We performed a comparison between Apica and Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."What I like the most is that Apica can simulate different browsers and different versions of desktop or mobile browsers."
"We see the benefit almost every day. It allows us to be alerted whenever there is a store that is not responding properly around the world. We do have a network operation center (NOC) who receives these alerts, immediately checking if everything is okay."
"One of the biggest advantages of moving to Apica is the ability get to a hybrid model with the architecture in the cloud and our agents on-prem. We also have access to Apica's cloud agent across the globe. That has changed the way that we have our load testing setup at this point. Previously, it was always internal. Now, with this change in the way it is implemented for load testing, we can test anywhere across the globe and from the list of agents available within Apica's cloud. If I don't have an agent available in a second location, it just takes an email to their customer support, then it is spun up within 24 hours. That flexibility has changed the way that we perceive our load tests, not just in the US, but globally."
"With the ZebraTester, the ability to have and store dynamic variables, when setting up the monitors, means you can extract that value and use it in a subsequent service call. This is something that has made our lives easier... This is one of the features that I like the most because it helps us in configuring these services, in a certain flow, without the need to re-record the whole thing."
"There are several features that are really good. The first one is the flexibility and the advanced configuration that Apica offers when it comes to configuring synthetic checks. It provides the ability to customize how the check should be performed and it is very flexible in the number of synthetic locations that it can use. It allows us to run scripts from different locations all over the world, and they have a really good number of these locations."
"As always, within the IT industry, everybody's always looking to upgrade and update everything else like that. Apica has been one of those things but it's really hard to replace because it offers us the unique capability to see what the customer is seeing. A lot of other ones can do Selenium script and things like that, but there's a lot in Apica that we use right now. We utilize a lot of the scenario options in Apica right now, and there's a lot of other ones that do parts of it, but it doesn't do everything that Apica does."
"It is easy to set up and configure."
"It uses a basic scripting language, which is easy to learn and customize as needed. Compared to LoadRunner, I found writing and customizing code much easier in Apica."
"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"It's easy to use."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"I like the monitoring feature."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Pros →
"The having to install an application on your desktop to utilize something like ZebraTester is a little cumbersome. It would be nice to see that become a web-based application. Having the documentation a little more accessible, and easier to digest by people who are just learning how to use the framework, especially when it comes to more complex or more edge-based cases would be really helpful to have."
"There are some components of the user interface that are not up to date. Just to give you an idea, today we have web applications that are called single-page applications that are much faster than the old style of web application. If we can move faster into the flow of the graphic user interface, and in a more effective way, it will save us a lot of time."
"We could use more detailed information in the request and response sections."
"The customer service and support were a little slow to respond. The browser sometimes checks alerts on unknown issues like latency from Apica's side."
"Learning the tool has always been a little difficult from a scripting perspective because the framework is proprietary and unique. Once we became used to what it does and how to perform it, then it became easier for my team and me. I would like to see some of the testing steps be part of a more well-known language, like Java or Python. That would be a big improvement."
"Alerting needs improvement. It's a little noisy. It needs some better options. Currently, they have an issue, when you set up a synthetic monitor, you can set up where it's monitoring from, a data center that Apica owns."
"When it comes to the way the internal agent is installed, because you can install an application on a server, I would love to see the application Docker-ized. If you could install internal agents using Docker or using containers, it would be easier for us to manage them and spin up internal agents."
"The accuracy of alerts can be improved a little bit. Right now, it's pretty good in terms of alerting pretty quickly about failures or changes in response times. However, what we have seen happen is the number of alerts that we are getting is very frequent, and we would like to tone down the number of alerts. That's the only trouble we have. Apica could tone down those settings because there is no option for us to tone it down to a level that would reduce the alerts to a minimum. As a platform, it does send us good alerts, but it could be improved a bit."
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."
"The logging functionality could be better."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"It could be even more automated."
"It could be more stable."
"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Cons →
More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Earn 20 points
Apica is ranked 55th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 4 reviews while Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is ranked 24th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 9 reviews. Apica is rated 8.4, while Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Apica writes "Offers transcript download feature and easy to set up and configure tests but not very user friendly". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) writes "Good logging and tracing but does need more profiling capabilities". Apica is most compared with Dynatrace, Datadog, AppDynamics, Apache JMeter and OpenText LoadRunner Cloud, whereas Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is most compared with AWS X-Ray, Datadog, Azure Monitor, Amazon CloudWatch and Grafana. See our Apica vs. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) report.
See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors and best Log Management vendors.
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