Log Monitoring helps companies collect, aggregate and analyze application log data to better optimize their applications. As this data can help them understand the workings of their application performance and catch issues.

Yet, many companies are still hesitant to use it citing various excuses. Many of these excuses are rather their preconceived notions. Here are some of such popular excuses and how to beat.

Excuse 1: Only Large Scale Applications require Log Monitoring

A lot of startups think that since they are small and have a smaller customer base they don't require Log Monitoring . Afterall there are quite a few servers to manage and fewer users to deal with.

What these companies don't think about is that accidents can happen anytime. As long as the application is live in production, there will be some common issues which might go unnoticed. If there is proper log monitoring in place, debugging the root cause of the problem becomes quite simple. Plus it is always better to cultivate log monitoring habit early on.

Excuse 2: Log Monitoring is an Old-School Way of doing things

Many folks associate log monitoring with something which was practised in the DOS era. They start using all those fancy application performance monitoring tools which do tell you about the problems which occurred on the server and/or the application but just not how it occurred. You’re not getting the full story from your data without log monitoring.

Excuse 3: Log Monitoring is Expensive

While some log management tools are definitely expensive. There are a few which are reasonably priced. And let's be honest, we all hate those "unknown" or "something went wrong" system errors. I myself have struggled with the problems that come from a lousy logging strategy. Adding enough context to logs will make the difference in identifying what log data is useful, and what data is useless. Always consider factors like the benefit provided and the overall time saved while factoring in the costs.