Checkly’s Impact on BÆRSkin: Enabling Daily Deployments and Reducing Response Times by Over 50%

The BÆRSkin team was facing several challenges when they decided it was time to search for a new monitoring solution: 

• Rapid Growth: With a growing customer base and product line, robust monitoring solutions became critical. The diverse range of products and services necessitated a comprehensive approach to ensure consistent performance.
• Manual Monitoring Challenges: Before adopting Checkly’s Terraform provider, BÆRSkin relied on manual checks and disparate monitoring tools, which proved inefficient and time-consuming. The lack of a Monitoring as Code approach led to inefficiencies and time-consuming manual checks.
• Transition to Microservices: Their composable journey, the shift from a monolithic architecture to microservices, added complexity, making it harder to monitor each component effectively. The granular nature of microservices required a more sophisticated monitoring solution that could handle multiple services simultaneously and integrate closely into the development process.

After using tools like Pingdom, Uptime Robot, and Google Cloud Monitoring, BÆRSkin thoroughly evaluated Checkly’s features. The team was particularly impressed by Checkly's ability to combine synthetic monitoring with real browser checks. This dual capability was crucial for BÆRSkin, alllowing them to monitor both backend services and frontend user experiences comprehensively. Other key factors included: 

• Integration with Existing Tools: One of the key factors in choosing Checkly was its seamless integration with other tools that BÆRSkin was already using, such as Playwright for testing and Sentry for error tracking. Checkly’s ability to fit into their existing ecosystem made the transition smoother and reduced the learning curve for the team. This seamless integration into the CI/CD pipeline ensured continuous monitoring and quick setup.
• User-Friendly Interface and Documentation: The user-friendly interface and detailed documentation provided by Checkly were significant advantages. Even though BÆRSkin primarily used the Terraform provider for infrastructure as code, the intuitive interface made initial setup and exploration straightforward. The clear documentation also helped resolve any issues quickly during the integration process.  
• Flexibility and Customization: Checkly offered a high level of flexibility and customization, allowing BÆRSkin to tailor their monitoring setup to their specific needs. Whether setting up heartbeats for scheduled tasks or creating custom API checks, the platform provided the necessary tools to ensure comprehensive monitoring. 

Among the tools that the BÆRSkin team tested, Checkly stood out as the best option due to its robust features, ease of integration, and overall cost-effectiveness.

BÆRSkin uses Checkly's heartbeat monitoring to track scheduled tasks and processes, ensuring they run as expected. These tasks send heartbeat signals upon successful completion, and any missed signals immediately alert the team to potential issues. 

This implementation has been invaluable, providing early detection of issues and increasing the reliability of critical operations. Proactive alerts and insights into task performance enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of incident response, ensuring smooth operations and improving the customer experience.