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Hosted vs Self-hosted Collectors

When using AppSignal's OpenTelemetry integration, you have two options for deploying the AppSignal Collector:

This page will help you understand the differences between these approaches and choose the best option for your use case.

Hosted collector

The hosted collector is a service provided by AppSignal. It runs on AppSignal's infrastructure and receives OpenTelemetry data directly from your applications.

Benefits

  • Zero maintenance: AppSignal manages the collector for you, including updates, scaling, and monitoring.
  • No infrastructure costs: The hosted collector is included in your AppSignal subscription at no additional charge.
  • No setup required: Great for serverless applications, Platform-as-a-Service deployments (like Heroku, Render), and applications without the option to run additional services like the collector.

Limitations

  • Data privacy: Your application data arrives at the hosted collector unfiltered. We will filter the data during processing after it arrives.

Self-hosted collector

The self-hosted collector runs on your own infrastructure, either as a Linux package or Docker container.

Benefits

  • Enhanced privacy: Your application data never leaves your network until it's processed, sanitized, and sent to AppSignal.
  • Compliance: Some applications are legally required to process sensitive data within their own network before sending it externally.
  • Additional metrics: You want to collect host metrics from hosts where you install the collector's Linux package.

Requirements and considerations

  • Infrastructure management: You're responsible for installing, configuring, updating, and scaling the collector.
  • Infrastructure costs: You'll incur costs for the compute resources needed to run the collector.

Choosing the right option

If you need help deciding which collector to use, we advise the following below. If you need more help choosing, please reach out to us.

Use the hosted collector when

  • Your application runs on serverless platforms (AWS Lambda, Vercel, Netlify).
  • You're using Platform-as-a-Service providers (Heroku, Render, Railway) and can't run the collector as a Linux service or Docker container.
  • You want minimal operational overhead.
  • You don't have strict data residency requirements.

Use the self-hosted collector when:

  • You have strict data privacy or compliance requirements.
  • You want complete control over your infrastructure, including when the collector is updated.
  • You have the infrastructure to run the collector.

Getting started

Both options use the same configuration and provide the same features for collecting and processing your OpenTelemetry data.