Building a great website isn't just about good content and an attractive design. You also have to deliver a good user experience (UX).
There are a lot of factors that impact UX. In this article we'll look at the role website speed plays for your website and what tools you can use to improve it.
Why should I use a website performance monitoring tool?
By making sure your website is fast you provide a good user experience for your visitors. That not only helps with conversions but also with Google rankings.
Website performance monitoring provides you the data you need to optimize your website speed, as well as alerting you when any problems arise.
While there are many different types of website monitoring, in this article we'll focus on software that helps you measure and optimize your page speed.
1. DebugBear
DebugBear is a website monitoring tool that combines three different types of performance data:
- Synthetic website monitoring: scheduled lab-based testing
- Real user monitoring (RUM): analytics on real visitor experiences
- CrUX data: data Google publishes about real Chrome visits
DebugBear is focused on helping development and marketing teams optimize the Google Core Web Vitals of their website.
Pricing: from $99/mo
Scheduled tests on DebugBear let you keep track of your own website performance, and get alerts when there's a problem. You can also track your competitor website to make sure you're leading in the industry.
In addition to the scheduled synthetics tests, DebugBear also shows you how your actual visitors experience your website.
This is especially important to improve Google's Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric, which depends on a real user action that can't easily be simulated in a lab environment.
2. GTmetrix
GTmetrix has long been an established tool for running synthetic website speed tests. You can:
- Run website speed tests from a range of different test locations
- Track performance metrics over time
- View how the website renders and debug this with a request waterfall
GTmetrix does not support tracking real user or CrUX data.
Pricing: from $3.50/mo
3. SpeedCurve
SpeedCurve is a great website performance tool, helping you keep track of both synthetic and real user data. It supports:
- Detailed request waterfall analysis
- Custom performance dashboards
- Real user web vitals debugging
Pricing: from $12/mo
4. Sentry
Unlike the tools we've mentioned so far, Sentry is a broader application monitoring service aimed at developers.
The product includes a wide range of monitoring features, including:
- Backend performance monitoring
- Real user monitoring
- Error monitoring
Pricing: from $26/mo
5. RUMvision
As the name suggests, RUMvision is a tool focused entirely around real user monitoring (RUM). Synthetic tests are not included.
RUMvision focuses on:
- User experience optimization
- Core Web Vitals monitoring
- Google CrUX data
Pricing: from $107/mo
6. DataDog
DataDog is a broad monitoring and security platform. It mostly targets developers and infrastructure teams.
Website monitoring with Datadog includes:
- Synthetic monitoring
- Real user monitoring
- Transaction monitoring
Price: various depending on functionality, from $12/mo for browser testing
7. NewRelic
NewRelic bills itself as an all-in-one observability platform, aimed at engineering teams.
The product provides a wide range of website monitoring features, including:
- Synthetic and real user monitoring
- Session replay
- Server-side performance monitoring
While a broad set of features is supported, NewRelic does not specifically target Core Web Vitals optimization.
Pricing: free, cost depends on amount of data ingested
8. Pingdom
Pingdom is a website monitoring platform that supports both uptime monitoring and page speed monitoring. It offers:
- Synthetic tests and transaction monitoring
- Real user performance data
- Incident management
Pricing: from $10/mo
9. Google Search Console
Search Console is a free tool by Google that provides reporting on real user experience as well as SEO metrics.
- Core Web Vitals data by page group
- Integrated with PageSpeed Insights
- Analysis of SEO issues
Unfortunately, Search Console does not provide much control about how data is collected and reported.
Pricing: free
10. Raygun
Finally, Raygun is an application monitoring platform. It doesn't offer synthetic testing, but provides a wide range of performance user data, including:
- Real user performance monitoring
- Error monitoring
- Server-side tracing
Pricing: from $80/mo
Get started with website performance monitoring
There are lots of monitoring tools out there. Most of them offer a free trial, so you can see how well they work for your use case.
Ready to get started? Sign up for DebugBear to get a detailed analysis of your website and see how fast it is for real users.
Monitor Page Speed & Core Web Vitals
DebugBear monitoring includes:
- In-depth Page Speed Reports
- Automated Recommendations
- Real User Analytics Data