Stackify Retrace Alternative:
Enhance Your APM platform

On-demand Load and Stress Testing with LoadView by Dotcom-Monitor

Complement your APM solution with real browser-based performance testing for websites, web applications and APIs.

Test Infrastructure Limits

Build a test scenario that meets the demands of your customers.

Web-based Scripting Tool

Support for over 40 desktop/mobile browsers and devices.

Scalable

Start with a few virtual users and scale into the thousands, if necessary.

Cloud Platforms

Utilize over 13 globally distributed locations. No need to manage your own cloud accounts.

Today’s organizations must ensure their software and critical applications are continuously up and running. To assist DevOps and IT teams manage the complexity that goes along with maintaining and managing their entire application ecosystem, organizations can implement an Application Performance Management (APM) tool. The main benefit of an APM tool is to help to detect application errors, giving developers and IT teams the ability to diagnose them faster, thereby lessening the impact to users and customers.

Monitoring applications in production is one of the keys to maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction, however, ensuring those applications go through rigorous testing in the development phase is another. This is where the LoadView platform from Dotcom-Monitor can help play an integral part in filling the gap left out by APM solutions, such as Retrace. LoadView can assist with determining if your organization has the necessary level of infrastructure/hardware needed, so your applications and sites will be able to perform within your pre-determined thresholds. Additionally, search engines use page load time metrics to rank websites. Don’t let your SEO budget go to waste without proving how your fast your pages load.

 

On-Demand Performance Testing with LoadView

LoadView is a performance testing platform that can be used to load and stress test applications, APIs, web apps, and websites. When the time comes to deploy your code or application, you can be assured it will be able to withstand high levels of traffic without degradation or errors. If done in-house, load testing can be a time-consuming process involving multiple teams. LoadView removes the process and need of having to set up load generators and creating world-wide distributed agents. Everything is managed through the platform so developers can focus on their application and code.

LoadView was built with performance in mind, acknowledging that engineers, WebOps, and IT teams that use an APM tool to help monitor uptime and availability may also be interested in knowing the capacity of their websites and applications, and even testing the limits of their infrastructure. LoadView from is an easy-to-use platform that can assist with the following:

  • Finding bottlenecks and bugs
  • Uncovering failures and errors
  • Discovering database slowdowns
  • Distributing load between geographic regions
  • Understanding the capacity of your infrastructure
  • Ensuring a consistent user experience

 

Multiple User Simulations

Many of the load testing solutions on the market today, specifically open-source tools, only run protocol-based user simulations, which is not enough to meet the demands of the applications and websites that are built today. With the LoadView platform, users can run different user simulation types: HTTP/S and real browser-based tests.

  • Protocol – HTTP/S
    • Concurrent users generating HTTP Request to web server
    • No client-side rendering necessary
    • Low level analysis
    • Scripting/programming skills required
  • Real browser:
    • Concurrent users performing a series of scripted actions in Chrome or IE
    • Real user simulation
    • Customizable scripts and script playback
    • Easy to create scripts

Distribute Load Globally

The LoadView platform also gives users the option to distribute load between geographic locations based upon from multiple points around the world. For example, if you know that a certain percentage of your customers and users come from a specific geographic location, you can select those specific areas when setting up your load test.

Central U.S. (Council Bluffs, Iowa) U.S. East (N. Virginia)
U.S. West (Oregon) U.S. East (Ohio
U.S. West (N. California) Canada Central (Montreal)
Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Asia Pacific (Mumbai)
Asia Pacific (Singapore) Asia Pacific (Sydney)
South America (São Paulo) Europe (Ireland)
Europe (London)

 

The EveryStep Web Recorder: Real Browser-based Scripting Tool

Proper testing is essential to maintaining a consistent user experience and retaining customers. The EveryStep Web Recorder can automate the many types of tests involved in web development and is a great tool to use with alongside APM tools to validate performance.

The EveryStep Web Recorder is a free automation scripting tool that records every step of a web transaction and replays the script using a real browser. Compatible with over 40 desktop (Chrome and Internet Explorer) and mobile browsers (iPhone, iPad, Google, Samsung, etc.), the EveryStep Web Recorder supports virtually anything rendered in a browser, regardless of the technologies used, such as AJAX, Java, HTML5, Flash, PHP, Ruby, in addition to others.

The EveryStep Web Recorder is easy to use and there is no scripting experience required, just point and click through your application or site like a typical user would. You can record multi-step test scripts of the critical and complex actions your users make, such as button clicks, menu selections, form submission, shopping carts, and text inputs. These scripts can then be uploaded into the LoadView platform for load testing your websites, web application, web services, and APIs.

Launch the EveryStep Web Recorder Now!

 

The Stackify Platform: Retrace and Prefix

Stackify is a SaaS-based APM solution that provides tools for developers to improve their code, so they can deploy better applications, faster. Through their Retrace and Prefix platforms, Stackify offers a set of application monitoring features, from pre-production through production, giving developers the ability to validate releases and support production applications.

Prefix is a code profiler that is designed to work on a workstation, so developers can minimize errors during the development process. A code profiler is usually used by developers or programmers to help any performance related issues, like understanding how long each method is in piece of code or how long each of those methods take to run. Code profilers can also track down CPU or memory issues. Development cycles can range from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, so a code profiler helps to keep code running efficiently and keep the project on track, as there is typically little room for error.

Prefix allows developers to view details of individual web requests and can also suggest code improvements when errors or unusual elements are detected.

Retrace is an APM solution used in QA and production environments to monitor applications and server metrics. When Retrace is used in conjunction with Prefix, developers and IT teams can be sure that the code that is being written will run efficiently and with fewer issues.

Retrace integrates industry leading application performance management, error monitoring, log aggregation, and resource (including cloud-specific) monitoring into a single interface. Retrace provides out of the box support for the following:

  • .NET and Java for APM function
  • .NET, Java, Node, PHP, and Ruby for errors, logs, and monitoring
  • .NET Core
  • Enhanced async pattern, profiling for Windows Services and other non-web applications
  • Microsoft Azure and AWS (cloud support)

Retrace also supports the following popular application and container-based models:

  • Docker
  • Azure App Services
  • AWS Elastic Beanstalk
  • Kubernetes
  • Azure Functions

The Retrace platform is comprised of six components, or modules: APM, transaction tracing, metrics, logs, errors, and alerts. It works by installing a server agent that goes out and automatically picks up all the applications running on a server, giving developers insight into high-level data and information such as application type, number of instances, requests per minute, satisfaction, errors per minute, features, and alerts.

Going further into the dashboard, users can view specific application metrics like the following:

  • Number of instances
  • Availability
  • User satisfaction
  • HTTP errors (alerts over time)
  • App logging rates
  • Server CPU percentage,
  • App pool CPU percentage
  • Server memory percentage
  • App pool memory.

Users can also pull data over a set of pre-defined ranges or setup a custom range.

Additional sections and tabs within the dashboard allow users to see that the environment is, in fact, running, along with the general health information of the servers. Specific metrics like availability, memory used, disk space used, network interface, any additional custom metrics, IIS site and IIS app pool can be seen here. Furthermore, if users have a web request that is critical to your application, they can setup key transactions that will continually monitor those specific requests. Here you can see your requests per minute, page load times, error rates, etc.

Prefix is a web request code profiler that helps identify bugs during code development. It is free for .NET and Java developers (support for macOS is not currently available). It captures traces of web requests as you are writing your code. The trace data is pulled into the interface, allowing you to see specific code metric detail, such as errors, log statements, SQL queries, etc. Additional features of Prefix include:

  • Trace transactions across servers
  • Compare performance to QA or production environments
  • Track any behaviors or actions within your code
  • Validate code behavior

Stackify Retrace Pricing

Stackify Retrace APM – $50/month per server (no annual contracts). Includes the following features:

  • App Performance Monitoring
  • Code Profiling
  • Error Tracking
  • Centralized Logging
  • App and server metrics

Additional Stackify Retrace Pricing Options include:

  • Retrace APM for small servers – $25/month per server
  • Retrace monitoring without code profiling (APM) – $15/month per server
    • Ideal for additional servers that don’t require full APM capabilities
  • Retrace APM for QA/staging servers – $10/month per server (alerts and notifications are disabled)

LoadView Pricing

LoadView has subscription-based plans, starting at $199 per month.  With our subscription-based plans, unused virtual user minutes and load injector hours roll over from one month to the next.  Alternatively, you can also select from a pay-as-you-go plan. Pricing is calculated and displayed before you begin new test, so you know exactly what you’re paying for.

If your specific needs require more than what is listed above, please contact us for Enterprise-level plans.

 

LoadView Professional Services

The objective of our LoadView Professional Services is to have you running performance tests, analyzing your data, and adjusting your system without our engagement. Our methodology is tested, proven, and offered in unique à la carte fashion. You pick and choose which elements you need assistance with, and our performance engineers will coach you through them.

Our engineers are also available to perform the entire testing exercise for you, offering consultation to optimize your code and infrastructure. The level of Dotcom-Monitor interaction is completely up to you.

Conclusion

Together, the LoadView and Stackify platforms complement each other and combine to help organizations become more proactive when it comes to establishing quality code, applications, and websites. Prefix allows developers and WebOps teams to create efficient, bug-free code, the LoadView platform can be utilized to ensure code and applications will hold up against thousands of concurrent users. And finally, Retrace can monitor those applications in production, helping to minimize downtime if errors occur. Utilizing the individual power of these tools allows teams to guarantee a top-notch user experience.

Try LoadView from Dotcom-Monitor

and get up to 5 load tests free