Uptime.com Blog
What is Synthetic Monitoring?
Synthetic monitoring (SM) uses script-based, simulated user interactions to assess the performance and reliability of websites, application program interfaces (APIs), and other digital services. These scripts can mimic typical user behaviors, such as logging in, completing a purchase, site navigation, etc., and run consistently from multiple locations so you get real-time feedback on how your systems handle different scenarios.
Unlike real user monitoring (RUM), which synthetic monitoring is sometimes conflated with, this strategy is authentically proactive.
Your DevOps or site reliability engineering (SRE) teams can use continuous SM to monitor everyday performance, regardless of traffic load, so they know everything’s running smoothly around the clock.
Then, when it’s time to test new features or system updates before launch, SM can safely run simulations in test environments so you can avoid any surprises once real users engage with your site. Tech teams will know what to fix before launch based on flagged steps along the scripted journey.
Across industries and business sizes, there’s incredible value in having these predictive insights into what your customers might experience when interacting with your online resources. Let’s dive into the details behind synthetic monitoring and how it can help your customer experience flourish.
How Does Synthetic Monitoring Work?
Synthetic monitoring software lets you replicate common user paths that simulate how people actually interact with your digital platforms. The results of those simulations can help you better understand the user’s perspective before real customers interact with the system.
Here’s a quick guide on how to set up synthetic monitoring to show you what happens behind the scenes:
Script Creation
First things first: Your DevOps team will create the simulation scripts for internal testing, external testing, or both.
Testing inside the firewall works within your internal network to verify your internal infrastructure — servers, switches, routers, etc. — is operating within your ideal parameters.
Outside of the firewall, synthetic monitoring testing has the chance to spread its wings, simulating everything from completing online purchases or playing a multiplayer game to navigating through your on-site architecture or signing up for a newsletter.
The specific scripts that your DevOps department configures will depend on several variables, including your industry and the mission-critical functions that regularly need interval checks.
Configure Locations and Scheduling
After your scripts are complete, the next step involves selecting where and when they will run.
A valuable synthetic monitoring tool lets you simulate user interactions from various global locations. Focus on regions where your customers are most active or where performance may fluctuate due to network conditions.
As for timing, more frequent testing — every few minutes — can help catch problems quickly for high-traffic sites and critical user paths. For sites with lower traffic or less frequent changes, scheduling tests hourly or a few times a day may work best.
Not sure where to start? Play around with your timing and figure out what works best for you. That’s the beauty of a customizable synthetic monitoring tool.
Benefits of Synthetic Monitoring
Now that your scripts are running and your alerts are in place, what benefits can you expect from a synthetic monitoring tool?
Catch Problems Before Users Do
With synthetic monitoring, you don’t have to wait for users to report issues like slow pages or broken checkouts. Instead, you’ll know about them first. It catches potential problems early so your team can fix things quietly and keep the experience smooth for your customers — often before anyone notices something’s off.
Deliver a Consistent Experience, No Matter the Location
Whether your users are logging in from across the street or across the globe, they expect the same fast, seamless experience. Synthetic monitoring helps you monitor how your site or app performs in different regions, flagging any slowdowns or hiccups specific to each location so your service feels consistent everywhere.
Keep Tabs on Third-Party Tools
If your site relies on third-party services — like payment gateways or data-sharing APIs — synthetic monitoring also monitors them. When one of these external tools lags or fails, it can disrupt the whole experience. Synthetic monitoring sends an alert when there’s an issue so you can step in and fix things before they affect your users.
Get Actionable Insights With Real-Time Data
You don’t always hear from users when they’re dissatisfied. In many cases, they’ll bounce without hesitation, leaving you wondering what could have possibly happened to cause such an abrupt departure.
With synthetic monitoring’s constant data stream, you won’t have to wonder anymore because it’ll show how well your online services perform. Then, stakeholders can make strategic improvements to the experience without waiting for issues to impact the bottom line.
Why Synthetic Monitoring Is Different From Other Types of Web Monitoring
Now that you know how synthetic monitoring works, you might wonder how it stacks up to other website monitoring tools.
Any monitoring you can deploy to keep your digital interfaces online will make a difference, but that doesn’t mean they’re all designed to perform the same tasks. On the contrary, synthetic monitoring is a gold mine for proactive interventions that other tools can’t beat.
How Is Uptime Monitoring Different Than Synthetic Checks?
Uptime monitoring primarily serves a binary purpose: letting you know whether your website is accessible by sending a simple request to the server and triggering an alert if the system doesn’t respond.
Contrastingly, synthetic monitoring digs deeper, assessing the more nuanced aspects of how your digital services perform under certain conditions.
| Synthetic Monitoring | Uptime Monitoring | |
| Purpose | Simulates user interactions to test functionality and performance | Checks if the site or service is reachable |
| Scope | End-to-end user experience, including complex transactions | Binary: checks if the server/service is up or down |
| Frequency | Regularly scheduled tests, customizable frequency | Continuous |
| Metrics/Insights | Provides detailed performance metrics and failure alerts | Alerts teams when the site is down or unreachable |
| Test Environment | Can run in production or staging environments | Production only |
| Timing | Proactive | Reactive; alerts when site is already down |
How Is Real User Monitoring Different Than Synthetic Checks?
Think of synthetic and real user monitoring as two sides of the same coin.
On the proactive side, synthetic monitoring runs scheduled tests regardless of traffic, meaning you can spot potential issues before they affect users.
On the reactive side, real user monitoring captures real-time data from actual users, showing how they interact with your site across different locations and devices. It’s best for tracking historical trends based on usage patterns.
| Synthetic Monitoring | Real User Monitoring (RUM) | |
| Purpose | Simulates transactions to test functionality | Monitors live user behavior for actual site performance and UX insights |
| Scope | Focuses on predefined, specific user journeys, independent of actual traffic | Comprehensive overview of actual interactions/experiences across the site |
| Frequency | Scheduled intervals | Continuous; dependent on traffic |
| Metrics/Insights | Response times, transaction success rates, availability, and performance metrics | Device type, location, clicks, page load speed, etc. |
| Test Environment | Can run in production or staging environments | Live environment |
| Timing | Proactive | Reactive; captures in-the-moment issues based on activity |
How Is API Monitoring Different Than Synthetic Checks?
When you rely on API endpoints for your system to run smoothly, you need to know that third-party vendors are holding up their end of the SLA for response rates and speed. API monitoring has you covered with a configurable platform that monitors your integrations and lets you know if something’s gone wrong.
However, instead of focusing on APIs in isolation, synthetic monitoring simulates real-world scenarios where these integrations matter to other services, like submitting a form or checking out with a shopping cart.
| Synthetic Monitoring | API Monitoring | |
| Purpose | Simulates any number of different end-to-end user journeys involving multiple components | Specifically monitors API endpoints and responses |
| Scope | Comprehensive, covering the full user transaction process | Singularly focused on API functionality |
| Frequency | Scheduled intervals | Can run continuously or at set intervals |
| Metrics/Insights | Response times, transaction success rates, availability, and performance metrics | API response times, error rates, latency, and availability |
| Test Environment | Can run in production or staging environments | Can run in production or staging environments |
| Timing | Proactive | Proactive and/or reactive |
How Are Performance Monitoring Tools Different Than Synthetic Checks?
As for how synthetic monitoring stacks up against performance monitoring tools, you’re comparing a focus on user experience to one focused on the system’s operation.
Does system operation impact user experience? Of course, it does.
But performance monitoring is more internal, digging into your server, CPU, etc., metrics to prevent downtime and resource bottlenecks.
Conversely, synthetic monitoring is more insightful about the microcosm of a user’s interaction with a page. It answers questions like how long it takes for a page to load and whether a sales funnel works as intended so that you can target potential friction in everyday user interactions.
| Synthetic Monitoring | Performance Monitoring Tools | |
| Purpose | Evaluate performance under specific conditions | Monitors real-time system performance |
| Scope | User experience | Infrastructure health |
| Frequency | Scheduled intervals | Continuous |
| Metrics/Insights | Response times, transaction success rates, availability, and performance metrics | System resource usage, latency, network error rates, etc. |
| Test Environment | Can run in production or staging environments | Production environments |
| Timing | Proactive | Reactive |
What Business Should Use Synthetic Monitoring?
Truthfully, all businesses across all industries would benefit from synthetic monitoring if they want to have a client-facing digital interface.
But there are a few industries where we would consider it an absolute necessity. Learn why you need synthetic monitoring with these real-world examples of where it would have saved a business from a digital disaster.
Retailers & E-Commerce
Macy’s 2017 Black Friday was a worst-case scenario when an unexpected technical nightmare brought the transaction processing system down across stores nationwide. Shoppers eager to score some deals were left standing in long lines only to be told, “Cash only” due to issues running credit, debit, and gift cards. The problem lasted for hours, resulting in countless customers leaving empty-handed and sharing their disdain with other potential customers across social media.
How Synthetic Monitoring Could Have Helped
Even for brick-and-mortar retailers, backend systems rely heavily on online connections to process payments, manage inventory, and handle customer data. Synthetic monitoring could have identified performance issues in the API integrations that link in-store systems to credit card networks, which are already susceptible to breakdowns during periods of high demand.
SRE teams could have monitored these simulations and then optimized their payment processing infrastructure to avoid the utter chaos that unfolded in stores.
SaaS Platforms
On Halloween 2017, Slack users got the scare of their lives when the communication platform went offline for a few hours. Users immediately flocked to Facebook and Twitter, where they lobbed outrage at whichever poor intern runs their social media accounts who could do nothing but apologize over and over until the tool went live again.
The problem was blamed on a thoroughly tested infrastructure change, but it resulted in an unexpected mass disconnect of users. As everyone was kicked off Slack and tried to reconnect simultaneously, the surge in activity overwhelmed the platform, mimicking a self-inflicted distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
How Synthetic Monitoring Could Have Helped
Devs could have turned to synthetic monitoring to simulate the mass reconnect process after the infrastructure change, thus testing Slack’s ability to handle the surge of activity. Based on that information, engineers could implement one or more mitigation strategies, such as:
- A staggered reconnection process to reduce the server load
- Preemptively and temporarily scale their infrastructure to prevent bottlenecks
- Optimize their load-balancing strategy to redistribute the reconnect attempts evenly across regions
Financial Institutions
The infamous GameStop trading frenzy of early 2021 saw retail investors pile into the stock, sending its price soaring. While the internet celebrated the chaos, Robinhood wasn’t having a good time. As millions of users tried to access the platform to trade GameStop and other meme stocks, Robinhood claims they experienced a surge so overwhelming that users were locked out, resulting in missed trades.
How Synthetic Monitoring Could Have Helped
With synthetic monitoring, Robinhood could have tested its systems for extreme trading surges by mimicking large-scale, rapid trading scenarios. Then, it could have optimized API rate limits and request throttling mechanisms so the platform could better manage the number of simultaneous trade requests during market frenzies.
Media Sites
When Disney+ launched in 2019, many users were excited about accessing a library of nostalgia-inducing media. But that excitement quickly turned into fury when technical glitches plagued the first few hours of its release. More than 7,000 issues were reported, with 35% comprising log-in errors and 64% streaming errors.
How Synthetic Monitoring Could Have Helped
Given the range of problems Disney+ encountered at launch, there may have been failures in the user authentication process preventing login attempts. At the same time, streaming issues suggest a problem with the content delivery network. Synthetic monitoring could have evaluated both factors in stress-test scenarios, allowing Disney to optimize its systems to handle peak user traffic and content delivery more deftly.
What To Look for in Synthetic Monitoring Solutions
Before you invest in synthetic monitoring software, evaluate whether its feature lineup ticks all the necessary boxes for easy, effective deployment.
Easy Setup
The best synthetic monitoring tools don’t have a steep learning curve but an intuitive setup that lets your DevOps, SRE, or IT teams get monitoring scripts running quickly.
Look for platforms with a built-in visual editor or prebuilt templates for standard user flows to eliminate the need for complex code and boost your time-to-value returns.
Customization Options
An e-commerce business doesn’t need a streaming service, so it doesn’t have the precise requirements for synthetic monitoring tools. Thus, you want to choose one that is flexible enough to cater to your specific workflows.
You should also be able to set thresholds for different performance metrics and create specialized alerts based on your needs. The more customizable the solution, the more valuable it is for your business.
Global Testing Capabilities
Today’s online community operates globally, and so should your synthetic monitoring solution. Make sure that the platform offers servers in multiple countries across different continents so you can monitor service performance across various regions and then provide necessary optimizations to cater to all your audiences.
Real-Time Alerts and Reporting
A synthetic monitoring tool’s ability to alert your team to small problems gives them the edge in correcting a minor concern before it escalates into a full-fledged negative experience, making reliable triggers a must.
Second, it should deliver a full-scale reporting feature to let you identify trends that may not have been identifiable without a macro view. Then, you can take customized, targeted steps to improve performance without wasting time or resources on unnecessary fixes.
Integrations With Other Tools
For error responses to be most efficient, your monitoring solutions should minimize context switching by aligning with your existing tech stack — Slack, PagerDuty, Zapier, and any other tools you depend on for issue management.
You don’t have to look far for a synthetic monitoring tool that provides all of the above.
Sign up for a 14-day free trial of Uptime.com’s Premium Plan and get started with our top-rated synthetic monitoring services today!
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