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 7.8, while VMware is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.8. Paessler GmbH holds a 4.3% 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

6,499 Views
4,437 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 46 vRealize Network Insight reviews

885 Views
526 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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

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Helped 844,944 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

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

23rd

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.3%, down from 4.8% 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 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."

"Good compilation of the system's information."

"The solution has excellent redundant features."

"We can see which fiber links have been used heavily and, if they are used heavily, we can introduce more links to particular buildings or particular areas."

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

"The scalability is good. You can improve a remote host or the clustering. This gives it the flexibility to monitor another infrastructure remotely."

"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."

"There is a simplicity to setting up the extra sensors. It's really easy for us to build infrastructure and start monitoring very quickly."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"As a troubleshooting tool, it's a level-3 troubleshooting-skills tool and it's very easy to use and very easy to find the information that you need."

"It especially helps with deploying NSX, that you're not having to manually chase down and figure out what you need to do to microsegment VMs. This gives a nice option where you can say, "Hey, this VM, show me what flows are there." I can export it out and then import it as an NSX rule and job done."

"It provides deep visibility into what is happening with traffic and helps us manage our network."

"I find it user-friendly and intuitive. With the GUI interface that we do use on a regular basis, it's easy to navigate, it's easy to see, easy to query. We get reports. It's easy to use."

"It allowed us to set up NSX and to do microsegmentation, without all of the pain points of having to determine each port and each IP address that needed to have access, and which ones needed to be blocked."

"The solution helps reduce time to value, increase performance, provide deep visibility, and easily manage networks."

"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."

"We're a smaller company so it automates a lot of the tasks and lets us focus in on building out our own solution. It's quicker, there is less building of manual solutions, and less downtime. It allows our developers to quickly develop, get provisioning done, de-provisioning, etc; the stuff that you would expect to be able to make it streamlined."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"I know we're going to move to Docker applications and I understand that PRTG does some monitoring regarding this. I do not know if it is complete. If it's not yet complete, it's something they should consider improving."

"The technical support from PRTG needs significant improvement."

"When you email the support team, they take three to seven days to respond and resolve simple issues."

"Users need to buy the more expensive licenses if they expect to be able to scale."

"PRTG access works best from the web GUI. There are dedicated apps on Windows/Android/iOS, but they are slow and don’t work as well as the web GUI."

"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."

"More training videos for installing and configuring this software would have been nice, especially when working with a lot of devices."

"The Desktop app is good but it can be really sluggish at times, especially when you're editing different elements."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

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

"If it had some kind of plugins with vSphere, more effective plugins with Horizon View or other VMWare products, if it had interconnectivity, I think it would be more effective than it is today."

"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."

"When we talk about those micro-segmentation rules, there's an Export function. It is very macro-segmentation oriented instead. So if you choose an application, it will find the tiers within that application and say that it's communicating on, say, port 80 to a separate VLAN. There might be 200 machines in that other VLAN. You don't want to open port 80 at all of them. So we need a lot more granularity in those suggested firewall rules."

"There are some random glitches in the Web UI, but they are usually pretty cosmetic in nature. I don't really seem to use any browser other than Chrome with it. I also get some weird errors from time to time on the hardware NetFlow Collectors, where it doesn't sync data."

"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."

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is reasonable for the features that the solution provides. They charge you per monitoring, not per node, it is per port that you need for a device."

"It is about £4,500 for the first year, then about another 15 to 20 percent annually after that. So, we are looking at about £1000 running costs a year. When you think about how much an outage costs per minute, it's negligible."

"We have an unlimited perpetual license, so we just pay support costs and it can scale throughout the organization."

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

"All monitoring system is close to the same pricing scheme."

"We are licensed for 2500 endpoints."

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

"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is more expensive than other solutions, such as OP Network Manager."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

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

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

"It reduces costs. It takes something that may be challenging and makes it more usable and visual by being able to bring in tools, seeing what their impact is, such as microsegmentation and application rationalization, and seeing it quickly."

"It has brought more money into our company."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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…

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...

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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?

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

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Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

DX NetOps vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 15% of the time

DX Spectrum vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 13% of the time

AppNeta by Broadcom vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 11% of the time

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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

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

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