We were looking for a DEM tool to improve how we understand our users’ experience with our products. Basic features such as synthetic monitoring [also known as synthetic transaction management (STM)], and real user monitoring were given as necessities.
But we were looking for solutions that would have a proactive approach, detect performance trends, and have real-time notifications. The ease of implementation and cost were also factors for us. After looking at several tools, we narrowed the list down to what we think were the four best.
Two of the leading solutions are Aternity and Nexthink. We evaluated both and ultimately chose Aternity.
Nexthink is a solution that focuses on giving insights into users' technology experiences. Aimed at IT departments, it helps them understand how employees use their applications and services with automation, analytics, and employee feedback. Nexthink’s Digital Employee Experience Management platform combines Real User Monitoring and Digital Employee Experience to help organizations measure and manage their staff’s digital experience.
We liked their proactive approach that enables IT teams to quickly solve any issues. You can fix common issues with the help of automated actions. Nexthink also helps you visualize data at the event level to detect any application issue. It also allows you to customize remediation scripts and collaboration features.
Aternity is a software solution that tracks what users see when interacting with applications. We liked that it shows response time between a client device, network, and application back end, so we can identify and solve issues quickly.
Aternity is stable and has many valuable features, such as debugging, workload planning, automatic discovery, and self-healing. We especially like the experience level agreement (XLA), which validates activity performance across applications. Another benefit of Aternity is that it eliminates under-used resources, reducing tech sprawl. The broad visibility and the ability to filter by a category, location, or industry are added features. Price and performance were our main concerns to choosing a solution. Aternity met our requirements for efficiency and visibility in an all-in-one digital experience monitoring tool.
Other solutions we looked into were:
Catchpoint is an enterprise-level Digital Experience Observability solution. It provides visibility and enables quick detection and mitigation of issues. We liked that it gives insights into areas where enterprise IT cannot control, be it in SaaS or cloud environments. It is easy to implement and allows monitoring of externally-facing endpoints. It also enables latency monitoring in a large number of testing locations.
However, we found that adding an endpoint with Catchpoint is quite complex. Also, there is no data classification, so prioritizing what data is more important can be difficult. This lack of prioritization complicates the reporting, and it is confusing to understand the origin of the issues. There are a lot of false positives as well.
The last solution we looked at was SysTrack. It is a digital experience monitoring solution that focuses on collecting and analyzing data across your ecosystem and detecting what may impact user experience and business productivity. We liked that it provides a broad picture of each system. It has great scalability and customer support. The downsides include the lack of a free trial period, which was important for us, and the lack of alert prioritization.
Find out what your peers are saying about Nexthink, Splunk, Lakeside Software and others in Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM). Updated: December 2025.
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) tackles the challenges of ensuring optimal user experiences by monitoring and analyzing the performance of applications, networks, and user interactions in real-time.Providing detailed insights into application performance and user interactions, DEM empowers businesses to proactively address potential issues. It offers the ability to dissect user experiences to optimize application performance and enhance productivity. This approach not only aids in...
We were looking for a DEM tool to improve how we understand our users’ experience with our products. Basic features such as synthetic monitoring [also known as synthetic transaction management (STM)], and real user monitoring were given as necessities.
But we were looking for solutions that would have a proactive approach, detect performance trends, and have real-time notifications. The ease of implementation and cost were also factors for us. After looking at several tools, we narrowed the list down to what we think were the four best.
Two of the leading solutions are Aternity and Nexthink. We evaluated both and ultimately chose Aternity.
Nexthink is a solution that focuses on giving insights into users' technology experiences. Aimed at IT departments, it helps them understand how employees use their applications and services with automation, analytics, and employee feedback. Nexthink’s Digital Employee Experience Management platform combines Real User Monitoring and Digital Employee Experience to help organizations measure and manage their staff’s digital experience.
We liked their proactive approach that enables IT teams to quickly solve any issues. You can fix common issues with the help of automated actions. Nexthink also helps you visualize data at the event level to detect any application issue. It also allows you to customize remediation scripts and collaboration features.
Aternity is a software solution that tracks what users see when interacting with applications. We liked that it shows response time between a client device, network, and application back end, so we can identify and solve issues quickly.
Aternity is stable and has many valuable features, such as debugging, workload planning, automatic discovery, and self-healing. We especially like the experience level agreement (XLA), which validates activity performance across applications. Another benefit of Aternity is that it eliminates under-used resources, reducing tech sprawl. The broad visibility and the ability to filter by a category, location, or industry are added features. Price and performance were our main concerns to choosing a solution. Aternity met our requirements for efficiency and visibility in an all-in-one digital experience monitoring tool.
Other solutions we looked into were:
Catchpoint is an enterprise-level Digital Experience Observability solution. It provides visibility and enables quick detection and mitigation of issues. We liked that it gives insights into areas where enterprise IT cannot control, be it in SaaS or cloud environments. It is easy to implement and allows monitoring of externally-facing endpoints. It also enables latency monitoring in a large number of testing locations.
However, we found that adding an endpoint with Catchpoint is quite complex. Also, there is no data classification, so prioritizing what data is more important can be difficult. This lack of prioritization complicates the reporting, and it is confusing to understand the origin of the issues. There are a lot of false positives as well.
The last solution we looked at was SysTrack. It is a digital experience monitoring solution that focuses on collecting and analyzing data across your ecosystem and detecting what may impact user experience and business productivity. We liked that it provides a broad picture of each system. It has great scalability and customer support. The downsides include the lack of a free trial period, which was important for us, and the lack of alert prioritization.