Andy Halliday

Top 5 Best Server Log Analysing Tools

Server Logs

There are quite a few Server Log tools on the market and that can only be a good thing as more and more people realise the importance of the data that is held in the log files.

I have decided to review the top 5 server log file tools to see which is best.

Table of Contents

So they are the five contenders lets have a look at them.

* Lowest Score
***** Highest Score

	Screaming Frog	SEMRush	Onpage Rocks	Sunlight	Sumo Logic
Pricing	***	**	*****	**	*
Ease of use to set up	****	****	***	*****	**
Desktop / Cloud Based	Desktop	Cloud	Cloud	Cloud	Cloud
Reporting	**	***	****	*	*****
Overall	***	***	*****	*	**

Screaming Frog

From the company which brought you the very popular Screaming Frog crawling tool, they have now released a Server Log Tool.

SEMRush

To go along with the cloud-based crawling tool, they have now released a server log auditing dashboard.

Onpage Rocks

Been my ambition for a while to finally release a tool which stops me from doing Server Log Audits and puts the power into your hands.

I wanted to make it as affordable as possible and as easy to use that anybody can use it.

Sunlight

A very recent entrant to the market, they do things differently, you add a tag to your website and when Google Bot renders a page they report on it.

Not a full-blown server log auditing tool, but a nice intro into the market.

Sumo Logic

By far the biggest Server Log tool on the market, it’s an all-round server log analysing tool, helping both SEO and developers spot errors in the log files.

Price

Screaming Frog – like their desktop crawler, you pay a yearly fee for the software and its also desktop based.

SEMRush – quite pricy at $99.95 a month but this is part of their full suite.

Onpage Rocks – just $9.99 a month, by far the cheapest option on the market. Currently not real-time but that is being worked on.

Sunlight – while a good price – you get what you pay for.

Sumo Logic – the most expensive out of all the software, but they do offer a lot of metrics and are a lot more comprehensive in what they monitor (plus you can do it real time).

Ease of use to set up

Screaming Frog, SEMRush and Onpage rocks are all about the same, it requires you to get hold your log files from the server and upload them.

Sunlight requires you to install a tag on your website – but it only captures when Googlebot renders your pages.

Sumo Logic – requires more set up, its more advance, but this is because they currently offer real time reporting.

Desktop / Cloud Based

Apart from Screaming Frog, they are all cloud-based.

Reporting

Screaming Frog – doesn’t limited to certain Google bots and limited reporting (this is likely to change over the coming years – but we can only analyse what we can use now).

SEMRush – not as detailed as their Crawling dashboard

Onpage Rocks – second most comprenshive audits on the list

Sunlight – very basic information given

Sumo Logic – by far the most comrpehensive of the 5, but some of the metrics are more for developers than for SEO specialists – can be a little daunting when you first start to use the dashboard, but it doesn’t take long to get used to the dashboards and what they offer.

Overall:

Screaming Frog is a good intro but is very very limited to certain bots (Google) and not very detailed. There is no real reporting interface.

SEMRush – better dashbaording than Screaming Frog and a nice simple process for uploading logs, but still misses some very basic issues.

Onpage Rocks – great value for money at just $9.99 and covers the most SEO metrics – it’s a dashboard built with SEO in mind.

Sunlight – only really triggers for when Googlebot renders a page (doesn’t count crawl data) or any other bots. Its still in beta so has chances to improve a lot (however the way the data is collected it won’t ever be able to do hits and just renders).

Sumo Logic – once set up (can be quite difficult) its a great tool for multiple departments to use (SEO and developers) and while it has some very good SEO metrics, it does miss some important metrics, but it does offer a lot of non SEO metrics to monitor issues in your log files.

	Screaming Frog	SEMRush	Onpage Rocks	Sunlight	Sumo Logic
Pricing	***	**	*****	**	*
Ease of use to set up	****	****	***	*****	**
Desktop / Cloud Based	Desktop	Cloud	Cloud	Cloud	Cloud
Reporting	**	***	****	*	*****
Overall	***	***	*****	*	**

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