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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

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Helped 848,716 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

"We like the alerting system, the SNMP monitoring and the customization of the bandwidth."

"The email notifications are helpful, and the dashboards are user-friendly for people with little network monitoring knowledge."

"It is great for service level agreements and can comply fully with internet monitoring or any interface."

"It is easy to use and intuitive, which is really important. It does what it says on the box by giving you a visual of the state of what is going on at any one time."

"The installation is not that complex."

"The remote probe feature in PRTG Network Monitor helps you monitor remote systems or your network at a lower cost than other solutions."

"The solution is very easy to use and the web provides information with ease."

"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."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"The most valuable feature for us is that insight into what our network is really doing - it's a fairly complex network. Not having to go through thousands of lines of network configuration to find firewall ports that were open or closed, for various ports, was very valuable. It went out and found everything we need very quickly."

"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."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"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."

"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."

"The graphical interface of this environment is so good with all the views, the graphics, and everything in them. It's really easy for me. It doesn't need an engineer to work on it. It's easy enough that anyone can get into the environment and look for issues or look at how communication is going on across the VMs. It's pretty much straightforward."

"The solution has helped improve our organization by directing the network traffic using SDN."

"It's user-friendly. It's similar to the GUI that most VMware products are moving to, and the consistency across those makes it easy to switch from one product to another. Also, the search bar at the top is plain text and it helps you, it guides you along with your search query, so that helps. The first day you're in there you can start building actual queries."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"This solution is a good product so far, but I haven't been using it long enough to know how it could be improved."

"Having a Unix implementation or Unix installation could be an improvement. Right now, it's based just on Windows, and that's a problem for some customers."

"The solution could be better and faster when it comes to performance."

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

"The database needs improvement."

"In our organization, we encounter performance issues with our PRTG probe service. I saw documentation from the vendor or Paessler mentioning that there are limitations for WMI sensors. Other than that, we are okay with PRTG."

"Needs ability to monitor standard notification time (notify after X time)."

"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."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined."

"There's enough information there, especially in the visualizations, but I would love to see this in a kiosk mode, where I could have a dashboard for interested stakeholders to see and appreciate what's going on. Then, moving on to a more practical level for our Help Desk, our operations team could benefit by seeing, in real-time, a visual view of the network."

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

"I want to be able to monitor a network flow that is approximately two weeks back, but I haven't found an easy way to do this."

"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."

"The solution can be improved by making it more compatible with other brands, allowing for better integration."

"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."

"The IT infrastructure industry is expected to evolve towards a hybrid cloud model in the next five to ten years. In this model, most of the customer's resources reside on-premise within a private cloud setup, such as VMware. Another segment operates within public cloud environments like Azure and AWS, and a portion remains in traditional data centers. There should be seamless interoperability between public and private clouds. AWS and VMware need to work together to make it possible. Whether users interact with on-premise infrastructure or configure resources in the public cloud, the user experience must be seamless."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The price of PRTG is reasonable. PRTG's competitors like SolarWinds and ManageEngine charge more for the same functionality."

"PRTG is now available as PRTG Enterprise Monitor, and the price varies depending on the total number of sensors the customer buys"

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

"The price is actually on the cheaper side. If you're going with the unlimited license code, it's very cheap compared to competitors unless you're going for something free, like Zabbix. But you get what you pay for, and it doesn't have the full suite of products or tools like SolarWinds or a ScienceLogic."

"When you buy PRTG, everything comes in one bundle. Licensing is very easy."

"I'm paying something like €1000 per year for the maintenance. I've got unlimited sensors."

"We are using the premium version of PRTG Network Monitor. The price of the solution is a bit higher than competitors but it is worth the extra money. However, it would be helpful if the price was lower."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

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

"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'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 has brought more money into our company."

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

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

49%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

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...

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Comparisons

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

LibreNMS vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

PRTG Enterprise Monitor vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

ThousandEyes vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 17% 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 10% of the time

More vRealize Network Insight Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

April 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

April 2025

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