back-end automation."
"It is a relatively reliable tool for running big amounts of API tests, which you can schedule to run periodically, as the product is very good."
"Valuable features include: Being able to add tests as sub-tests in a parent test for regression testing; notifications for tests that pass/fail; being able to customize expected results with assertions; being able to set tests to run daily."
"It helps us verify that production deployments do not break the features our customers use."
"It is a cloud-based environment for building and executing tests, which allows me to focus on building, running, and reviewing test results."
"The schedule is definitely the most valuable. Also, being able to check the JSON attribute values is helpful. We always check the attributes. Finally, the notifications are helpful as well."
"It uses JavaScript which is easy."
"We can receive an email and slack notifications if tests are failing/passing."
More Runscope pros
 

Cons

"I would like the ability to get more data points with regard to some of the unique requirements that we have."
"I could use a few changes to the user interface."
"What needs improvement in AlertSite is the documentation, particularly the lack of documentation. If there's a specific activity you want to do, you can't even find information on how to do it, so you have to contact the AlertSite support team to assist you, and only then would the issue be resolved. At the moment, it's not easy to find or get full documentation on how to deal with different issues. You always have to go back to AlertSite support and get help. The documentation for AlertSite could be improved and it's what I'd like to see in the next release of the tool because at the moment, the documentation isn't complete, so you'll have to contact support, but contacting support isn't an issue because the team responds to you quickly."
"AlertSite sometimes triggers false alerts or fake alerts, which needs to be rectified. When we see an alert and go ahead and run certain tests on it, the test always passes. However, on the main screen, it shows up as critical. Therefore, the false alert needs to be fixed."
"One area that needs improvement in AlertSite is the slow UI. I'm using the classic UI because it's quite user-friendly, or in human-readable format, but it's a little slow. It takes time to load all the monitors, so if that could be sped up, that would be helpful. The AlertSite support team also needs improvement in terms of availability. Most of the agents in the team aren't available 24 x 7, so if there's something you need to discuss, you need to tell the support team ahead of time to schedule it. Multiple times, when a case comes up during weekends or whenever my team is doing an update, support needs improvement, availability-wise. I use AlertSite for synthetic monitoring, so whatever is available right now is okay, but if I want to request a new feature on a website, currently, the UI refreshes automatically. I would like to have the option on AlertSite to configure that manually. The UI auto-updates every few minutes, so if I can control that manually, that would be helpful."
"It is not compatible with all of the product platforms that we use."
"Additionally, support from AlertSite is not at an enterprise level since it is not offered 24/7."
"We would like the ability to configure Runscope behavior when a given test has its schedule modified. That is, in a non-production environment, we often need to pause a test (either by removing it from the schedule or adjusting its frequency) and this results in the automatic kick-off of this test in all other environments. We would like the ability to simply pause a test for a specific shared environment without causing additional tests to be started."
"One thing that can be improved is the logging. Sometimes, when we have an error, we don't know how to find more information about the problem that has happened. Sometimes, it just returns something like "that gateway." More information would be a way to improve it."
"File upload is a big part of the products that we test. The lack of file upload in Runscope requires us to still use UI (Selenium) automated tests for these scenarios."
"There are not many options for scalability."
"The user interface requires a lot of clicking around."
"I would like to see easier integration and display of test results so that the data could be shared via a dashboard within our company. (Some integration is possible, provided you use one of the supported platforms)."
"We would like to be able to select the actual time a test will run automatically. It appears that you can set up the automatic schedule, but the test runs based on the last time it ran and not a time you select. Since we want these tests to run in the middle of the night, it would be nice to be able to select that."
"Reliability. I would like to see more money invested in disaster recovery testing of the application. The product should be hosted across several AWS regions so if there are issues with an EC2 instance in a particular region, the whole application won't be affected. Once or twice a year there are issues with AWS that causes the reliability of the application to suffer."
More Runscope cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is high."
"My company pays to use AlertSite, but I'm unsure of the exact costs because it depends on how many monitors you have."
"We purchased the license once and had the option of selecting the number of user licenses."
"Having the different plans organized by team size, buckets, and requests per billing period works for our needs. Larger companies may need to take a close look at these elements."
"Runscope pricing is unbeatable"
"Pricing is fair."
"The price for the product is very reasonable for a team of more than four to five members."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
17%
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlertSite?
The pricing is reasonable.
See all answers
What needs improvement with AlertSite?
When I last worked with AlertSite, everything was okay. However, we could make some changes to the UI. While it was user-friendly, making it a bit easier for new users to work on would be beneficial.
See all answers
What is your primary use case for AlertSite?
In AlertSite, I was monitoring the kiosks and servers for JetBlue Airlines. The servers would trigger alerts if there were any outages or issues with any of the kiosks, servers, or the ticketing to...
See all answers
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Comparisons

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Postman vs Runscope Logo
Postman vs Runscope
Compared 100% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
AlertSite
April 2025
AlertSite reportDownload AlertSite product report
Buyer's Guide
Runscope
April 2025
Runscope reportDownload Runscope product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA Runscope
 

Overview

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

Here are AlertSite’s 6 use cases: 

  1. Monitor web: AlertSite monitors beyond availability to detect performance anomalies and notify the appropriate people when deviations occur, whether it's online apps or websites.

  2. Monitor APIs: Check to see that your internal, external, and third-party APIs are working properly, returning the correct content, and performing as expected.

  3. Monitor apps: With nearly any action, monitor your online sites and applications using actual browsers, just like a consumer. There is no need for scripting.

  4. Monitor mobile: Monitor your mobile-friendly websites, native mobile apps, carrier-based nodes, and network speeds with real devices (3G, 4G LTE).

  5. Monitor SLAs: Make sure you're meeting service-level agreements' requirements. SLA requirements are monitored and reported on by AlertSite.

  6. Monitor cloud: Monitor your cloud-based applications to improve mobility. AlertSite monitors your apps across public and private clouds, giving you complete visibility into their status.

AlertSite Features

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

  • Enables a comprehensive view of UI and API performance.

  • Monitoring coverage from 350+ worldwide nodes and private networks.
  • Integrates with DevOps and Ops tool stacks.

  • Displays availability and performance data that assist in determining the root cause of performance problems.

  • With AlertSite's Single Sign-On (SSO) support, you can assist your authentication procedures.

  • Free training and assistance. AlertSite’s responsive team is always there to assist you, from the initial rollout through day-to-day support.

  • Eliminates the stress of false alerts using these key features:

    • Tracks the performance of your apps, APIs, and websites.

    • Sets up monitor and alarm schedules, as well as blackout periods and retry choices.

    • Sets alert thresholds that are both static and dynamic.

    • Calculates the number of failures needed to set off an alarm.

    • After the first failure, retries logic.

    • Based on error code, sends an alert to recipients and group routing.

    • Tests from over 85 different locations across the world, with internal and external monitoring.

    • Defines assertions and validations.

    • Integrates with PagerDuty, Slack, Splunk, VictorOps, and more.
  • Easy configuration with help from these key features:

    • DejaClick is an intuitive, seamless plug-in for documenting web transactions and user journeys.

    • Use the point-and-click script creation for website, web, and mobile monitor scripts.

    • Benefit from using native API monitor creation.

    • Scripts for functional tests can be reused.

    • Automate monitor creation by using Swagger Specs or OpenAPI Specification files.
SmartBear
Information not available
Broadcom
 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, Payless ShoeSource, Hilton Inc., StubHub, Symantec, Newegg, Sapient, AstraZeneca, Dell, Quest Diagnostics
Twilio, Microsoft, Adobe, Okta, Tesco, Charter Communications
Buyer's Guide
AlertSite vs. Runscope
April 2025
Free Report: AlertSite vs. Runscope
Find out what your peers are saying about AlertSite vs. Runscope and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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