API Monitoring for Site Performance Analysis

Using APIs have become quite common for websites as they offer convenience of using other web services. API is a piece of software that allows applications to communicate with each other. Through an API, websites or applications interact with each other to exchange information or add specific set of features or functionality. There are plenty of APIs both free and paid available web services that can help websites expand their functionality and offer additional services. Though APIs offer whole range of benefits for any kind of website, relying too much on third party APIs can put a site in a vulnerable situation. 

Particularly, in case of free APIs, when too many requests are made to the servers owning the API, the performance may go down due to excessive load on the servers. Sometimes an event could trigger massive traffic to the website leading to high volumes of API calls. And in other scenarios, some companies take APIs as an advantage of monetizing opportunity and force unnecessary advertisements. Any one not accepting their terms will be deprived of the API resource. For whatever reason, if API doesn’t work or the service providing API stops supporting it, then visitors to your website will have trouble accessing the full functionality. 

The Importance of API Monitoring for an Online Business

No matter how good your website is, if API doesn’t respond well or if its response is unreliable, then there will be negative effect on site functionality. The performance of APIs is crucial especially if they impact end-user experience. Whether the website is using API of your own or from third party, it is important to monitor and ensure that it is working and performing as it should. Any outages, errors or performance issues of APIs can generate bad experience to users and make your online business suffer.

Why a Monitoring Service with API Monitoring is Essential?

Not all website monitoring services investigate APIs for their speed and functionality. Only a quality service with comprehensive monitoring features can support testing of internal APIs and identifies defective third party APIs that the website is relying on. With API monitoring integrated in website monitoring, identifying and addressing API issues becomes easy. Additionally, to tailor the monitoring service features to the needs of websites, some monitoring service providers offer their own custom built APIs to their customers to include in the existing software. This will give their customers more control on monitoring process and lets them have a detailed check on each phase of the HTTP response / request. These additional monitoring capabilities allow site owners to deliver uninterrupted website service and find issues before their end users do.