Application Performance Monitoring vs Custom Metrics
Developers should use APM when building or maintaining production applications, especially in microservices or distributed architectures, to proactively detect performance degradation, reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) for incidents, and improve user satisfaction meets developers should learn and use custom metrics to monitor application-specific kpis that standard metrics don't cover, such as conversion rates, feature usage, or custom error types, enabling proactive issue detection and performance optimization. Here's our take.
Application Performance Monitoring
Developers should use APM when building or maintaining production applications, especially in microservices or distributed architectures, to proactively detect performance degradation, reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) for incidents, and improve user satisfaction
Application Performance Monitoring
Nice PickDevelopers should use APM when building or maintaining production applications, especially in microservices or distributed architectures, to proactively detect performance degradation, reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) for incidents, and improve user satisfaction
Pros
- +It is critical for ensuring service-level agreements (SLAs), optimizing resource utilization, and debugging complex, multi-tier applications where traditional logging may be insufficient
- +Related to: observability, distributed-tracing
Cons
- -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case
Custom Metrics
Developers should learn and use custom metrics to monitor application-specific KPIs that standard metrics don't cover, such as conversion rates, feature usage, or custom error types, enabling proactive issue detection and performance optimization
Pros
- +They are essential in microservices architectures, e-commerce platforms, and SaaS applications where business logic requires tailored tracking for debugging, scaling, and improving user experience
- +Related to: monitoring, observability
Cons
- -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case
The Verdict
These tools serve different purposes. Application Performance Monitoring is a tool while Custom Metrics is a concept. We picked Application Performance Monitoring based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.
Based on overall popularity. Application Performance Monitoring is more widely used, but Custom Metrics excels in its own space.
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