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 #8 with an average rating of 7.6, while VMware is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.0. 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

7,258 Views
4,823 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 45 vRealize Network Insight reviews

1,001 Views
579 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

vRealize Network Insight

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

PRTG Network Monitor and vRealize Network Insight compete in the network monitoring domain. PRTG is preferred for affordability and ease of use, while vRealize leads with its advanced features, despite being more costly.

Features: PRTG Network Monitor offers quick deployment, high scalability, and compatibility with various infrastructures. Its comprehensive alerting features and low licensing cost make it user-friendly. vRealize Network Insight excels with sophisticated data visualization, robust troubleshooting, and strong integration with VMware environments, aiding traffic management and issue identification.

Room for Improvement: PRTG Network Monitor could enhance flexible template usage, graphical interfaces, and distributed monitoring support. Users desire better technical support responsiveness and more cloud-native features. vRealize Network Insight needs improvement in pricing transparency, easier integration with non-VMware environments, and enhanced reporting and dashboard functionality.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PRTG Network Monitor is noted for its intuitive setup process and comprehensive resources but has mixed reviews on support due to email reliance and time zone issues. vRealize Network Insight, despite complex deployment requiring technical expertise, seamlessly integrates with VMware environments and offers effective but costly support.

Pricing and ROI: PRTG Network Monitor is valued for cost-effectiveness, flexible licensing, and a free version for small to medium businesses. vRealize Network Insight, though expensive, delivers substantial value through its advanced features, particularly benefiting larger enterprises or those with significant VMware investments. Both solutions provide substantial ROI by reducing downtime and enhancing monitoring capabilities.

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

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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

8th

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

18th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.2%, down from 5.0% 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.

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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.

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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."

"PRTG Network Monitor is user-friendly and offers flexible alerting systems."

"I really love the activity library. It gives the flexibility to discover data and metrics about my interface and data server."

"The most valuable features of PRTG Network Monitor are bandwidth utilization, user-friendliness, all past report simple retrievals, and timeout features. Additionally, if the solution does go down it is simple to bring it back."

"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."

"It is pretty simple to use, which is always a good thing. It's been very reliable in updating us if any issues crop up."

"The initial setup is pretty easy."

"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is its ease of use."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"One of the most valuable features is the ability to look at the traffic flows, to look at NetFlow data."

"The best feature of this application is its ability to capture everything within the same application, as well as capture all the traffic."

"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."

"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."

"Whenever we say "valuable" with respect to the network, it's more towards the security. The firewall rule issues it shows us and the recommendations that we get from vRNI are the most valuable features because they are actually making our network more secure."

"The most valuable feature is the profiling of the applications for micro-segmentation... It has made the migration to NSX much easier. Most of the sys admins within the smaller silos, they have no idea what ports are needed to run their stuff at all. I am pretty sure the micro-segmentation would never, ever have occurred without it."

"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."

"Also, the ability to troubleshoot all the way across the NSX part of it to the physical and actually watch the packets go through and then see where the bottleneck is or where the interruption is. We run queries on the network flows within the application to find where they are in it and it graphically tells us how the packets are actually going through the system."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"Other monitoring tools that I have used are easier to use."

"Integration into service management ticketing systems could be better. They should simplify the integration into big service management platforms like ServiceNow, Remedy, and Cherwell. They're really into monitoring, but they don't do any self-resolution. It would be better if the company moved more into the AIOps space so that you could actually kick off some remedies. I know that you can execute some commands from the tool, but you need to develop those all yourself. It would be really handy if they had some auto-remedy scripts that they could develop on top."

"The solution has to evolve as an end-to-end monitoring solution. It has to do better at understanding the application at the deepest level."

"A room for improvement in PRTG Network Monitor is its sensors. Its application technology sensor, such as the IAS, .NET, etc., needs some improvement because it doesn't work as expected. For example, the IAS sensor doesn't give immediate information, and the information you get from it isn't of good value. The web GUI of PRTG Network Monitor also needs improvement because errors keep popping up if it's not been updated to the latest version. What I'd like to see in the next release of the tool is end-to-end topology mapping for the business model, and that should be required. There has to be a technical map. Technical mapping and topological creation are missing in PRTG Network Monitor, so I would like to see those in the future."

"It would be good if there were better graphical interfaces when you have it on multiple monitors... Because we have so many servers, things can get lost in the fog a little bit. Maybe having a better way of showing different geographies, Flash, etc., would help."

"Once you start going above 5000 sensors, things do start to get a bit shaky. There are some best practice out there that you will need to adopt and be aware of."

"PRTG would be improved if it required less memory to run."

"The operations dashboard is only available in PRTG's enterprise version, but I wish it could be accessed in the standard licensing. It would also be nice if PRTG had templates for dashboard monitoring, software monitoring, etc. It can help me set up a dashboard because now we don't have a template from PRTG, so we need to create one from scratch."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"The compatibility with each and every component of the infrastructure is the main thing that I am looking for. I would like them to make sure that it's compatible with different kinds of storage systems, etc. I have seen the compatibility list. I feel it can be more compatible than it is right now."

"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."

"I would like to see application identification. That would be cool."

"I would like to see more interoperability on the firewall and low balancer sides."

"The only issue we have is that the solution does not always capture the host names."

"While it's not exactly a feature, what normally happens when we are trying to look at the VM flow portion is - although Network Insight does have options to integrate a few physical switches into it - we can't really get an end-to-end flow of the network. We might be using a few switches that are not supported by Network Insight. That is where they can improve, in the support for more physical switches and network devices."

"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 would like to see more reporting features, more dashboards."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It's a cost-efficient tool."

"We bought a license for 4000 sensors."

"The licensing fees are billed annually and there are no costs in addition to this."

"Pricing for PRTG Network Monitor is a nine out of ten. It meets my company's budget and monitoring requirements. My company is on a perpetual license."

"Because we are only on the free version, we have a limited number of sensors. Therefore, we are not monitoring as much as we want to be to obtain historical information."

"While I am not the person who deals with pricing, I would say that we pay around 1000 pounds a year."

"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."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

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

"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."

"It has brought more money into our company."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

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

"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."

"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

54%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

10%

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...

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What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

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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.

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

The sales team often complains about the cost whenever we need to quote vRealize Network.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?

Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined. They can show a little bit more information because vRealize Network Insight is virtu...

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

AppNeta by Broadcom vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 10% of the time

DX NetOps vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

February 2025

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

January 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

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