We performed a comparison between Apica and OpenText SiteScope based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability."I like the transcript download feature. And with UI scripting, it's helpful that Apica handles a lot of the backend work automatically. I don't have to tag everything manually, though I can tag elements later if needed. It's really good at recording the steps."
"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."
"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 helps with releases because we monitor them in staging. We can tell if something is critically wrong before it gets into production, e.g., if it was load related or function related and also what was different in the dev stage. It then alerts us straightaway inside of our production monitors once it has been released. Therefore, it has improved how we run our systems since we monitor multiple environments."
"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."
"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."
"It is easy to set up and configure."
"What I like the most is that Apica can simulate different browsers and different versions of desktop or mobile browsers."
"Has a simple setup. It can be up and running within hours."
"The tool has capabilities other than managing web-based applications, like URL Monitor and EPI Script. It is also easy to use the tool."
"VM monitoring is pretty good showing good visualizations of how VMs are operating within the context of all the VMs running on the same hypervisor."
"It's easy to template standard monitoring configurations, and automate monitoring configuration."
"The most valuable feature of SiteScope is its infrastructure monitoring."
"Being able to create your monitors for monitoring your internal URLs and databases and other things like that is valuable."
"The product's ability to monitor systems and applications and send alerts and create support tickets are the most valuable features of the product."
"Simple deployment: The deployment uses protocols such as NetBios, SSH, WMI, SNMP, which means that any device with any of these protocols will be monitored."
"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."
"We could use more detailed information in the request and response sections."
"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."
"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."
"We have been focused on reducing polling times for synthetic checks. We have gone from 10 minutes down to five minutes for a pretty broad swath, but there is some appetite to reduce that further, which could be an improvement."
"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."
"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."
"Apica should add more features and integrations with different tools and certain ticketing systems, like ServiceNow."
"In terms of issues with Micro Focus SiteScope, some that we've run into were unintended, for example, extra executions of monitors and some false alerts when there were problems connecting to endpoints or there were issues with the application that sometimes resulted in false positives. We had a few issues with the way time zones were configured when the system time differed from the time indicated during the monitoring, but those were just little things that weren't too bad. As far as the limitations of Micro Focus SiteScope, the types of scripting files that can be executed are rather limited unless you go to some third-party plugins. These are the areas for improvement in the solution."
"Sometimes in a huge environment, I think the documentation does not provide the required calculations so you can't know what the required set up should be. You need to test."
"They have not kept up with browser security requirements or advances in GUIs, they switched to a corruptible database architecture instead of text config files."
"SiteScope isn't productive if you want to monitor RAM or if you want to monitor some URL."
"We'd like a uniform interface for monitoring our system, since that's the purpose of SiteScope."
"Full application functionality available via the API. There are some functions you can perform managing monitors, that are only available through the UI."
"The graphs and dashboard in the solution are areas that need improvement."
"It could be more reliable using a database repository instead of a log repository."
Earn 20 points
Apica is ranked 55th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 4 reviews while OpenText SiteScope is ranked 28th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 24 reviews. Apica is rated 8.4, while OpenText SiteScope is rated 7.6. 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 OpenText SiteScope writes "Doesn't require much custom coding and can run on different platforms, but the types of scripting files you can execute on it are limited". Apica is most compared with Dynatrace, Datadog, AppDynamics, Apache JMeter and OpenText LoadRunner Cloud, whereas OpenText SiteScope is most compared with Dynatrace, SCOM, AppDynamics, Prometheus and BMC TrueSight Operations Management.
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