End-to-end visibility has reduced troubleshooting time and provides clear insight into network issues
What is our primary use case?
I have been using ThousandEyes for the past four years.
The main use case for ThousandEyes is in the visualization of paths and it also helps in troubleshooting, software optimization, and understanding where there is packet loss. It enables me to troubleshoot if there is a downtime and also provides visibility to notice if there is an internal network problem or ISP problems. These are the primary use cases. ThousandEyes enables me to be aware of any performance degradation before users report any problem or issues are being reported.
A great specific example where I used ThousandEyes in solving a problem is as a tool for troubleshooting. I use it in troubleshooting complex network applications, especially with the integration of ThousandEyes with AWS. We use it to monitor our ISP, our third-party services, and also to monitor our DNS and our software application performance. The usage of ThousandEyes really helped in creating an end-to-end visibility. Instead of guessing where there might be a network issue, ThousandEyes made it very clear whether the problem was in our internal network, ISP, or a third-party service.
ThousandEyes really helped me in noticing latency issues in our network. This really helps a lot for us to know how to improve our network, especially when it comes to performance issues or ISP issues. Also, in our cloud and SaaS performance monitoring, it helps us to monitor the actual users in our SaaS applications and also to detect packet loss outside our own infrastructure. Because our own infrastructure is hosted on AWS, ThousandEyes being hosted on AWS really helps us to detect any packet loss in our infrastructure and also notice any performance against incident periods and identify anomalies very clearly. Another good use case that helped me so well is that ThousandEyes helped me to confirm whether performance actually improved or if new issues were introduced, especially when I'm trying to monitor packet loss or latency issues.
How has it helped my organization?
ThousandEyes has really impacted my organization because my organization works a lot with SaaS products and also services other endpoints. It has really helped my organization to not have to hop from different endpoints to see exactly where latency loss or routing issues occur. It has also really helped our organization to understand the importance of performance observability and to understand the risk and single points of failure. The application of ThousandEyes on both internal and external services has helped us to better understand the idea of performance across regions and how internet conditions can vary globally.
There is a reduction in the time spent on root cause analysis. Sometimes, figuring out the root cause without concrete evidence of where the problem is can cause more errors and problems. With ThousandEyes, we are able to perform root cause analysis very effectively, and this also reduces the time spent on troubleshooting. Troubleshooting can be very complex, and if we don't have the right incident sensor, a lot of time can be wasted trying to troubleshoot a small problem. But with ThousandEyes' detection and the ability to provide the right agents, it makes troubleshooting very easy and reduces the time we waste. Faster troubleshooting is essential, and the detection of the root cause is great with the usage of ThousandEyes. I really recommend ThousandEyes for organizations that rely heavily on cloud services or external providers because it provides clear accountability when issues arise.
What is most valuable?
The best features that ThousandEyes offers are end-to-end network path visualization, and also cloud and internet performance monitoring across the public internet and cloud services. Also, agent deployments are a great feature. This includes deploying lightweight agents in different locations such as on-premises, cloud, and remote sites. This enables the measurement of real user paths and performance. Another great feature of ThousandEyes is its dashboard and historical baselines. The dashboards can enhance historical trends that help you compare against current performance and old performance. This is a great feature, especially when exporting reports that help to explain issues to executives, vendors, or customers during collaboration, reporting, and alerting processes.
I find all of them fascinating and great. You cannot really say one is better than the other because they all work in collaboration to help you detect problems. The end goal is always to present the historical baselines and reports to stakeholders. As a software developer, I find the end-to-end visibility fantastic because it reduces the stress of my work trying to figure out where there is packet loss or latency issues. Also, agent deployment helps in monitoring, detection, and internet performance, which is great. Then, the dashboard's ability to detect a historical trend provides great analysis. This reduces the need for separate data analysis or incorporating a third-party SaaS to explain historical trends. For me, all the features are great and make ThousandEyes stand out among other observability products. I find all of them fantastic. As a software developer, the end-to-end visibility comes first, but there is also the aspect of explaining to management what the issue has been. The operational features are really fantastic. It's a great collaboration where one cannot do without the other.
The feature that surprises me and is very prominent is the ability to deploy agents in cloud regions. I work very well with AWS, and this is a great feature integration with ThousandEyes. The ability to deploy agents in different cloud regions is a great key for monitoring, even on-premises or hybrid infrastructure. Also, custom alerts really help to reduce team noise and focus on real incidents. I find it fantastic. Another ability is the internet outage intelligence. This correlates with internet issues by monitoring the data. Right now, performance optimization is very important with the usage of SaaS products or when you host your infrastructure on a cloud. When there is an internet downtime, it causes heavy traffic. With ThousandEyes being able to detect and monitor this, it's fantastic for me. It reduces the workload and also reduces errors in trying to figure out where there is internet downtime, low visibility, or other incidents. I really find this aspect of ThousandEyes great. There could be improvement in the future, but for now, it works perfectly when you compare ThousandEyes with other observability products.
What needs improvement?
ThousandEyes can be improved based on path visualization. When you're trying to check exactly where traffic was impacted, the path visualization could be improved by pinpointing the actual performance problem and also detecting the right outages. For me, path visualization is a great area for improvement in ThousandEyes, as well as providing the right agents to detect where problems are occurring. Another area of improvement could be proactive incident detection. Incidents should be alerted on and traced early, before they escalate to full outages. With ThousandEyes, there should be the possibility of alerting on incidents. This helps in incident detection and being proactive so that time, which is essential, is not lost. An alert can be given so the problem can be solved very quickly. Alert detection and path visualization are two strong areas to improve on ThousandEyes.
The visual reports should be much easier to explain, for example, when explaining network issues to application teams and management. Also, when it comes to vendor accountability, the platform should be able to provide solid data to back up claims when working with service providers or on third-party issues. This is an aspect of integrating third-party providers on ThousandEyes, and especially when we talk about security, there should be solid data to back up claims. This would enable third-party vendors to know the essential work when they are integrated with ThousandEyes.
I chose eight out of ten because of the lack of objective performance data. With observability, performance data is very important, which isn't fully the case with ThousandEyes. Also, as I mentioned, path visualization needs improvement to provide better visibility into connectivity issues, especially with remote users across different regions. These are the two aspects I removed points for. ThousandEyes needs to improve its visibility, which can affect connectivity for remote users in different regions, and it needs to improve its path performance visibility. It also needs to improve its service level agreement in terms of performance data. It's all about the data, which is essential when explaining things to management or stakeholders.
For how long have I used the solution?
Two years.
What other advice do I have?
The advice I would give others looking into ThousandEyes is that it's a great product. The ability to deploy agents in cloud regions is a key feature for monitoring hybrid, on-premises, and private cloud infrastructure. The custom alerts and dashboards help reduce noise and focus on real incidents, which is a great feature. Also, the ability for path visualization, addressing performance issues, and being proactive in troubleshooting complex network issues are great aspects of ThousandEyes. It can help organizations reduce the time they spend troubleshooting network issues or their ISP. Another aspect is the idea of proactive alerting, especially for latency loss thresholds. ThousandEyes is really good in that aspect, which can help define problems and improve current performance. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Proactive monitoring has transformed digital experience and now optimizes application delivery
What is our primary use case?
My main use cases for ThousandEyes at my current company are leveraging ThousandEyes for digital experience, internet, and internet performance. I'm using ThousandEyes for full network path visualization and network performance, application delivery. I also leverage ThousandEyes for overall ISP, public cloud, edge service monitoring, and what we call digital experience monitoring, which we're using ThousandEyes' endpoint agents to monitor user-side network health, metrics, and application responsiveness. I'm also using ThousandEyes for website and SaaS delivery optimization as well.
I use ThousandEyes for digital experience monitoring by leveraging their endpoint agents to monitor user-side network health, such as Wi-Fi and VPN metrics and application responsiveness to ensure that our applications are performing, are performant and are meeting and exceeding delivery expectations.
We use ThousandEyes in conjunction with our full end-to-end, full-stack observability offering, and we're using ThousandEyes to address critical performance issues. This is to be proactive about knowing how to address issues before they arise and how to ensure that our applications are always performant.
What is most valuable?
The best features ThousandEyes offers are network path visualization, deep end-to-end full-stack visibility, and intuitive dashboards. All of these features allow us to formulate a comprehensive view of network performance and how our applications are meeting and exceeding performance thresholds based on SaaS performance, network path visibility, and other attributes.
The intuitive dashboards really allow us to aggregate metrics, so when I think of network visibility, it's really around MELT data: metrics, events, logs, and traces. As part of our full-stack observability protocols and apparatus, we're able to track all of those types of event data and data points onto our dashboards. The dashboards are fully customizable, so we're able to actually, during our path visualization process, navigate the dashboards accordingly for our enterprise-wide deployments and access the dashboards according to roles.
ThousandEyes has provided my organization with invaluable network visibility and insights and incredible ease of use. There is a very narrow learning curve for new users in how to leverage the extensive features that ThousandEyes provides. ThousandEyes has become critical for swift network troubleshooting as well, so anytime that there's potential issues with applications or we want to be proactive in resolving potential issues before they arise, ThousandEyes is really the platform that we're leveraging for WAN monitoring, Wi-Fi, latency, packet loss, etc. ThousandEyes has become a very powerful tool in our toolkit.
ThousandEyes has saved my team on a week-to-week basis about 7 to 9% of our time spent on troubleshooting network and application visibility, availability, and performance. We are able to now allocate that time saved to other mission-critical activities and projects across the organization. ThousandEyes has become a really invaluable tool for not just identifying network issues, but also taking proactive steps in resolving those network issues. It's really been a huge relief in terms of not just time savings, but then also frustration and ease of troubleshooting tool to free up our DevSecOps engineers to more mission-critical activities.
What needs improvement?
With ThousandEyes, there are some configuration and metric screens that are not entirely intuitive with ThousandEyes, so they can certainly improve in terms of the usability of certain metric screens. ThousandEyes can also offer deeper traffic insights relative to specific applications, so detailed analytics on application-level traffic would help in better understanding and managing our network resources effectively.
I would say that ThousandEyes can also, in terms of providing more extensibility with other observability tools, offer more out-of-the-box integrations with other observability tools so that ThousandEyes can serve as that single source of truth, so that we don't necessarily need to go to other tools to be able to be that one-source dashboard. I think there's a lot that ThousandEyes can continue to improve on there.
The issues that I've talked about, including extensibility with other platforms and the improvement of accessing specific metric screens in order to be able to provide for fuller access and more detailed access to network-level metrics would make the platform feel less complicated to navigate. It wouldn't require as many manual integration inputs.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using ThousandEyes now at three companies, and here at Fruidist, I have been using ThousandEyes for a little over 14 months. At my previous two companies, I had been using ThousandEyes for cumulatively about two and a half years as well.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate ThousandEyes a 9. I think that it has tremendous capabilities around granular data views and dashboard access. I just think that the issues that I've talked about, including some of the metric screens and extensibility across other platforms, can still be improved.
I would say that certainly do your research in terms of the extensibility of ThousandEyes across other observability providers as well. ThousandEyes is an incredibly powerful solution when it comes to network visibility and performance. To get a full scope of coverage across your technology layers, including the application layer and infrastructure layer, you will need to combine other best-in-class observability solutions for a fuller picture. I would certainly do your research in terms of which other providers work and integrate well with ThousandEyes for that full-stack view.
ThousandEyes is deployed via public cloud at our organization.
We are using Amazon Web Services as our public cloud provider.
I did purchase ThousandEyes through the AWS Marketplace.
ThousandEyes pricing can also get more streamlined. Right now, ThousandEyes prices based on cloud and enterprise units, endpoint agents, insights, and implementation services, and I feel that the pricing model can certainly be streamlined.
ThousandEyes has been an incredible partner for network path visualization and full-stack visibility. I have now used ThousandEyes at this my third company utilizing ThousandEyes for network visibility, and the ease of use and learning curve are just incredible. I look forward to utilizing ThousandEyes going forward as well.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Improved end-to-end visibility has reduced troubleshooting time and speeds incident response
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for ThousandEyes is to keep an eye on vital enterprise tools, which are mostly cloud-hosted in the form of SaaS apps. It helps us provide visibility into our performance and availability and also figure out when issues occur and who is the responsible party. It is also used to monitor all our public-facing services hosted in our private data center.
A quick specific example of how we use ThousandEyes in our day-to-day work is that we usually use it for observability purposes, monitoring and alerting, and identifying an issue before the customer does. We monitor nodes in the colocation facility around our location in the USA. The biggest problem that ThousandEyes addresses is being able to do off-net tests to compare our network with external networks. This allows us to create historical baselines and verify reachability for customers that may have issues getting to specific websites. Sometimes those issues are local, but ThousandEyes helps us verify if they are global or part of a larger issue.
ThousandEyes is deployed in my organization using a hybrid cloud model with AWS as our cloud provider. We purchased ThousandEyes through the AWS Marketplace.
We use ThousandEyes in our day-to-day activities to try to fix problems quickly and ensure a smooth experience for our customers.
What is most valuable?
ThousandEyes offers the best features including global internet and cloud visibility from distributed vantage points, application and network performance monitoring, real-time outage detection and incident alerts, end-to-end path visualization for rapid troubleshooting, proactive issue demarcation, and historical data. It is easy to use, easy to set up, has a good support team with quick responses, features high-level customization for dashboards and testing, and provides seamless integration with Cisco products.
ThousandEyes has positively impacted my organization by reducing mean time to troubleshoot and resolve issues faster, as well as resulting in fewer user mapping error issues.
What needs improvement?
ThousandEyes can be improved by making the installation procedure less time-consuming and enhancing the interface to be more user-friendly. Better agent integration on Cisco routers would also be beneficial.
An improvement needed for ThousandEyes that we have not discussed yet would be a unified licensing for the endpoint agent.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using ThousandEyes for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
ThousandEyes is fast, reliable, and very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
ThousandEyes's scalability is excellent; it is very scalable and grows with my organization's needs.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for ThousandEyes is very proactive and supportive.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used a different solution called LogicMonitor and Zabbix before switching.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment by reducing troubleshooting time and having lesser user mapping error issues, in addition to engineering time saved through better observability and reduced organizational MTTR.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that everything was cost-effective.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing ThousandEyes, I evaluated other options such as Atlassian and Confluence.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate ThousandEyes an eight out of ten since it has improved visibility into our infrastructure, which is not under our control.
The advice I would give to others looking into using ThousandEyes is that it is a great tool for application and network performance troubleshooting, especially for understanding upstream SaaS networking pathing and performance. Nevertheless, it is not very appropriate for heavy synthetic application testing where variable consumption of compute units makes the solution cost unpredictable.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Critical for Swift Network Troubleshooting
What do you like best about the product?
I used ThousandEyes to find problems fast. it helps me see exactly where the internet or a website is breaking, which helps me find the problem in minutes instead of hours. It really assists my team; when my students or staff have trouble connecting to our network, I can identify the exact spot where the trouble is and fix it right away. I like that it uses simple maps and charts to show me the internet, so I don't have to look at boring code or long lists of numbers to understand where the problem is. I really enjoy how easy it is to share what I find with others, as I can send a simple link to my team or a provider to show them exactly what is wrong, so we can work together to fix it faster. I use it with tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams, and ThousandEyes sends a message directly to our chat group when something breaks, so the whole team knows about the problem instantly. We switched to ThousandEyes from SolarWinds because it is much easier to understand and better at showing us what is happening outside our own office, especially with cloud services.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes the tool feels a bit complicated because there are so many features. It took me a while to learn where everything is. I wish the initial setup and learning process were a little simpler for new users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use ThousandEyes to quickly find internet or website problems, reducing troubleshooting time from hours to minutes. It helps my team fix connectivity issues by pinpointing exact problem spots, improving our response time and effectiveness.
Additional Features great for Network Visibility and Availability
What do you like best about the product?
ThousandEyes offers additional visibility into network hops when executing synthetic tests. This is a feature not available in many mainstream enterprise observability tools.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some of the configuration and metric screens are not very intuitive.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use it for network monitoring and observability. Currently focused on BGP monitoring.
Has improved collaboration with providers and pinpointed issues across regional networks
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for ThousandEyes is troubleshooting, with a specific example being testing connectivity through IXP to ensure the fastest route in collaboration with service providers over the region.
ThousandEyes helps with troubleshooting and collaborating with service providers by providing a sample or proof of issues at a certain level, which helps us prove what's happening when service providers act as if the issue isn't from their end.
What is most valuable?
ThousandEyes has been the most user-friendly tool I have seen in the past couple of years, making life easier in troubleshooting and helping us find what's happening while offering vivid options on how to use the agents or the server-side tools with multiple options to trace out the issues.
The best features ThousandEyes offers include the ability to place two different points or nodes, such as a server or a node in the cloud in my account, then installing agents and tracing the connectivity which helps me build a perfect user experience to check what's happening while users access my resources.
I love the dashboards in ThousandEyes and the way I see the results after placing or doing the tests; this is perfect, and I would say this is the best thing.
ThousandEyes has positively impacted my organization by raising the customer experience and positive feedback by over 70% due to the complex situation with local service providers, allowing me to resolve user feedback and issues which enhanced the user experience significantly.
I measure the 70% improvement in customer experience through customer tickets and feedback after resolving issues, where previously, users faced problems and limited time on the platform, and after using ThousandEyes, the user time reached up to five to six hours a day, even for teams possibly totaling 30 hours a day.
What needs improvement?
ThousandEyes could focus more on end-users than enterprises, as the solution is powerful, and collaboration with multiple cloud providers should be developed for better test traceability, with the introduction of a free version for end-users and enhancements to the user interface for easier navigation.
Regarding the user interface, I appreciate dropdowns, but I prefer a guided experience where the interface explains itself instead of requiring extensive searching to reach a point.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using ThousandEyes for the past four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
From my experience, ThousandEyes has been stable up to 95%; I have not seen any stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Although I have not encountered a case where I needed to scale up with ThousandEyes, I know that it is highly scalable based on what I have learned.
How are customer service and support?
I have not dealt with customer support, but I know ThousandEyes is well known for having good customer support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before ThousandEyes, I used DirectFN; they offered a good Falcon DF solution, but I switched because their solution was kind of legacy, hard to set up, and time-consuming for results, which led us to choose ThousandEyes.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing and licensing for ThousandEyes is fine; there has not been any setup cost because I am already experienced with the tool, eliminating the need for professional help for installation.
What was our ROI?
There has been a great ROI from using ThousandEyes, with significant time saved in troubleshooting as I can quickly pinpoint issues rather than spending time isolating them, alongside enhancing customer feedback and experience.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I evaluated multiple other options before choosing ThousandEyes, but I cannot mention specific names, and ultimately, ThousandEyes was the one I picked.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking to use ThousandEyes is to give it a try, do the demo, and invest in such solutions that will significantly ease the work for engineers and networking professionals.
I believe ThousandEyes has been helpful along my path, and I look forward to seeing more additions and enhancements to the platform and the solution. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Alerts show exact client issues and boost troubleshooting efficiency
What is our primary use case?
We use
ThousandEyes primarily for monitoring our production and BCP servers. We specifically utilize it to monitor URL alerts. We have multiple applications, and at times, URLs may go down due to patching schedules or upgrades. When that happens,
ThousandEyes sends an alert, allowing us to see the exact error and client details. This helps us determine what the client is experiencing, and we can then contact the relevant team, such as L2 support, to resolve the issue.
What is most valuable?
I find the most valuable feature of ThousandEyes is the ability to directly see the client's exact issue. Unlike other platforms where we only receive update notes, ThousandEyes provides the exact error from the client, making troubleshooting more efficient.
What needs improvement?
ThousandEyes could improve by implementing a similar incident management system like
BigPanda or
ServiceNow. Having a dedicated incident alert system for URL alerts would help manage noise and streamline operations, especially during patch upgrades.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using ThousandEyes for two and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not observed any instability, like lagging or crashing, with ThousandEyes so far.
How are customer service and support?
I have contacted the technical support at ThousandEyes. There was an instance when the ThousandEyes URL, along with all other URLs, went down due to a network issue. We contacted the support team, and they resolved it within a couple of hours. Their response time and solution were satisfactory.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not use any alternatives before ThousandEyes.
How was the initial setup?
The initial installation of ThousandEyes was easy for us. It was straightforward to understand and allowed us to check and resolve errors efficiently.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate ThousandEyes nine out of ten. Despite its efficiency, it could still benefit from improved incident management.