Report:
Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring
How does Gartner define the Digital Experience Monitoring market in 2025?
Gartner defines digital experience monitoring (DEM) as the measurement of the availability, performance and quality of the user experience of applications. This can include internal users (employees), external users (customers and partners) or a digital agent connecting to an API. In addition to performance, DEM enables observability of user behavior and journeys based on their interaction with applications. DEM tools allow I&O leaders to understand the availability, performance and reliability of business applications, networks and infrastructure by focusing on understanding the user experience. This is in contrast to other performance monitoring approaches, such as observability platforms, that understand the inner workings of applications.
Key Facts for Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring in 2025
- Publication Date: 27 October 2025
- Document ID: G00823799
- Coverage: Global
- Authors: Padraig Byrne, Pankaj Prasad, Martin Caren, D.B. Cummings, Matt Crossley, Tanmay Bisht
- Core Purpose: DEM tools monitor the availability and performance of modern and legacy applications to gauge the end-user experience of employees and customers. Heads of I&O can use this Magic Quadrant to shortlist DEM vendors.
Strategic Planning Assumptions
No strategic planning assumptions provided.
How was the Digital Experience Monitoring market evolved in 2025?
- The DEM market grew by 17.1% in 2024 and is projected to grow by 14.3% CAGR through 2028
- DEM is transforming from passive performance measurement into a strategic engine for proactive, business-aware operations
- AI and machine learning are key to the future of DEM, automating analysis of user experiences and providing actionable insights
- Privacy continues to be a concern for vendors, clients, and regulators as RUM has access to sensitive personal information
- Growth is propelled by digital business transformation, importance of user experience, and proliferation of SaaS-based applications
- Market consolidation and M&A activity is increasing in the wider observability markets
- Significant 'reality gap' exists between marketing promises of 'agentic AI' and current assistive capabilities
- Integration with observability platforms is essential to unlock true value of DEM
What product features are required to be included in this year's evaluation?
- Measurement of the health and performance of an IT system from an external, front-end interface perspective, either via a UI or an API.
- Ability to visually display an end-to-end representation of a request, journey or interaction with the system showing points of intersection with system components.
- Ability to interrogate the system to answer questions about the impact that the health and performance of the system has on the user experience or behavior.
What are the common features of top products in the Digital Experience Monitoring space?
- Real user monitoring (RUM) — records the interactions of real users within a web application
- Synthetic transaction monitoring (STM) — simulated user interaction through scripts, bots, network traffic simulation or API tests
- Multiple geographic points of presence for synthetic transaction monitoring, and the option to deploy private agents for increased visibility
- Analysis of RUM telemetry, including session replay and customer journey mapping
- SaaS application performance and availability monitoring
- Benchmarking key performance metrics for establishing baselines and comparison and trend analysis
- Provide actionable insights through the use of advanced analytics and machine learning that are otherwise not possible or feasible to derive through manual interrogation and analysis of data.
- Support for browser emulation and automation languages such as Selenium, Cypress, Playwright and Puppeteer
- Internet performance monitoring — ability to provide insight into cloud services and the optimum paths available
- Thick client monitoring — capability to deploy DEM to non-web-based interfaces
- Integration with adjacent domains such as security monitoring and software testing
- Mobile application monitoring via software development kits (SDKs)
- Integrations with application performance monitoring or observability platforms to see a drill-down at the transaction level that shows how the application spends time when responding to a user request
Scope Exclusions
- Tools that focus primarily on customer experience analytics rather than measuring the impact of application performance
- Digital employee experience management (DEX) tools that focus exclusively on employee endpoints
- Solutions offering endpoint-only monitoring
- Solutions that focus on or are only provided within security or vendor VPN implementations
- Self-hosted deployment options (this Magic Quadrant focuses on SaaS offerings)
Inclusion Criteria
Vendors must, among other requirements:
- Generally available capabilities as of 16 June 2025
- Sell DEM tool directly to paying customers without requiring professional services help
- Active product roadmap and go-to-market strategy for DEM solution
- Phone, email and/or web customer support with documentation in English
- All mandatory features and three of five common features from market definition
- DEM tool delivered via SaaS (self-hosted alternatives optional)
- At least 50 paying, production customers in at least two geographic regions, or
- At least $5 million in annual GAAP revenue during 12 months prior to June 2025
Ability to Execute — Relative Weighting
- Product or Service - High
- Overall Viability - Low
- Sales Execution/Pricing - High
- Market Responsiveness/Record - Medium
- Marketing Execution - Medium
- Customer Experience - Medium
- Operations - Not Rated
Completeness of Vision — Relative Weighting
- Market Understanding - High
- Marketing Strategy - High
- Sales Strategy - Medium
- Offering (Product) Strategy - High
- Business Model - Low
- Vertical/Industry Strategy - Not Rated
- Innovation - High
- Geographic Strategy - Low
FAQs
Q: What does this research cover?
A: This research evaluates 15 vendors in the Digital Experience Monitoring market, assessing their ability to execute and completeness of vision. It covers DEM capabilities including real user monitoring (RUM), synthetic transaction monitoring (STM), session replay, customer journey mapping, and integration with observability platforms. The report focuses on SaaS-based solutions and vendors serving at least two geographic regions with 50+ paying customers or $5M+ in annual revenue.
Q: Who should use this research?
A: This research should be used by Heads of Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) and IT leaders responsible for monitoring application performance and user experience. It helps organizations shortlist DEM vendors based on their specific requirements, geographic needs, and strategic priorities. Buyers should use this Magic Quadrant in conjunction with the Critical Capabilities research to evaluate vendors against outcome-driven requirements rather than expecting a fully capable end-to-end solution from any single vendor.
Q: What are the mandatory features of vendors included in this market?
A: To be included in this Magic Quadrant, vendors must offer all three mandatory features: 1) Measurement of IT system health and performance from an external, front-end interface perspective via UI or API, 2) Ability to visually display end-to-end representation of requests/journeys showing system component intersections, and 3) Ability to interrogate the system to answer questions about how system health and performance impacts user experience or behavior. Additionally, vendors must offer at least three of the five common features listed in the market definition.
Q: What are some reasons for not being included in this report?
A:
- Product not generally available as of June 16, 2025
- Requires professional services engagement to purchase and use (not sold directly)
- No active product roadmap or go-to-market strategy
- Lacks customer support via phone, email, or web
- Does not offer documentation and support in English
- Missing mandatory features or fewer than three common features
- Not delivered via SaaS
- Fewer than 50 paying production customers in at least two geographic regions
- Less than $5 million in annual GAAP revenue for the 12 months prior to June 2025
- Did not rank among top organizations using Gartner's Customer Interest Indicator (CII)
Q: What differentiates Ability to Execute vs. Completeness of Vision?
A: Ability to Execute focuses on current operational capabilities including product quality, sales effectiveness, market responsiveness, and customer experience. It evaluates how well vendors are executing today in terms of their products, pricing, sales channels, and support. Completeness of Vision focuses on strategic direction and future potential, including market understanding, innovation, product strategy, and geographic expansion plans. It evaluates vendors' ability to anticipate market changes, drive innovation, and position themselves for future success rather than current execution.
Reference
- Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring, 27 October 2025, ID G00823799
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