PRTG Network Monitor vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Paessler GmbH and VMware are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Paessler GmbH is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.9, while VMware is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.9. Paessler GmbH holds a 4.2% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Paessler GmbH users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 101 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

6,972 Views
4,667 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 46 vRealize Network Insight reviews

960 Views
556 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

PRTG Network Monitor and vRealize Network Insight compete in the network monitoring category. PRTG seems to have an upper hand in cost-effectiveness and ease of deployment, while vRealize excels in detailed network flow analysis.

Features: PRTG Network Monitor is known for its intuitive setup, a diverse range of monitoring sensors like SNMP and WMI, and cost-effective pricing. Its flexible licensing model and real-time alerting system are highly appreciated. vRealize Network Insight specializes in providing deep insights into network traffic flows, with advanced visualization capabilities, helping in planning application migrations and monitoring east-west traffic.

Room for Improvement: PRTG Network Monitor could enhance its solution by improving template and application monitoring, along with distributed monitoring for remote networks. Improvements in dashboard graphics and sensor customization are also needed. vRealize Network Insight would benefit from better third-party integrations, simpler reporting features, and enhanced compatibility with various network devices.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PRTG Network Monitor is praised for a straightforward deployment process and requires minimal manpower, which is advantageous for companies with limited IT resources. Its customer service is responsive but limited to email support. vRealize Network Insight, effective in on-premises setups, can be complex to deploy in hybrid environments. Their support is reliable, though users seek more integration assistance and training resources.

Pricing and ROI: PRTG Network Monitor is recognized for its competitive and straightforward pricing, offering excellent ROI with its comprehensive package. This makes it appealing to small and medium enterprises demanding cost-effective solutions. Conversely, vRealize Network Insight is often considered expensive, which is seen as a barrier despite the valuable insights it provides. However, both deliver significant ROI by enhancing resource optimization and minimizing downtime.

To learn more, read our detailed PRTG Network Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight

February 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 842,592 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

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

5th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

20th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

19th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.2%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

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

NiteshKumar1

Principle consultant at Infosys

The tool's configuration is easy and artifacts are easily accessible through professional services and the web

The product is highly regarded, and many customers have been using it along with other VMware products like vSphere and VMware vCloud Usage Insight. However, recently, there's been a trend among customers, especially those using VMware for a considerable period, to explore the potential of migrating to the public cloud. The common concern among these customers is how the VMware products will perform in the public cloud environment. Migrating instances from VMware to different platforms is not easy, especially when dealing with many instances across multiple customers. Customers are keen to maintain the functionality of their existing VMware products but prefer to run them on the public cloud instead of on-premise servers. Our clients for vRealize Network Insight are enterprise businesses. I rate it a nine out of ten.

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

"The bandwidth monitoring is a very attractive feature, it can tell you the bandwidth utilization while it is attempting to connect to the host for feedback."

"The technical support seems to be quick, clever, and has a comprehensive knowledge base online, which is fantastic."

"We use the remote probes a lot for our branch offices. Instead of deploying the full instance of PRTG, we'll put a remote probe out there. This simplifies the whole deployment for us."

"It is a user-friendly solution."

"The product is simple and easy to implement."

"It's very easy to manage when you've got time to do some work on it: things like adding devices, adding groups, adding sensor clusters, and being able to clone and move stuff around."

"Its proactiveness is its most valuable feature. We already know when we come in, in the morning, if a server or site is down, as opposed to someone telling us."

"The best feature is that it lets me know what is going on. I need to know if something has gone down, I need to know if something is running very slowly. PRTG tells me that."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"It has enabled us to set up and do application discovery, as far as network traffic is concerned, and set up the appropriate rules that we need to make sure we're compliant with our security frameworks."

"I like being able to see the flows coming in and out of the product. In terms of monitoring network flows, we use it to verify whether or not different servers/applications should be communicating with each other."

"It allows us to go from virtual through NSX, up to the core, and see all of that in one pane of glass, it's pretty easy."

"It is user-friendly. It's pretty simple to deploy and to run. It gives you pretty easy-to-understand reports, very graphically intense, so you can visualize what's going on in your network."

"We haven't had any complaints about the stability of the solution or heard of any issues. None of our clients have mentioned running into bugs or glitches. There haven't been crashes."

"If we deploy NSX it shows us how the workflow will flow in the organization, what the roadblocks are, and what we need to do to overcome those hurdles. When we run this product, it gives us reports which describe problems with physical switches. We work with the network team to get them all resolved."

"vRNI can trace the flow of each and every packet and it is easy for us to troubleshoot all the issues that we do have with the networking. We can trace down the packet to a point where it has been dropped."

"The most valuable feture is NetFlow to help us understand how VMs communicate with each other over ports that are known and ports that are also unknown to us. Our company is a security company, so it's very important for us to know exactly which VMs are doing what at all times."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"The technical support could respond a little bit quicker."

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

"We run it in a cluster, so we have two that run together. The cluster behind it is sketchy at times."

"PRTG Network Monitor should provide syslog monitoring since it is not available at this time. There are very limited features as compared to other solutions."

"I would like to see more updates available in this solution."

"I would like to see Office 365 monitoring. Essentially, it doesn't do it. I assumed not at all, but apparently it does it slightly. However, due to issues with APIs, they currently don't provide full monitoring for O365."

"I wouldn't mind better categories for the sensors. When I go to add a new sensor for a new device, there are some categories in there already, and they can be filtered out, but there's quite a large pool of sensors... When I want to go in and find something quite specific, I have got to scroll down and scroll down to find what I'm actually looking for,"

"The technical support from PRTG needs significant improvement."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"There could be some deeper analytics into packet inspection and trace flows. It could use some kind of machine learning to look at Layer 7 traffic for potential malware or corrupt packets."

"There is room for improvement when it comes to pricing because we pay here in Brazil, and all the costs are based on the dollar."

"The only real improvement they can make is to add more third-party vendors into the environment, mostly switch manufacturers, because it's really limited to Cisco equipment and there are a lot of companies out there other than Cisco."

"After you use it for a little while you become accustomed to it but the layout doesn't feel very intuitive. You have to dig around and find the exact place where you can find the information, where you can actually see your east-west traffic, etc. I would like them to bring that information more to the forefront, instead of having to find it."

"If it were more application-aware, more descriptive; if it were able to determine the application that is actually doing the communication, that would be easier. More application information: which user or account it's accessing, is it accessing this application, doing these calls, if it is accessing a script, what script is it accessing. Things like that would provide deeper analytics so I can track what's going on. It would not just be, "These people shouldn't be talking," but who is actually doing these calls."

"I'd like to see better support for being able to search the hardware NetFlow data. It ingests fairly well, but you can't tell, in a lot of cases, what source the data came from. I'd like to see more support for picking specific sources. That way you could really make a compelling use case. There are also some difficulties where it can't exactly trace the path between source and destination but if you hit the reverse flow on the same search it shows the entire path."

"I would like to see them expand the capabilities to infrastructure types other than just VMware."

"It needs to be a little easier to use and to understand the information it's putting out. That would make it more helpful. If you're not a network person you need to understand things like network policies and concepts. If you gave it to a regular admin, it would be nice if it were easier for them to pick up what is going on, understand the flows and whether or not stuff should be talking to each other, as opposed to just port groups and IP addresses."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The ability to use the base version with 100 free sensors is great. The cost on other packages can be very reasonable."

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

"We looked at PRTG and SolarWinds. From a cost side perspective, compared to PRTG, and from what you get back from it, PRTG was sort of a hands down the winner."

"The price is pretty comparable."

"We've got the unlimited package... I believe it was around the £15,000 per year mark."

"We are satisfied with the price."

"The pricing is very low compared to other solutions."

"We have unlimited devices and sensors, and it is a bit pricey, but we do have unlimited sensors. With all things considered the price is fine, related to the solution itself. PRTG Network Monitor is good value for money."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The solution has reduced the time that we spend on other products. For example, with NSX, we were able to quickly find things that we would normally spend days trying to figure out."

"Cost always has room for improvement, you could always make it cheaper. But I think it's a good value for what you pay for it."

"It's a little expensive, but for what you're getting out of the product, you often see the trade-off. It depends on the type of licensing you have. It might be a little too pricey for some."

"The solution has helped us to reduce time, increase performance, reduce costs, and even easily manage networks. We are probably seeing 10 to 20 percent labor savings because we are able to be very specific and focused on what we want to do. It ends up saving the customer money and makes us be more efficient on our cost deliveries."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."

"It has brought more money into our company."

"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."

More vRealize Network Insight 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

842,592 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

Educational Organization

53%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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

What do you like most about vRealize Network Insight?

The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?

Broadcom is known for increasing product prices, making them expensive compared to what people used to pay. I liken the subscription model to not truly owning what you pay for.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?

Right now, I do not see a specific area for improvement. My main concern is understanding the intentions of Broadcom, which has acquired VMware. Broadcom should improve by going back to what was wo...

See all answers

Comparisons

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

LibreNMS vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

PRTG Enterprise Monitor vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

ThousandEyes vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 21% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 14% of the time

DX NetOps vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 13% of the time

DX Spectrum vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 12% of the time

AppNeta by Broadcom vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 12% of the time

More vRealize Network Insight Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

March 2025

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

March 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

Overview

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

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It helps customers build an optimized, highly-available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks and provides operational views to manage and scale VMware NSX deployments.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight

February 2025

Free Report: PRTG Network Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight

Find out what your peers are saying about PRTG Network Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our PRTG Network Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight report.

See our list of best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors and best Network Monitoring Software 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.