What is our primary use case?
The solution is for network monitoring.
What is most valuable?
Overall it is a very good tool to use.
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.
It has the capability to discover a lot of information over the networks automatically.
What needs improvement?
Network monitoring is not the strongest area of the solution which should be improved. It is not the best tool of the application but if someone has to start from the beginning and reach a moderate level of abilities for monitoring, then PRTG still serves that purpose. For experts, it is not the application monitoring tool they would choose. This tool is more suited for beginners and intermediate users.
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.
The performance of the monitoring is outdated and when they have upgraded the tools in the past, it slows down the performance.
Auto Discover features could improve by allowing people the choice to manipulate the discovery to design and customize it to create a technical map of the services dependent on each of them.
They should also add service monitoring. They currently have a Windows service, but they do not have monitoring as a separate service. If I would like to specifically monitor the service within Windows, I would have no choice but to use theirs.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for approximately ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution. I did not see any challenges. However, the performance is not that good. When asked about stability, I will split it into two parts. When I go into the devices and I click on the devices, I should see all the devices immediately, I do not, which is a performance issue. When I click on one of the devices in the list of All Devices section, it should show me the graph and the monitoring statistics site. This is where it has failed many times, it does not show it. We complained about this to PRTG many times. I currently find the solution to be 80% stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability should come deep within the roots of the solution. The root of PRTG is having a lot of sensors inside because they work on monitoring sensors. The more sensors you have, the more you can scale. The good thing about the solution is that you can make your own sensors. This means it is scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
I did not have a good experience with customer service. They were not able to give answers in a timely manner. They were able to give some less complex answers but when the questions become difficult, they find it very difficult to manage a solution. For example, what do bandwidth monitoring and bandwidth sensor mean? I think they should be able to explain this to me better, they could not explain it well. Their bandwidth sensors do not really work as a bandwidth sensor.
I think they might have some missing knowledge or they have unqualified employees sitting down and reading the documents from their screen to the customers, like myself. I find that technical support could have been much better, they have been a company for many years. They need to continue to support their customers in a much better way and should hire experts as other organizations do. When contacting support it is handled by the very first level of agents, then it is escalation up for an answer. I did not like this about the support, it takes time. I find myself left trying to solve the problem myself.
The technical support requires a lot of improvements, they offer a lot of information to be downloaded and used by the customer. I think it has to be supported much better to allow customers the ability to easily deploy it and use it effectively.
How was the initial setup?
I did not have any challenges attempting to install the solution. It was quite straightforward, you do not need any training to install it. The experience was good.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment is the longest part of the setup. I would say the installation did not take much time but the complete utilization of the software took three or four hours. I had to configure it properly, discover the sensor, support the sensor, utilize it to the best possible way, make a group, and put in the site. All of these processes take time. If somebody has experience in PRTG, I think it can be done in half day.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have evaluated SolarWinds and it is one of the easiest for beginners to start working with network monitoring.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to others. However, if they are a beginner, there are other products out there that might be more appropriate, like SolarWinds.
I rate PRTG Network Monitor a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
What was the most helpful strategy you found to adjust to the unofficial terminology used in the solution/setup?