Best of Application Management Software 2021

TrustRadius Team
January 6, 2021
Awards, IT & Development

Best of Application Management Software 2021

Application Management refers to software that manages the performance and availability of a broad range of applications within an organization. This often includes network services as well as cross-program communication. This year, TrustRadius is awarding the best in Customer Support, Feature Set, and Usability among some of the most common categories of Best of Application Management in use today.

The Best of Application Management winners are: 

Best Feature Set – API Management

  • Postman, 1st Place

Best Customer Support – Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

  • Kemp LoadMaster, 1st Place

Best Usability – Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

  • Kemp LoadMaster, 1st Place

Best Feature Set – Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

  • Kemp LoadMaster, 1st Place

Best Usability – Application Performance Management

  • SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor, 1st Place

Best Customer Support – Observability Tools

  • Dynatrace, 1st Place

Best Feature Set – Observability Tools

  • Dynatrace, 1st Place

Best API Management Feature Set

An Application Programming Interface (API) allows individual programs to communicate with one another directly and use each other’s functions. API Management software allows for developers to then manage those parameters. Because API management enables developers to write applications that interact with backend systems, it is important to have a broad set of features that customers can utilize effectively. Below are the awards for Best Feature Set in API Management.

Postman, 1st Place

Postman Star trScore

Postman is a collaboration platform built for API development. It is designed to be a great fit for organizations looking to develop and test apps or APIs in an online, collaborative nature. Customers were pleased with Postman’s interoperability across disciplines, as well as its ability to integrate into existing pipelines.

“ Postman is used by several departments: QA, Dev, IT monitoring. Each of them is having their use cases by checking performance and response times during development, testing, or on production environments. Also, teams are connected around one tool, and data sharing or cross-checks for SLI/SLO parameters get easier. It can be integrated into the CI/CD pipeline.”

Lasha J., Head Of IT Monitoring | adjarabet.com | Gambling & Casinos, 1001-5000 employees

Best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Customer Support 

An Application Delivery Controller (ADC) is a device housed in a data center between firewalls and application servers. They are part of an application delivery network (ADN), along with WAN optimization controllers (WOCs). Due to the increasing technical complexity of network-based applications, good customer support is tantamount to vendor success. Below are the awards for the Best of Customer Service in Application Delivery Controllers.

Kemp LoadMaster, 1st Place

Kemp LoadMaster trScore

Customer Support Score: 10.0

Customers were ecstatic in regards to the prompt, knowledgeable, and thoughtful support offered by Kemp LoadMaster. They also consistently praised its comprehensive knowledge base available online.

“Their support is always very responsive and knowledgeable when I have worked with them. Even when I cold call with a question they are able to diagnose very quickly. Their how-to articles for things like updates are very accurate and thorough. Even with an email ticket I have yet to wait more than an hour for a response.”

James W., Systems Engineer | United Memorial Medical Center | Hospital & Health Care, 501-1000 employees

Best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Usability 

Application Delivery Controllers exist basically for the purpose of application acceleration, reducing the load on websites, and performing load balancing, as well as other network-centric features. Because of this critical functionality, it is important that such software be approachable and easy to use. Below are the awards for the Best of Usability among Application Delivery Controllers.

Kemp LoadMaster, 1st Place

Kemp LoadMaster trScore

Usability Score: 9.1

Customers praised Kemp LoadMaster‘s intuitive import functionality, combined with a vast template library that allows for simple setup and deployment.

“ They have templates you can download and just import based on what you’re needing it to do. Simple download import and then update with your Virtual IP you need to share, and the servers you want to actually use. This makes it very easy setup time, and usability makes it a breeze.”

Kurtis B., Network Administrator 2 | Public School and Education Employee Retirement System of Missouri | Financial Services, 51-200 employees

Best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Feature Set

Application Delivery Controllers are necessary to handle a variety of functions, including SSL offload, proxy/reverse proxy, firewall for web applications, and more. Customers will want to find a solution which can handle any of these numerous use-cases as a one-stop-shop. Below are the awards for Best Feature Set in Application Delivery Controllers.

Kemp LoadMaster, 1st Place

Kemp LoadMaster trScore

Kemp LoadMaster was praised for its operability, allowing for consolidation and efficiency as well as its wide range of acceleration and balancing solutions.

“I’ve used competing load balancers previously and Kemp LoadMaster is the simplest, most efficient load balancer I have used in my 25 years in the tech industry. It allows SSL acceleration as well as a great way to load balance via VS or SUBVS options. The way I’m able to consolidate environments into groups such as demo environments, test environments, and production environments with an at a glance view is indispensable.”

Jared L., Lead DevOps Engineer | RexelUSA | Electrical & Electronic Manufacturing, 501-1000 employees

Best Application Performance Management Usability

Application Performance Management (APM) solutions are software designed to monitor applications to ensure performance and availability. APM tools don’t just alert IT managers concerning problems, they also help to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. With a task that is mission-critical to an organization’s success, customers will require a solution with extreme ease-of-use to accomplish this in an efficient and straightforward manner. Below are the awards for Best Management Usability among Application Performance Management software.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor, 1st Place

SolarWinds Server & Application trScore

Usability Score: 8.7

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor provides users with comprehensive server and application monitoring. Customers were beyond satisfied with the intuitive nature of the product’s many features, allowing for straightforward operation.

“In my experience, setting up alerts and monitors for services or processes isn’t difficult once you understand the software. But with Solarwinds SAM, it was almost too easy. I found it to very [sic] intuitive to create exactly the alerts that I wanted to see, or the dashboards for our NOC operators.”

Curt S., Network Support Engineer | Clarks | Retail, 10,001+ employees

Best Observability Tools Customer Support

Observability platforms help businesses understand system behavior and predict outages or problems before they occur. Businesses use observability tools to act proactively and prevent system problems, and in order to do so, support from vendors is tantamount to success. Below are the awards for Best Customer Support in Observability Tools.

Dynatrace, 1st Place

Dynatrace

Customer Support Score: 8.4

Dynatrace was praised for their excellent support throughout the installation and migration process, as well as their knowledgeable and dependable service agents.

“Our support team for converting Synthetics from Gomez to Dynatrace was absolutely wonderful. Nicole G. has been extremely helpful and always follows-up on our issues and concerns. She was invaluable in our upgrade–always providing both technical support as well as “moral support.” Our Dynatrace coach is also extremely involved in helping us become proficient Dynatrace administrators. He also follows-up on our questions and issues.”

Sandy N., Sr IT Technical Specialist | LabcorpHealth | Wellness and Fitness, 10,001+ employees

Best Observability Tools Feature Set

Many observability tools specialize in monitoring or logging, which can impact what features they offer. That being said, some of the most common features include application monitoring, event logging, infrastructure monitoring, and database monitoring, to name a few. Below are the awards for Best Feature Set among Observability Tools.

Dynatrace, 1st Place

Dynatrace

Dynatrace was praised for its well-rounded functionality and powerful AI. Debugging, load testing and monitoring were all just some of the features customers were most pleased to have at their disposal.

“Dynatrace is an amazing all-around product that can really change the way you do business. Dynatrace has the ability to see all the metrics in your infrastructure, and provide you with baselines, and report off that to show you how everything works together.”

Alyssa S., Senior Systems Administrator | BARBRI Inc. | Education Management, 201-500 employees

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TrustRadius Team

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