Table of Contents
  • Monitor application performance: You can keep a close eye on your application performance at all stages of development.
  • Proactively address bugs: Pick up on anomalies and problems before your users start complaining. This proactive approach can lead to a better user experience and a smoother-running application.
  • View trends over time: Track the long-term trends of your Heroku applications to plan optimization and resource allocation projects.
  • Track usage: Learn exactly how your users engage with your Heroku applications.
  • Maintain compliance: You can check your logs to monitor the access and usage of sensitive data.
  • Centralized logs: Bring all of your application logs together in a single place so that it’s easier to manage. You reduce the administrative overhead of your application, simplify backup processes, and offer a single version of truth for anyone working with this data.
  • User-friendly syntax: Sumo Logic has a search language that is straightforward and simple to use.
  • LogReduce: This Sumo Logic feature distills your log events into groups of patterns, which speeds up analysis so you can quickly address issues as they arise.

Heroku is a powerful PaaS that helps developers easily and quickly launch and scale modern applications. In addition to its base features, it also offers Heroku Elements Marketplace, which has add-ons for expanding the functionality of the base platform.

While Heroku has built-in logging for your applications in this platform, you may find that the default interface leaves something to be desired. You’re also limited to the last 1,500 lines of your logs in this interface, so you lack full visibility into your application’s performance. Manually going through your logs is not a sustainable practice past a certain point, and you could miss vital insights with this approach.

Several logging add-ons are available for Heroku, which makes it possible to connect to more advanced tools for this important process. We chose the top three for 2021 based on G2 reviews.

  1. Sumo Logic Heroku Logging Add-On
  2. LogDNA Heroku Logging Add-On
  3. Coralogix Heroku Logging Add-On
  4. Choosing the Right Logging Add-On for Your Heroku Applications
  5. Continue Expanding Your Application Analytics Capabilities

1) Sumo Logic Heroku Logging Add-On

The Sumo Logic add-on delivers a wide range of logging tools for your Heroku applications. The standout features with this solution include:

 

2) LogDNA Heroku Logging Add-On

LogDNA is a Heroku logging add-on that offers a streamlined configuration experience. It provides many user-friendly features for working with your logs, including:

  • Automatic format detection: During LogDNA’s log ingestion process, it automatically identifies the format so that it can parse, index, and tag your logs. This feature allows you to save time on configuring the add-on, as it already handles many important parts of log analysis for you.
  • User-friendly interface: LogDNA is set up to be as user-friendly as possible, so users can quickly access insights from application logs. Type-ahead fields speed up inputs, and you can use natural language queries rather than a syntax.
  • Scales to massive logs: LogDNA is an enterprise-scale logging tool, with a capacity that goes up to terabytes daily. When you’re working with high logging loads, using an add-on that can keep up with the demand is essential.
  • Aggregated logs: You can aggregate Heroku logs along with other systems into one service with LogDNA. This centralization allows you to search through logs across your organization easily, without needing to move between solutions.
  • Create dashboards: Visualize your application logs with custom dashboards that show you related events.
  • Save frequently used queries: You can set up your most common queries so that you can run them with a single click.

3) Coralogix Heroku Logging Add-On

Coralogix is a Heroku logging add-on that’s focused on alerting you based on this data. Automated alerting allows you to react quickly to problems in your application, changes in user behavior, and resource demands on your applications. Here are the key features offered by Coralogix:

  • Alerts sent to multiple channels: You can send alerts to many popular channels, including email, Slack, OpsGini, and PagerDuty. In addition, you can set up custom webhook destinations if you need to send alerts to a platform that’s not natively supported by Coralogix.
  • Customize your alerting: You have fine-tuned control over the alerts that get sent out with Coralogix, so that your team only gets notifications when it’s important. Some ways that you can customize alerts include under and over values, immediate, dynamic machine learning, and relative alerts.
  • Log aggregation: Coralogix will put your logs into their original patterns within 24 hours. You’re able to see the data that’s important without being bogged down by unstructured entries. You can drill down into each part of the log to gain a better understanding of this information.
  • Software flow mapping: This add-on can automatically map software flows so that you can pick up on any problems in the production environment and where you can better optimize your solution.

 

Choosing the Right Logging Add-On for Your Heroku Applications

The right logging fit for your Heroku applications depends on your use case and business requirements.

For example, if you want to have a robust set of automated alerts and notifications, then Coralogix is the best pick of the three tools we covered. If you want a logging tool that requires little to no configuration before you can start using it, LogDNA offers the right experience for you. If you want a solution that offers a wide range of advanced capabilities, then Sumo Logic stands out.

By gaining control over your Heroku application logs, you’re able to discover problems before they impact the user experience, discover ways to grow your applications, and understand the trends and patterns over time. 

Continue Expanding Your Application Analytics Capabilities with Integrate.io's Heroku Integration

 

Integrate.io also offers a way to get more out of your Heroku application data. You can install the Integrate.io Heroku add-on to connect this ETL solution to your application data and easily build pipelines. The functionality offered by this tool includes aggregating your data, cleansing and transforming it, and then loading it back into Heroku or another data store. Schedule a call with our support team to start enriching your Heroku experience.