When comparing Sentry vs Timber, the Slant community recommends Sentry for most people. In the question“What are the best log management, aggregation & monitoring tools?” Sentry is ranked 2nd while Timber is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Sentry is:
It's what Sentry calls [Rollups](https://docs.sentry.io/learn/rollups/]. All individual issues rolled-up can still be drilled down. Also two issues can be **merged** manually.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Consolidates similar errors and makes resolution easy
It's what Sentry calls [Rollups](https://docs.sentry.io/learn/rollups/]. All individual issues rolled-up can still be drilled down. Also two issues can be merged manually.
Pro Email/Slack/GitHub/Hipchat integration
Newly discovered issues (i.e. one that isn't rolled-up under and existing one) can generate an instant notification via many means.
Pro Has an official Docker image
Sentry has an official Docker image which means it's likely going to be well reviewed and maintained for a while and it makes it easy to set up.
Pro Completely open source, with a hosted version available
Sentry is a completely open source tool. It's free to use if you want to run it on your own. If you want to avoid the overhead of running and maintaining another server, it also has a hosted version available at www.getsentry.com
Pro Source maps support
Has support for source maps.
Pro Can create projects and teams
A single Sentry server can be used for various teams/products.
Pro Beautiful, modern, easy interface
The Timber interface stands out in the space:
- It's beautiful, easy, and modern.
- It's fast. It uses advanced front-end technologies to maximize performance and usability (react, redux, etc).
Pro Great search
Timber offers a really great simple search, with a support for advanced features like: term negation, condition grouping (parenthesis), regex, field searches and conditions, etc.
Pro SQL query your logs (w/ join support)
Timber allows you to SQL query your logs just like you would a traditional database. The JOIN support is very powerful.
Pro Six month searchable retention
The retention Timber offers is exceptionally longer. The default is generally 2 - 4 weeks, Timber offers 6 months.
Pro Real-time graphing
Because Timber fully embraces structured data, graphing is simple, real time, and fast. They provide a number of aggregates you can graph on.
Pro Automatic context & structured data
Timber provides native libraries that automatically attach metadata to your logs. They've designed a schema that defines events and context, which normalizes the data and makes querying, alerting, and graphing simple and reliable.
Pro Easy installation
Timber can be installed in < 1 min and usually with a single command. It asks your for your application details and provides 1 set of simple instructions.
Pro Simple pricing and plans. No feature matrices.
Besides the free plan, Timber doesn't impose limits on the number of users, alerts, etc. It's entirely based on the amount of data allowed for the plan. It's refreshingly straightforward.
Pro Real-time alerts with thresholds
The alerts are real-time and the approach is thoughtful. Instead of blasting you with alerts every time it's triggered, they change the state of the alert once, notify you once, and then notify you again when the alert is no longer an issue.
Pro Excellent documentation
Timber's docs are detailed and thoughtful, both for the service as well as the libraries they offer.
Pro No rate limiting
Beyond the space your plan is allowed to use, there is no rate limiting.
Pro Logs show up quickly
Logs show up < 3 seconds of when they are generated
Cons
Con Not really a logging solution
Sentry collects exceptions, it's not a solution for log aggregation.
Con Can't filter by browser versions
Sentry only filters by browser names and not by browser versions (for example: Firefox, instead of Firefox 27, Firefox 28 etc...)
Con No free cloud hosting
Unfortunately there is no free plan for cloud hosted solution. Only self-hosted solutions are free to use.
Con Not really a centralized log management tool
It only takes in events from specified "apps", not all unstructured data. And, if you select "other" (apps), it just says:
Bummer! We don't support apps of this type yet.