Best Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) Tools 2025

What is Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) Software?

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM), also called end user experience monitoring (EUEM), gives IT personnel visibility into users’ digital experiences with given machines, tools, and websites. The software first gathers information about how applications and business transactions affect front-end experience. The software then presents this information to IT personnel in a way that reflects the user (such as employees) perspective, in digestible tables, charts, graphs, etc. Some DEM products focus strictly on monitoring, while others also include management and remediation capabilities in their platforms.

Digital experience monitoring is particularly important in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or when application virtualization is being used to deliver services. In these environments it is not always clear how application performance affects the end user's desktop workspace. Additionally, information gathered by DEM tools can be useful for analysis of software license utilization patterns, and budget rationalization.

These applications make DEM tools highly useful for monitoring employees’ digital experiences, as the most common users of VDI and virtualization instances. DEM products can dramatically improve employees’ digital experiences, and broader productivity as a result. The other primary use case is to monitor other end-users’ digital experiences, such as product customers or consumers.

DEM heavily leverages the application performance monitoring (APM) framework. Vendors offering DEM tools may offer whole and integrated APM or IT Infrastructure monitoring suites, or may focus on DEM and playing nicely with third party software. DEM products can utilize a range of discrete monitoring features, including:

• Synthetic monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• Network visibility
• Application performance monitoring
• Endpoint monitoring

These tools, when used together, provide a range of benefits to businesses. Real-time IT visibility allows organizations to proactively monitor and surface when there are inefficiencies, blockers, or disruptions in users’ digital experiences. Given the elevated expectations consumers and employees have around digital experiences, managing digital experiences deliver greater value than they would have before. DEM functions also help resolve omnichannel fragmentation from having disparate systems interconnected to widely varied degrees. These tools help identify where the gaps are in digital flows, and guide next steps towards patching said gaps.

Digital Experience Monitoring Tools Comparison

Consider these factors when comparing digital experience monitoring tools:

• Breadth and Depth of Data: What depth of data can each option deliver to the IT department. How real time is said data? What level of historical tracking and trends visibility is available?
• Monitoring vs. Remediation: Consider how valuable it would be to add automated or guided remediation capabilities on top of the core monitoring capabilities. Monitoring will be a universal capability, but only select vendors offer built-in remediation assistance at this point.
• APM vs. EUEM focus: Consider each vendor’s historical products/legacy approach to DEM. Some vendors focus on application performance management, which may lead to more technically-focused DEM. In contrast, end-user experience monitoring may facilitate deeper front-end user experience insights.

Start a digital experience monitoring product comparison here

Pricing Information

Digital experience monitoring products are usually priced by the amount of events/activity being monitored. Some pricing starts at $10+/month per 10,000 events. Most DEM vendors do not publish standard pricing, since pricing can vary significantly based on the specific use case and deployment environment.