Question 1

What is error tracking software?

Accepted Answer

It is a tool that automatically captures unhandled exceptions, crashes, and runtime errors from your application in production, then surfaces them to developers with stack traces, environment data, and breadcrumbs to help reproduce the issue.

Question 2

How is error tracking different from application performance monitoring (APM)?

Accepted Answer

Error tracking focuses on individual exceptions and crashes, while APM focuses on request latency, throughput, and distributed traces. Many vendors offer both as separate products or combined suites.

Question 3

What should a small team look for in an error tracking tool?

Accepted Answer

A generous free tier, quick setup with a single SDK install, automatic source map handling, and simple Slack or email alerts. Avoid tools that require heavy configuration before the first error appears.