Crittercism’s app monitoring business is exploding: Revenue up 4x, now on 600M devices

Now that companies are realizing mobile apps are more than just a fad, they’re keen on making sure their apps actually function well.

And that’s good news for Crittercism.

The San Francisco company offers extensive mobile application performance monitoring for publishers, telling them exactly what could be causing a crash, or how they can make their apps run faster. Thanks to the increased focus on mobile apps and a surprising amount of interest from employee-facing app makers, Crittercism says that its revenue has quadrupled over the past year. It’s services now cover 600 million devices, double its figure from last year, and it’s also processing more than 2 billion app events a day.

The company initially aimed to improve the experience for consumer-facing apps, but founder and chief executive Andrew Levy tells me he was caught off-guard by attention from companies for their own internal apps. That includes things like Home Depot, which offers an app for contractors, and Urban Outfitters, which has replaced much of its in-store hardware with smartphones and tablets for employees.

“The employee app side for businesses is a little bit higher touch than consumer apps, which are more transactional,” Levy told me. Basically, it’s important for companies to make sure their internal apps are stable and efficient, since they get used more than consumer apps and their businesses actually depend on them. “The other thing is that consumer apps are very engineering-focused … employee facing apps are really pushing traditional companies towards mobile.”

Crittercism has raised $19 million in funding so far, most recently with a $12 million round led by Google Ventures. The company’s clients include big names like eBay, PayPal, and LinkedIn.

Looking ahead, Levy tells me he’s aiming to tie app performance metrics back to business metrics. He hopes that Crittercism can eventually show companies how much it will cost them if their apps fail.