Avenue Pros and Cons

Avenue’s Ops Queue tool has saved us hours of digging and gives our exec team peace of mind know that tasks get closed out (according to the prescribed playbook). We’d thought about building a tool like this internally but decided against because it would require too much engineering time — with Avenue we could set up the alerts we needed around operations and account management in minutes using simple sql queries. Day 1 we were able to connect our Snowflake, Airtable, and Intercom to Avenue. Each day our ops team knows exactly what they need to work on at the exact time it happens and they have an accompanying playbook to figure out how to resolve. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Would like to get recommendations on how we can improve operations — I imagine Avenue collects so much data on how ops teams work, it would be nice to get curated recs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As a hands-on operator at a consumer company, Avenue has simplified and legitimized our QA system - it’s truly been a game-changer. Before Avenue I built these internal systems which ended up being janky. We considered hiring an engineer or using part of our existing engineering team to build out an internal ops alerting + smart-queueing system but Avenue was wayyy cheaper (and faster to implement). It’s so easy to set up monitors (which basically means what’s the issue you want to monitor for, where do you find it, and who needs to solve it, and what can be automated in the process). The data enrichment (which lets us build an alert based off 2 data sources like Snowflake + Zendesk, is helpful for streamlining our communication and allowing us to automate vendor communications effortlessly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Would be nice to have more customizable reporting in the tool. We currently use the data warehouse export and signal view to get a read on performance but I’d like to see progress over time IN the app. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Avenue has been great for alerting. We hooked it up to Zendesk and Slack, and now, whenever a customer has an issue, Avenue automatically kicks a Zendesk ticket. It even fills in all the details about the customer, so our support team knows what’s up right away and can communicate with the rest of the team in Slack (since only the CX team uses Zendesk) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Would be helpful to have templates for our industry so we know what customers like us should be monitoring for. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Avenue’s broad data source support and SQL query capabilities make it an easy choice for monitoring critical business events. The plug-and-play integrations with Slack and Zendesk enable real-time alerts and collaboration within our existing workflows. Our team can stay in the tools they already live in because of cross-platform syncing. Also like that we can manage escalations / reminders in Slack to ensure team closes the loop (in tools like Zendesk/Intercom) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Would be helpful to have more out-of-the-box templates so our team can build out more alerting in Avenue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The versatility of Avenue is impressive. It’s not just an alerting tool, but a comprehensive platform for data observability and incident management. The platform’s ability to integrate with various data sources like Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery, and others is great. I also appreciate the ease of setting up monitors using SQL queries or other database types. The integration with Slack for real-time alerts is another highlight. I also really appreciate the support we get from the Avenue team — whenever I need help I reach out in Slack and get a quick reply. The team has also reached out proactively to help me configure monitors more efficiently. They were also very open to coming up with a pricing plan that worked for both parties. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There was initially a lack of tutorials or documentation on how to use specific fields when creating alerts or monitors. However, I’ve been informed that they have been working on updating their documentation, which should make the user experience even better. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What makes Avenue unique is its capacity to combine data from several platforms, offering a single picture that fosters useful ideas. The proactive alerting mechanism is actually a game-changer because it enables us to spot problems early and take action to prevent further damage. Additionally, operational effectiveness is increased by the easy interaction with programs like Twilio and Zendesk. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Since Avenue doesn't offer self-serve sign-up, we had to go through sales to get started. The sales team is excellent, but we couldn't simply sign up and start using the service without first meeting with someone. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The previous manner in which we helped our Ops team was to have a member ping an engineer to get the data they needed. This wasn't always that easy since not all engineers had Prod access and there often wasn't an exact request (you need to dig around a bit to figure out what you really need). With Avenue, we've completely removed this step and our Ops team simply creates the Alerts it needs and then can just wait for any signals that pop up afterwards. This helps free up time for both teams. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Because it's not always totally clear what the Ops team needs to look up to find the problem, having AI suggestions that are based on the context of the database would be helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I was the first employee at CommandBar so I wear many hats and needed a tool that would help me with stakeholder comms + transparency. As an early user of Avenue, I'm amazed by how much the tool has evolved and the responsiveness of the engineering team to feature requests. My favorite feature is the Slack integration and comment syncing across tools. Our team lives in Slack so we needed a tool that would augment our communications without forcing the team out of Slack. Being able to have real-time user data and event alerts come directly into our Slack channels has made a world of difference in how we manage workflows. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While it doesn't take much time to set up a monitor, if you want an effective operations "control center" as Avenue pitches then you need to be intentional from the start how you are going to manage and organize Avenue (as you would any other tool). Before diving into building out monitors, you should make sure to plan what you want your workspace to look like. Avenue helps with this by having teams and working hours and things like that. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As an engineer, I appreciate Avenue’s webhook monitors. The ability to trigger alerts based on a webhook is super useful. I also find the customization feature beneficial, especially being able to send communications to our customers through our email marketing tool, customer.io. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Avenue solves our current ops needs right now but it would be great if it had prompts for how you could improve operations. I imagine a “monitor suggestions” feature where Avenue tells you what companies like you monitor for. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The integrations Zendesk and Slack are my favorite parts of Avenue. It allows for comment syncing across different platforms, so each team can stay aware of all issues but also remain in their native tools. The internal notes feature in Avenue tickets also adds a layer of clarity, which is particularly beneficial during complex issue resolution (and good for referencing my own notes when we get to our monthly business reviews and I need to pull specific examples) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AI monitor suggestions!!! Write sql for me! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.