AppSignal Logging
Having quick access to your application’s logs is crucial for troubleshooting issues and assessing the health of various components, from your database to your messaging queue.
AppSignal Logging consolidates your application’s logs, enabling you to store, view, and query them, offering deeper insights into your application's performance and behavior. If you need to store logs for long retention periods, you can export them to an S3-compatible storage solution using the Long-Term Log Storage add-on.
AppSignal Logging helps you answer questions like
What errors are showing up in my logs, and where are they triggered?
What code in my app is causing performance to slow down?
What is the path of a request before and after it encounters an issue?
What are the severity levels of my app's logs?
How is my application performing during performance incidents?
Getting started
Our documentation covers everything you need to know to get AppSignal Logging up and running with your application.
- How to configure logging
- How to query, search and manage your logs
- How to export your logs with Long-term Log Storage
- How to create and manage triggers
- How to troubleshoot issues
Supported AppSignal Integrations
The following AppSignal integrations feature out-of-the-box support for AppSignal Logging:
Best Practices
To log or not to log, that can be a tricky question to answer. The best kinds of logs are descriptive, contextual, and concise. With AppSignal, you can get the most out of your logs by utilizing features like custom attributes, which allow you to add additional, filterable data to your log lines.
You can read our Learning Center article on logging best practices for more information on properly utilizing your application logs.
Log Retention
Your log data must not contain any Personal Identifiable Information (PII), such as names, email addresses, etc. It is your responsibility to ensure this data is filtered out before being sent to AppSignal, and when identifying a person is necessary that your application uses alternative forms of identification such as a user ID, hash, or pseudonym.
For HIPAA-covered entities, more information about signing a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) can be found in our Business Add-Ons documentation.
Retention will vary depending on your plan. You can find actual retention and pricing information on our plans page.
If you need to store logs for longer periods, you can export them to an S3-compatible storage solution using the Long-Term Log Storage add-on. This add-on allows you to retain your logs beyond the 30-day period AppSignal typically stores them, giving you greater control over your log data retention. For setup instructions, visit the Long-Term Log Storage setup guide.
Limitations
AppSignal Logging complements our APM features by capturing important events like slow database queries, admin activity, and outgoing API calls. However, there are some limitations:
- We support up to 500k log lines per minute per app.
- Log lines can be up to 10,000 characters, with any excess being truncated.
- Deeply nested JSON payloads are not supported.
For advanced monitoring and custom data tracking, we recommend using our Errors and Performance features, which are better suited for such use cases.