Custom Performance Metrics vs Synthetic Monitoring

Developers should learn and use Custom Performance Metrics when standard metrics don't capture the user experience or business goals of their application, such as in complex single-page applications, real-time systems, or e-commerce platforms where specific interactions directly impact revenue meets developers should use synthetic monitoring to ensure critical user journeys are functioning correctly and meeting performance benchmarks, especially for e-commerce sites, banking apps, or any service where downtime or slow performance directly impacts revenue or user trust. Here's our take.

Custom Performance Metrics

Nice Pick

Developers should learn and use Custom Performance Metrics when standard metrics don't capture the user experience or business goals of their application, such as in complex single-page applications, real-time systems, or e-commerce platforms where specific interactions directly impact revenue

Pros

• They are essential for identifying performance bottlenecks unique to the application's architecture, enabling targeted optimizations and improving overall user satisfaction and retention
• Related to: performance-api, web-vitals

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Synthetic Monitoring

Developers should use synthetic monitoring to ensure critical user journeys are functioning correctly and meeting performance benchmarks, especially for e-commerce sites, banking apps, or any service where downtime or slow performance directly impacts revenue or user trust

Pros

• It is essential for pre-production testing, compliance monitoring, and detecting issues in third-party integrations or dependencies that might not be caught by traditional monitoring
• Related to: application-performance-monitoring, real-user-monitoring

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Custom Performance Metrics is a concept while Synthetic Monitoring is a tool. We picked Custom Performance Metrics based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Custom Performance Metrics wins

Based on overall popularity. Custom Performance Metrics is more widely used, but Synthetic Monitoring excels in its own space.