ControlUp vs PRTG Network Monitor comparison

ControlUp and Paessler GmbH are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. ControlUp is ranked #37 with an average rating of 7.7, while Paessler GmbH is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.6. ControlUp holds a 0.9% mindshare in IM, compared to Paessler GmbH’s 4.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ControlUp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Paessler GmbH users who would recommend it.

ControlUp

Read 11 ControlUp reviews

1,407 Views
960 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 101 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

7,258 Views
4,823 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

ControlUp

PRTG Network Monitor

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

PRTG Network Monitor and ControlUp compete in the network monitoring category, with ControlUp having an upper hand due to its extensive features that offer additional operational value for complex infrastructures.

Features: PRTG Network Monitor is highly valued for its rapid deployment, easy setup, and a wide range of sensors that efficiently monitor network traffic and devices. It provides intuitive dashboards for instant visibility and is adaptable with custom scripts and sensors. ControlUp offers in-depth endpoint monitoring, real-time insights, and integrates well with various infrastructures. It comes with powerful administration tools, including script-based actions and comprehensive logs that enhance troubleshooting capabilities.

Room for Improvement: PRTG Network Monitor could improve cost management for large-scale enterprises, enhance its complex reporting features, and offer richer integrations for diverse infrastructures. ControlUp may benefit from streamlining its pricing structure, expanding its basic feature set without additional costs, and enhancing user-guidance materials for improved ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PRTG is praised for its straightforward deployment with minimal constraints, and its customer service is considered responsive and efficient. ControlUp also excels in deployment simplicity, with an easy-to-navigate interface backed by professional and responsive support services.

Pricing and ROI: PRTG Network Monitor's pricing model is cost-effective for small to medium businesses, but costs may escalate for large enterprises. It is economically favorable compared to SolarWinds. ControlUp, although perceived as more expensive, offers substantial ROI due to its robust features that justify the investment, especially in complex IT environments.

To learn more, read our detailed ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 838,713 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

ControlUp

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

37th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.2%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Richasvi Tripathi

Solutions Developer at HCL Technologies

Used to monitor several devices, but most reports do not give information of all the devices

We have approximately 10 to 20 feature requests pending on the vendor side. Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices. In our case, we are monitoring 200000 devices. So, we need details for all those devices, but that is limited to 100, which they have improved to an extent in some reports. I'm thinking of one feature request for ISPs because the dashboard does not provide a detailed list of ISPs, and it provides the wrong list. I feel some firewall issues are blocking that, and the team cannot send that detail. That may be the case. One feature request pending on the vendor side is the data format change. Once you see a detail in the report, it is mentioned in some other format, which is hard to analyze sometimes.

Read full review

Tochukwu Uzomba

Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited

Efficiently monitor networks across regions with seamless setup and robust feature set

PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational. It is an all-in-one monitoring solution without extra costs. For example, we set it up for an insurance company with branches across Africa. We are able to monitor from Lagos without installing anything in the branches, using the agentless feature. We just put in the IP address and the parameter, and we monitor from those ends. Additionally, all the sensors are very useful. Most people are interested in the bandwidth monitoring sensor to see what bandwidth the users are consuming. The pricing is affordable compared to SolarWinds.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It shows you so many details of what's going on in that log-on that, if there's a problem, you can identify it in five minutes."

"Integration with Netscaler and Scoutbees can provide a proper end-to-end analysis of the user's experience and give us a real ROI."

"The most valuable feature is the granularity of visibility into the resources that are in use by our applications."

"ControlUp has an easy installation process."

"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."

"When using ControlUp, the core feature that we have found valuable is its UI. It is a valuable tool to view the analysis reactions of a base core Level 2 or Level 1 team so that they can complete the necessary troubleshooting."

"The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities."

"ControlUp is beneficial as it provides a web interface through which you can access all your infrastructure—servers, devices, and VDI infrastructure—all on the same platform. It supports gathering all infrastructure components in a single, unified dashboard. This helps you identify performance issues or high resource utilization, allowing quick troubleshooting. I appreciate the solid interface that ControlUp offers."

More ControlUp pros

"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is the different monitoring probes available."

"The sensors and probes are great, nice and lightweight, they don't take up too many resources on the system. We just deploy them out and they start reporting instantly."

"It allows us to directly add individual VMs independently."

"The up-to-date graphs and the history are very good."

"Good compilation of the system's information."

"It improves the status of my infrastructure, from networking devices to real-time machines."

"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is real-time monitoring."

"We have asked questions of their technical support and they have a very good response time."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

Cons

"Something I would love to see from a partner perspective would be maybe a way to do this in a surface hosting provider."

"The most common complaint that I have heard, at least within our organization, is about reporting. They have their own reporting. It's just that it doesn't yet include everything that you can look at within the application. You can only report on specific metrics or collections."

"There was some lag earlier, and reports pulled from the dashboard would sometimes be half an hour old. But now, the information provides real-time status, which is greatly appreciated. Overall, I've seen improvement in the product."

"Integration is always a problem, and we feel that we are doing our best and the service provider thinks they are doing their best. I guess if ControlUp's system could be more capable or if people could understand the integration part, that would be better."

"The graphical user interface needs to be improved from version to version."

"Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices."

"Solve is a quick and intuitive tool for quickly mapping data together, however, once you have the view of the data that you like, it is difficult to share this with colleagues."

"ControlUp could improve the integration. Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring has better integration."

More ControlUp cons

"Maybe in the future there will be room for improvement, but currently, there is nothing pressing that I can think of"

"I would like to have a VM version that can be installed on a cloud such as Azure. We're using Azure, and we're eliminating on-premise servers. It would be helpful to have a PRTG version that can be installed on the Azure cloud."

"The licensing policy needs more flexibility."

"The only sort of limitation is the actual probes. So, if you don't have enough probes on there, you can over flip them and cause the WMI sensors and SNMP sensors to sort of overload. Sometimes, they might timeout for a minute, but they do come back."

"PRTG Network Monitor needs to show bandwidth utilization in proper graphs. It isn't easy to learn."

"Technical support is an area with concerns in PRTG Network Monitor, where improvements are required."

"Can be slow in the way it polls the different engines."

"Sometimes, it is difficult to drill down further to get information, e.g., if we saw spike in traffic, then we would want to drill down and find out what is causing that spike in traffic."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."

"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."

"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."

"There is a license to use PRTG Network Monitor and it is annually."

"PRTG Network Monitor is not that expensive, so I like it cost-wise. There's no additional cost apart from the standard licensing fees. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I would rate the cost of PRTG Network Monitor a two."

"We pay nothing for it. Its 100 sensors have allowed us to put a magnifying glass on some systems, providing an extra layer of detail. Therefore, our outgoing is nothing and our incoming is a lot of useful data that we can react to proactively."

"The pricing is okay and it is cheaper than some competing products."

"If you are not too sure about it, try the free version. Then, if you like it, you can go to the paid version and roll it out."

"I would like better pricing models for smaller businesses. The free version is fantastic, but it's too restrictive. If they could just get up to 200 sensors for a reasonable fee for on-premise, I would give PRTG my credit card right now."

"On a yearly basis, I believe it's between £1,200 and £1,500."

"The pricing for PRTG in our case is reasonable because we have a lot of applications to monitor within PRTG. It is not that expensive."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Healthcare Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

54%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ControlUp Real-time?

Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive. It is a cheap tool because it is deployed to many devices where I work.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ControlUp Real-time?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?

We use the tool to monitor approximately 2,00,000 devices for a client. We check how the devices are doing in terms of hardware and software. We also check their health and alerts every day. If som...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it avoid the configuring the device in PRTG. It automatically discover the device an...

See all answers

What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?

The prices are very high for PRTG Network Monitor. That's why I'm using the free100 sensor license.

See all answers

Comparisons

Nexthink vs ControlUp

Compared 27% of the time

Citrix uberAgent Monitoring vs ControlUp

Compared 17% of the time

eG Enterprise vs ControlUp

Compared 10% of the time

SysTrack vs ControlUp

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs ControlUp

Compared 3% of the time

More ControlUp Competitors

LibreNMS vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp

February 2025

Download ControlUp product report

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

February 2025

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Overview

ControlUp is a digital experience monitoring management platform that makes it possible for IT teams to deliver a work-from-anywhere experience for employees. The solution makes fixing and preventing issues easy, enabling IT teams to make smarter decisions. It also provides monitoring performance, availability, and useful productivity metrics.

The ControlUp platform supports:

Any digital workstyle
Physical endpoints
Virtual desktops
Apps
SaaS
Web apps
Unified communications tools

ControlUp Features

ControlUp has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Out-of-the-box device and performance metrics
Custom metric and device data collection
Non-intrusive, secure agents with offline mode
Custom reporting
Easy-to-use dashboards
Scalable SaaS infrastructure
Built-in troubleshooting & remediation actions
Remote assist
Custom script actions
Multiple scripting languages
Automation and alerting

ControlUp Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing ControlUp. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Wide range of platform options: ControlUp offers multiple platform options including Windows, macOS, Linux, and IGE, independent of device location.

Powerful analytics: With ControlUp, you can analyze across your entire infrastructure or you can collect detailed individual device performance.

Optimizes performance: The solution enables you to remediate issues and optimize performance with its support of both manual and automated actions.

Minimize user downtime: ControlUp helps you catch common issues that lead to workflow interruptions. Self-correcting capabilities and comprehensive early-warning systems address issues before they impact employee productivity.

Resolve issues faster: The solution enables you to spend less time on support calls and more time driving value via its real-time troubleshooting and remediation solutions.

Increased visibility of remote environments: Gain real-time visibility across your entire network and find new ways to deliver the best end-user experience possible.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the ControlUp solution.

A Chair, IEEE Consumer Technology Society - Dallas,Texas, USA at a non-profit says, “In terms of the public cloud, ControlUp's features make us feel very secure. Security, uptime, and reduced capital expenditures are the main reasons we use ControlUp. So basically, the money that we consume is based on the amount of time we are using a service. ControlUp offers a return-on-investment type of approach that helps us.”

A VP Virtualisation and Citrix Engineer at BlackRock mentions, “Solve is quickly becoming one of the most-used features. Its interface allows us to connect to all 54,000 monitored endpoints in real-time. The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities. Combined with the triggers, we have been growing their usage to fix things before they become an issue. Lastly, the controller view allows us to compare the configurations of settings side-by-side which is extremely helpful when tracking down the RCA of an issue.”

A Senior Citrix Remote Access Engineer at Rabobank comments, “The high-level view of the estate coupled with powerful administration tools has been great. We can see real-time performance and trends and can create triggers for common issues with associated scripts that can automate a lot of the previous manual remediation steps.”

ControlUp

PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.

To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.

Paessler GmbH

Sample Customers

B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor

January 2025

Free Report: ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor report.

See our list of best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors.

We monitor all IT Infrastructure Monitoring reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.