The best tool to track, analyze, and manage errors at scale? Rollbar tops our list.
What every developer should know about error monitoring
Ever had your app crash and struggle to figure out why? That's where error monitoring comes in. When something breaks, these tools give you the full picture - exact state of the app, complete stack trace, and even the code change (git commit) that caused the issue. Think of it as your production environment's black box recorder.
The best engineering teams in the world utilize these tools to stay ahead of issues before their customers ever report them. You'd be hard pressed to find a leading startup or member of the Fortune 500 that isn't using error monitoring.
Critical features to look for
When evaluating error monitoring solutions, certain capabilities are essential - they're the features you simply can't compromise on. Here's what to look for:
- Smart alerts that cut through noise and highlight critical issues, showing exact impact and severity. No more guessing which errors matter most.
- Release health tracking that instantly reveals if a new deployment spiked error rates or revived old bugs. Deploy with confidence, knowing you'll catch regressions fast.
- Quick recovery tools including one-click rollbacks and feature flag controls. Spot a problem? Roll back the code or disable specific features in seconds.
- Root cause analysis that connects errors to specific code changes, making debugging feel like time travel instead of guesswork.
- User impact tracking that shows you whose experience is affected, helping prioritize fixes based on real customer impact.
How to evaluate tools
Before we look at the list, here are a few things to consider when evaluating these products:
Budget - in today's world, budget is top of mind for everyone. Error monitoring tools can have very different pricing structures, and not every pricing structure fits well for every business. Do you want pricing to be fixed or elastic within usage? Do you mind being charged by the number of users or the number of servers? How are overages handled?
Use cases - why are you looking for an error monitoring tool in the first place? Defining the problem your team wants to solve first, before looking for a tool can be extremely powerful. This will save you money and time in the long run.
Languages and frameworks - today there are a lot of languages and frameworks that teams use, so you need to ensure that the error monitoring tool you select supports you today but also your future product roadmap. This includes frontend, backend, web and mobile support.
Scale - not all error monitoring solutions can handle billions of requests on a monthly basis. As you scale you need to ensure you have a solution that can scale with you quickly. Does the provider have a track record of large scale executions? How does each provider handle millions and even billions of errors? How good is the grouping at this scale?
Best error monitoring tools to use in 2024
Let's rank error monitoring tools to determine what separates the best solutions in the market from the rest. Here we go!
- Rollbar Try Now
- Pros: Focused on the full stack (end to end) for many languages and frameworks
- Cons: None we can think of
- Cost: Low
- Sentry / GetSentry Compare
- Pros: Good language and framework support
- Cons: Moving more towards APM and less focus on error monitoring
- Cost: Medium
- Datadog Compare
- Pros: One solution, does a bit of everything
- Cons: Less focused on error monitoring and more APM
- Cost: High
- Bugsnag Compare
- Pros: More Mobile Focused
- Cons: Less support for other languages and frameworks
- Cost: Medium
- LogRocket
- Pros: Great at logging and user interactions
- Cons: Medium error monitoring
- Cost: Medium
Why Rollbar Leads the Pack
Rollbar is the complete package for error monitoring of your application. You can also filter through the environmental reports. You can view all items, see how many times they happened, a trend of 24 hours, the last time it happened, the environment in which it happened, users affected, and the language.
Rollbar allows you to find the bugs before your actual users discover that. It makes your app robust and user effective to engage more and more users.
Track, Analyze and Manage Errors at Scale
Managing errors and exceptions in your code is challenging. It can make deploying production code an unnerving experience. Being able to track, analyze, and manage errors in real-time can help you to proceed with more confidence. Rollbar automates error monitoring and triaging, making fixing errors easier than ever. Sign Up Today!
