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AlertSite vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

SmartBear and Broadcom are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SmartBear is ranked #38 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.8. SmartBear holds a 0.5% mindshare in APM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of SmartBear users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.
AlertSite
Read 7 AlertSite reviews
  • 939 Views
  • 826 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews
  • 3,869 Views
  • 1,973 Comparison Views
93% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

AlertSite and VMware Aria Operations for Applications are two monitoring and performance management tools competing in the software monitoring category. While VMware Aria Operations for Applications stands out for its advanced features, AlertSite is preferred for its straightforward pricing and robust customer support.

Features: Users find AlertSite valuable for its simplicity, effective monitoring capabilities, and straightforward deployment. VMware Aria Operations for Applications is recognized for its comprehensive analytics, robust reporting tools, and deeper insights into complex environments.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest AlertSite could improve its integration capabilities, add advanced analytics features, and expand its reporting tools. VMware Aria Operations for Applications could benefit from a more intuitive interface, reduced learning curve for new users, and enhanced navigation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AlertSite is easier to deploy and manage, with quicker setup times and highly responsive customer support. Although VMware Aria Operations for Applications is slightly more complex to deploy due to its advanced features, its customer service is reliable and helps mitigate deployment challenges.

Pricing and ROI: AlertSite's pricing model is more accessible, offering a good return on investment, especially for small to mid-sized businesses. VMware Aria Operations for Applications, despite higher initial costs, provides significant long-term benefits and ROI, particularly for larger enterprises with complex needs.

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To learn more, read our detailed AlertSite vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: March 2026).
Buyer's Guide
AlertSite vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications
March 2026
Download the complete report
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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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
38th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
API Monitoring Software (3rd)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (17th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AlertSite is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.3%
AlertSite0.5%
Other98.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

IH
IsaacSamuel
Assistant Director at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Enterprise-level monitoring facilitates global observability and seamless script creation with intuitive tools
SmartBear, as a vendor, is focusing more on API management and testing rather than monitoring. AlertSite could benefit from more future-focused innovation, especially with competencies in generative AI. Additionally, support from AlertSite is not at an enterprise level since it is not offered 24/7. Outside of critical platform issues, there's no continuous support available.
Read full review
AS
Ajay Shukla
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.
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

"If there are any issues, it triggers an alert within 30 seconds."
"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."
"There are custom reports available along with the inbuilt reports."
"This solution has numerous advantages; it's extremely simple to configure, and either digital monitors or single-URL monitors are simple to configure and build."
"The return on investment of this solution is well witnessed in our organization because of the integration and various capabilities that it offers to interact with the upstream or downstream systems."
"This solution has numerous advantages. It's extremely simple to configure. Either digital monitors or single-URL monitors are simple to configure and build."
"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."
"The alerting capabilities were really helpful."
More AlertSite pros
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."
"Wavefront gives us the complexity we need, instead of spending time coming up with a nice dashboard from some other means, or just creating and coding our own app."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros
 

Cons

"I could use a few changes to the user interface."
"I would like the ability to get more data points with regard to some of the unique requirements that we have."
"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."
"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."
"In terms of support, it is all based on the cost of the subscription that our company purchased, but it wasn't great, and it could've been much better."
"AlertSite requires improvements related to security, even at the enterprise level."
More AlertSite cons
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased the license once and had the option of selecting the number of user licenses."
"My company pays to use AlertSite, but I'm unsure of the exact costs because it depends on how many monitors you have."
"The cost is high."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Transportation Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlertSite?
I would rate the pricing aspects of AlertSite as nine out of ten, indicating it is good or low-priced.
See all answers
What needs improvement with AlertSite?
SmartBear, as a vendor, is focusing more on API management and testing rather than monitoring. AlertSite could benefit from more future-focused innovation, especially with competencies in generativ...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for AlertSite?
I have been working with the AlertSite ( /products/alertsite-reviews ) product since 2019. Within our organization, specifically one service unit at one of the Big Four firms, this product has been...
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
See all answers
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
See all answers
 

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
AlertSite
March 2026
AlertSite reportDownload AlertSite product report
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations for Applications
March 2026
VMware Aria Operations for Applications reportDownload VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

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

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time. 

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

Broadcom
 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, Payless ShoeSource, Hilton Inc., StubHub, Symantec, Newegg, Sapient, AstraZeneca, Dell, Quest Diagnostics
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Buyer's Guide
AlertSite vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications
March 2026
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