A reliable website monitoring solution is one of the most important tools in your digital arsenal in 2024. These help you retain more customers and build trust - but with so many options at your disposal, how can you confidently choose the right solution?
We’ll compare and contrast two of the most popular choices in this guide - Pingdom vs Relic.
Pingdom, with its straightforward pricing and user-friendly approach, beckons those looking for simplicity and affordability.
On the other hand, New Relic appeals to complex use cases with its comprehensive features, albeit at the cost of a steeper learning curve and potential overkill for smaller-scale applications.
This begs the question - which one truly meets your needs? Or, are you better off with a different solution altogether?
After dissecting the strengths and weaknesses of both Pingdom and Relic we’ll unveil a third choice that addresses the shortcomings of each one to offer the most comprehensive uptime monitoring solution yet: Odown. First, let’s highlight the need for a web monitoring solution in general.
Overview of Website Monitoring Solutions
First things first - what is website monitoring? These solutions are pivotal in the digital age, acting as the sentinels of your online presence. These tools continuously scrutinize your website's performance, uptime, and security, ensuring that it remains accessible and efficient.
In a world where website downtime can mean lost revenue, damaged reputation, and customer dissatisfaction, these solutions are not just a luxury but a necessity.
Choosing the right monitoring tool is critical. The ideal solution should align with your business needs, scale, and technical capabilities. It's about finding a balance between comprehensive monitoring, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness.
The right tool can empower your business with insights and agility, turning potential digital disasters into opportunities for growth and improvement.
So, let’s look at some of the differences between Pingdom vs New Relic below and help you figure out if one of these solutions is what you need for peace of mind.
What are the Differences Between Pingdom vs New Relic?
Before we compare and contrast New Relic vs Pingdom, we want to highlight some of the strengths and weakness of each platform on its own. Let’s start with Pingdom.
Pingdom
Pingdom offers a comprehensive suite of website monitoring tools designed to provide real-time, actionable insights into website performance and uptime. It is tailored for a range of users, from digital marketers to web hosting providers and web developers.
Pingdom is powered by either synthetic or real user monitoring (RUM) to grant you insight into your website’s health. The option you choose influences your price along with the clarity and value you get from the software. Both start at $10/month, but quickly climb in price based on your needs:
- Synthetic Monitoring: This includes uptime monitoring from over 100 locations worldwide, page speed analysis, and transaction monitoring for critical website functions. Choose as few as 10 uptime monitors, 1 advanced, and 50 SMS alerts all the way up to 30,000 uptime monitors, 2,500 advanced, and 1,500 SMS alerts. You get transaction, page speed, and uptime monitoring, public status page and reports, and unlimited users.
- Real User Monitoring: Pingdom's RUM offers insights into how actual users interact with a site, including data on browser, device, and location. It starts at as few as 100,000 page views but can be boosted to as many as 1 billion. You get an unlimited number of sites and users, performance filtering, and 13-month data retention.
Regardless, you gain access to customizable alerts and reporting. These are tailored for various stakeholders, ensuring immediate response to issues and compliance with SLAs. Here are some of the most prominent use cases for Pingdom:
- Digital Marketers: Monitoring site availability and performance to improve customer experience.
- Web Hosting Providers: Providing service assurance and SLA compliance.
- Web Developers: Optimizing website performance in the development and production phases.
This is one of the most popular web monitoring services, but as you’ll soon discover, there’s a reason more and more users are switching to our Pingdom alternative. That being said, let’s look at the other half of the Pingdom vs New Relic debate below.
New Relic
New Relic presents an all-in-one observability platform with a broad range of capabilities and integrations. It's particularly beneficial for complex applications and larger-scale operations, with key features such as:
- Transaction Metrics: Detailed insights into application transactions, including response times and error rates.
- Customizable Performance Data: Metrics such as page loading time, server response time, and more.
- Database and Availability Monitoring: Critical for understanding application performance and customer reach.
- Error Monitoring: Essential for identifying and resolving software issues.
- New Relic Browser: Deep visibility into user interactions with applications or websites.
One of the biggest differences between Pingdom and New Relic is in regards to pricing - not just in overall cost, but how cost is calculated.
The New Relic pricing model is flexible and based on data usage and user types, with 100 GB of free data ingest per month. There are three user types to choose from - basic, core, and full platform. Each comes with varying access levels and features.
This software is suited for engineering teams needing detailed insights across their entire technology stack. It’s ideal for larger-scale applications where complex monitoring and deep data analysis are required.
Which is Better: Pingdom vs New Relic?
You may already be starting to lean towards one solution or the other just based on the general overview we’ve provided alone. But, let’s get into a more thorough comparison of Pingdom vs New Relic below to help you attain complete clarity as to which is right for your needs. We’ll look at the most critical criteria in choosing a web monitoring service - key features, performance, usability, support, and perhaps most importantly, value for the money.
Key Features
As both Pingdom vs New Relic are top-tier monitoring services, they share a lot of important features:
- Both offer Real User Monitoring (RUM), providing insights into how real users interact with websites.
- They include performance analysis tools to track and optimize page load times.
- Uptime monitoring is a core feature, ensuring the website's availability is consistently checked.
- Alert systems are in place for immediate notifications about issues.
- Both offer some level of transaction monitoring which tests key website interactions like signups or checkouts.
However, each also has some unique features that the other does not. For example, Pingdom offers page speed monitoring with a more detailed analysis for bottlenecks, root cause analysis in pinpointing performance issue culprits, and outside-in, client-side monitoring provides performance visibility across various environments.
However, New Relic is undoubtedly the more robust platform. It integrates with more than 700 different software and grants you access to everything you need in one solution. Database monitoring allows users to monitor and troubleshoot database performance, while error monitoring, records software errors for quick resolution.
Ultimately, you’ll have access to more features with New Relic - but you need to consider if you really need more features, or if it’s going to be overkill. Simple websites will find Pingdom’s feature suite satisfactory, while more complex websites and apps will opt for the extensibility of New Relic.
Performance and Reliability
Let’s make one thing clear - both of these software are reliable, high-performance solutions to website monitoring. Neither one has a history of unreliability.
Pingdom offers strong uptime monitoring capabilities, effectively checking the availability of webpages and critical components like APIs, CDNs, DNS, and networks.
It's praised for its fast alerting of outages and providing good summaries of monthly uptime, making it well-suited for monitoring uptime SLAs and instant notifications of application outages.
It's highly reliable for long-term monitoring, with users reporting very few false positives over extended periods. Features like Root Cause Analysis and traceroutes add value by helping identify the causes of failures, a feature that distinguishes Pingdom from many competitors.
However, some users have noted issues with the product's maintenance and support, pointing out a lack of product updates and delays in support responses.
On the other hand, New Relic is recognized for its reliable application performance management, particularly in large-scale environments. It's commended for effective observability across software stacks, offering dependable insights into software performance.
Users highlight features like distributed tracing, deep instrumentation of APIs, and detailed performance analysis, including transaction tracing and error logging.
These aspects contribute to its reliability, allowing users to identify and resolve issues quickly, ensuring stable application performance. This robustness in monitoring and troubleshooting is particularly valued in complex, multi-layered tech environments.
We’ll call this a bit of a wash, as ultimately, both software have a track record of being dependable solutions for monitoring websites.
User Interface and Ease of Use
This is where you’ll see an obvious difference between Pingdom vs New Relic. Pingdom has an edge in terms of user-friendliness and simplicity, making it more accessible for users who prioritize ease of use over complexity. Its dashboard is straightforward, and the setup process is more streamlined compared to New Relic.
New Relic, while offering a powerful interface and extensive features, may present a steeper learning curve. It is more suited for users who require detailed, extensive monitoring and are willing to navigate its more complex interface.
However, it’s important to note that most individuals using uptime or website monitoring software are in the IoT field, so they are equipped to handle more complex dashboards. It’s important that you consider who will be using the software and determine their needs/preferences.
Integration and Scalability
New Relic stands out in its integration capabilities, offering one of the industry’s largest ecosystems of open-source integrations. With over 700 integrations to cloud services, open-source tools, and enterprise technologies, New Relic caters to a diverse range of engineering needs.
These integrations cover various aspects, including CI/CD and DevOps platforms, DevSecOps, Prometheus for Kubernetes monitoring, and data management platforms, enhancing its scalability for different use cases.
This extensive integration capability aligns with the increasing complexity of modern software ecosystems, making New Relic a versatile tool for organizations looking to implement observability as a business imperative.
Pingdom offers a multitude of integrations in its own right, but it pales in comparison to New Relic. Some of the most noteworthy include Slack, Zapier, Datadog, AlertOps, NS1, bigpanda, StatusPage, Zenduty, and PagerDuty. It’s important that you research the capabilities of either software to ensure they align with your existing stack.
Customer Support and Community
New Relic is highly rated for its support, with reviews highlighting its strong customer support. The company offers a range of resources including a community forum, events, webinars, and New Relic University for training and learning.
The platform’s technical support and resource library are designed to aid users in maximizing the platform's capabilities. But, how does all this compare to the customer support and community of Pingdom?
As we touched on earlier, there are a number of customer reviews pointing out challenges in gaining assistance from the Pingdom support team. You deserve a software solution that is backed by fast, available support every day - which Pingdom falls short in.
That being said, the software does offer an array of support docs for you to use as you get set up or look to fine-tune your usage. However, having to fill out a lengthy form just to get in touch with support is a bit of a dealbreaker in our book.
Cost and Value for Money
It’s important to realize that you’re investing in peace of mind and website performance, so you shouldn’t choose your software based on cost alone.
That being said, Pingdom and New Relic cater to different market segments with distinct pricing models when considering the cost and value for money.
Pingdom is favored for its affordability, particularly appealing to smaller businesses or those with simpler monitoring requirements. Its plans start at a lower price point, and its pricing structure is clear and straightforward.
This accessibility and transparency make it a practical choice for users who need effective monitoring without extensive, complex features.
New Relic, with its user-based pricing model, is structured to serve larger enterprises or more complex applications needing detailed monitoring. While this can imply a higher cost, especially for smaller companies, it offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities that can be more valuable for such businesses.
The cost reflects the depth and breadth of features available, catering to organizations requiring extensive analytics and integration capabilities.
In essence, Pingdom offers a cost-effective solution for straightforward monitoring needs, while New Relic provides extensive features at a higher price point, suitable for more complex operational requirements.
The decision between the two will depend on the scale of your monitoring needs and the budget available for such services. That being said, which of these is right for you - New Relic vs Pingdom?
So, Which is Right For You: New Relic vs Pingdom?
We hope you now feel clear as to which of these software is right for you - but here’s a quick summary. Choosing between New Relic and Pingdom depends on your specific needs.
New Relic is ideal for larger enterprises or complex applications requiring extensive monitoring capabilities and a wide range of integrations. Its comprehensive tools cater well to in-depth performance analysis and observability across varied engineering environments.
Pingdom, on the other hand, is more suited for smaller businesses or users looking for a straightforward, affordable solution for website uptime and performance monitoring. Its simplicity and lower cost make it accessible for those who need effective monitoring without the complexity of extensive integrations.
But, what if we told you that neither of these solutions was the ideal choice for your business? Is it possible there’s a third option that addresses the shortcomings of each to offer the most comprehensive web monitoring solution?
How Do These Two Compare to Other Solutions?
As we said from the start, these are just two of the most common website monitoring solutions you have at your disposal. There are countless others to consider as well. You can read a similar comparison in our UpTimeRobot vs Pingdom guide. Or, you can check out these other comparison pages:
Ultimately, though, there is one software that stands apart from the rest when it comes to web monitoring and that’s Odown. Here’s why our website monitoring service is the #1 choice online, better than both Pingdom AND New Relic…
Introducing the #1 Website Monitoring Service: Odown!
Odown is the ultimate website monitoring solution that combines the best of functionality, simplicity, and affordability.
Unlike New Relic and Pingdom, Odown is designed to cater to a wide range of users, from small businesses to large enterprises, offering a unique blend of comprehensive monitoring tools and user-friendly interfaces.
Our service includes real-time alerts, detailed performance analytics, and a robust support system, ensuring your website operates flawlessly and efficiently.
Odown stands out with its intuitive design, making website monitoring accessible to everyone, regardless of technical expertise. We provide detailed insights into your website’s performance, uptime, and security, all through a streamlined dashboard.
Our competitive pricing model ensures you get top-tier service without the complexity or high costs associated with other platforms.
Don’t let website issues hinder your digital success. Choose Odown for a reliable, comprehensive, and cost-effective monitoring solution. Get started today and experience the peace of mind that comes with knowing your website is in good hands.
You’re just a few clicks away from your 14-day free trial so you can see firshtand what makes us the best alternative to Pingdom AND New Relic!
Wrapping Up Our New Relic vs Pingdom Comparison
In our comparison of Pingdom vs New Relic, you’ve discovered how crucial a reliable, high-performance web monitoring solution is for any online business.
Pingdom shines with its affordability and user-friendliness, making it a great option for smaller businesses or simpler monitoring tasks. However, its feature set may be limited for more complex needs.
New Relic, conversely, offers a broad range of integrations and detailed analytics, ideal for larger enterprises or intricate systems, but this comes with a steeper price and learning curve.
Recognizing these gaps, Odown emerges as a comprehensive alternative, blending user-friendly features with in-depth monitoring capabilities. Whether you're a small startup or a large enterprise, Odown tailors to your specific needs without compromising on quality or cost.
From SSL certificate monitoring to uptime monitoring, you can rely on Odown to keep your website running smoothly and preventing the headaches and costs assocaited with downtime. So, get started free with Odown today and elevate your website's performance and reliability!
