What is monitoring software?

Software that collects metrics, logs, and traces from systems to track performance, availability, and errors. It alerts teams when thresholds are breached and provides dashboards and historical data for analysis.

What's the difference between APM and infrastructure monitoring?

APM (Application Performance Monitoring) focuses on application code, transactions, dependencies, and user experience. Infrastructure monitoring tracks servers, containers, networks, and underlying resources. Many modern tools combine both.

Do I need separate tools for logs, metrics, and traces?

Traditional setups use separate tools (e.g., Splunk for logs, Prometheus for metrics). Modern observability platforms increasingly unify all three in one product to reduce context-switching and simplify correlation during incidents.

Best Monitoring Tools & Software 2026

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