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PRTG Network Monitor pros and cons

4.0 out of 5
4,236 followers
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Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

PRTG Network Monitor offers quick and easy setup, allowing for immediate data collection from devices.
It is highly customizable with the ability to create one's own program sensors and use custom MIB files, enhancing monitoring capabilities.
The versatile alerting and notification system proves essential for proactive issue management and network reliability.
Remote probes and scalability benefit organizations with complex networks by facilitating decentralized monitoring and efficient administration for global sites.
The integration and compatibility with numerous technologies and vendors provides a comprehensive and versatile monitoring environment.

CONS

PRTG Network Monitor struggles with scalability, especially when exceeding 10,000 sensors, often requiring additional cores as stand-alone instances.
Third-party integration could be simplified, with improved documentation and step-by-step guides, particularly for firewall sensors.
Performance tends to degrade with a large number of SNMPv3 queries, impacting tool efficiency.
Technical support is subpar, with response times ranging from three to seven days for resolutions.
There is a need for more cloud-native sensors for platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud to accommodate growing cloud service usage.
 

PRTG Network Monitor Pros review quotes

AJ
Apr 10, 2019
One of its valuable features is the fact that it handles multiple operating systems... And I like the fact that it tells me when things are about to fall over, which means I can preempt it and not have to wake up at three in the morning to fix it.
AG
Apr 10, 2019
The technical support seems to be quick, clever, and has a comprehensive knowledge base online, which is fantastic.
RC
Dec 14, 2022
The remote probe feature in PRTG Network Monitor helps you monitor remote systems or your network at a lower cost than other solutions.
Learn what your peers think about PRTG Network Monitor. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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LS
Apr 10, 2019
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.
CW
Apr 10, 2019
We can see trends for a lot of different things, such as hard drive space and bandwidth usage. We can see and plan for the future by knowing, "We're sort of at 75% capacity now. In three months time, we know we're going to be up to 90%,so we need to plan ahead for it, getting upgrades booked in place." Since things like this take time and effort, it's handy to see trends into the future of where our company is going.
SH
Jul 15, 2020
I would boldly say that this is the most scalable network monitoring tool that I know of
JB
Apr 10, 2019
The alerting is the most valuable feature. I also like the iPhone app. I get alerts in an email on the iPhone app.
DC
Apr 10, 2019
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.
AS
Apr 10, 2019
The most valuable feature is the dashboard interface. It's very clean, it's very simple to use.
SK
Feb 12, 2020
It is a central solution in terms of how to actually use it. It has a very easy dashboard. Everything is concise. We are able to create custom sensors. For different parts of the business, we have many products across many environments, and it works for everything.
 

PRTG Network Monitor Cons review quotes

AJ
Apr 10, 2019
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.
AG
Apr 10, 2019
The thing that we do struggle with a bit is in the historic data. If I want look over 30 days, because it averages out onto one graph, you can't zoom in and drill down information.
RC
Dec 14, 2022
Performance-wise, PRTG Network Monitor still needs improvement because a large number of SNMPv3 queries reduces tool performance.
Learn what your peers think about PRTG Network Monitor. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.
LS
Apr 10, 2019
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,
CW
Apr 10, 2019
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.
SH
Jul 15, 2020
Maybe in the future there will be room for improvement, but currently, there is nothing pressing that I can think of
JB
Apr 10, 2019
In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution. We had to install a probe on one of our cloud servers and then let that probe out from there. It would be really cool if it just monitored Azure without having to install something on the device.
DC
Apr 10, 2019
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.
AS
Apr 10, 2019
We've had some issues previously with the performance of the sensors. We tend to deploy quite a bit of WMI, which is quite processor-intensive, and we've found that that impacts the sensors quite a bit.
SK
Feb 12, 2020
With custom sensors, there is a lot of work which needs to be done in the background, just for it to be tailor-made for the specific thing that we are actually monitoring. We take a lot of time with the custom sensors. I would like to see the customer sensor be more robust and a bit more varied.