PRTG Network Monitor Reviews

We primarily monitor Windows-based servers and services running within them. We also have some ties-in scripting into more bespoke areas, as well on our network.

We host a virtual environment running VMware in-house.

The historical data is used for looking at trends: Where we are versus where we were and whether or not additional loads may be our system. We are able to see this over a period of time, looking back historically.

The solution provides us with needed the feedback on our IT infrastructure. We use 12 monitoring servers, which we use to monitor our wide area network and router switches, so we do monitor bandwidth. From a network point of view, we can see the state of the network, as well as bandwidth usage and downtime.

The immediacy of the alerting is the most valuable feature. My role is to keep our network up and running. We have a dashboard in the office and are able to see things almost in real-time, within a minute or two. This is the greatest benefit.

The scripting element allows the bespoke option, so I am not just tied in to what is provided out-of-the-box. We have created a few bespoke scripts, e.g., we have tied it into our phone system to do various things, like monitor SIP trunks. 

The product is flexible, and we can move outside the predefined probes. Although to be fair, there are quite a lot of those to choose from anyway. The out-of-the-box probes generally suit us fine.

There are so many out-of-the-box features to look at that there are very few things that we have had to write bespoke scripts for. We don't have a particularly diverse environment to monitor, since it is all very box bound, Microsoft products, and relatively new.

Although they are fairly comprehensive with what you can do with them, the mapping and dashboards are a bit clunky to set up. I would like a more straightforward ability to create dashboards and maps. The network maps should be a bit more flexibility in the GUI to do what we need to do.

I don't have an issue with the stability of the monitoring probes and the basic server. 

We have had a few issues with the web elements, as far as the dashboard. With the dashboard, it has to be manually refreshed. Occasionally, we reboot the server, or at least web services, due to the web aspect. However, these don't affect the underlining monitoring.

We have started out with a 1000 probes. We're currently running, or have licenses for about 2500, running about 2000 individual probes on the system. It is showing a strain on the server. We are running on a Windows VM at the moment. We have somewhere in the region of 64GB and 4 Core running it. It is an okay server, but it is showing signs of a bit of a slow down, needing patches, updates, and reboots. It does take a while to come back to life.

We have added more probes to the solution. From the monitoring side, it is fine. However, using the server and rebooting, it is showing its age, especially if I have to restart services. Whether or not it is the application or the hardware that it is running on. 

It is doing the job for us and has scaled up from where it was originally.

If you are a small company with a few servers, the product is overkill. For a larger enterprise (like us), we have around a 120 Windows servers in our environment, and it seems absolutely fine. If you're a small company, you probably want more simple, straightforward products, as you don't need the features.

I haven't had that much reason to go to them. 

A colleague of mine primarily does the updates and patching version updates. We have had a couple of issues with incompatibility after the updates. Then, we have had cause to use the tech support. The issues aren't outstanding for too long.

Prior to implementing this, we had some very basic home written ways of determining things, like remaining space on disk. It was very fundamental and wasn't fit for the purpose. It was for when the business had half-dozen servers, and as we grew, it wasn't. We knew we needed something, so we looked around, settling on PRTG.

There wasn't an incident that lead us to implement the PRTG Network Monitor solution. Obviously, all systems will have issues now and then. We knew we had to put something in place, but there wasn't a specific incident or instance that drove us in this product's direction.

The solution provides us response times to issues, since we didn't have any of this type monitoring prior to putting PRTG in. The product has created a more robust environment. As an infrastructure manager, I am less at the mercy of staff members who are trying to find and work things out more quickly. There are just provided for me.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward, as there were a lot of basic elements out-of-the-box.

As soon as any probes are in place, there is feedback straightaway from the system.

We purchased it through our reseller and implemented it ourselves.

It does help the IT department prevent or mitigate downtime. It allows us to pick things up which might not have been picked up that would have caused downtime. While there is a cost saving, it's rather intangible and difficult to state.

We are licensed for 2500 endpoints.

I don't have any comparison with direct competitors. We have been using PRTG for the better part of possibly ten years now. We haven't found the feature set lacking. Everything that we have tried to do, we have managed to work with PRTG to do it.

I would be happy to recommend PRTG. I have no qualms with it whatsoever. 

It does what we need it to do and is flexible. There are some areas, like setting up dashboards, which could be improved upon. However, I have no major problems with the solution and no concerns with renewing next time around.

I find the functionality within the web interface very feature-rich (compared to other products), so I have very few reasons to use the desktop app.

If you want to grant access for clients to the MSP service provider, you can use this solution. For example, if the client wants to monitor the net flow and net flow traffic with PRTG, you can analyze this traffic for them.

If you have a problem with your slow network, you can get visibility on the net flow and SNMP protocols in order to review them and then handle troubleshooting specifically about the issue.

We like the monitoring with the net flow and net flow protocols and SNMP protocols. 

The health check functionality is currently very good.

Its initial setup process is fast and easy.

It is stable. 

The scalability is pretty good.

The technical support services could be better. The service operation center also needs to be improved.

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

We would like to see more advanced features. It would be great if they can help us exclude some protocols if you want to configure some scripts. 

I've been using the solution for two to four years. 

This is a stable product. You only need to deploy remote probes around the network and infrastructure, so you need to add enough remote probes to meet your needs, however, if you do that, it remains stable. 

You can scale the solution if you buy the most expensive licenses or limited sensors. 

We have 12 people using the solution within the company.

At this time, we do have plans to increase usage and add clients to the MSP.

Technical support could be better. 

Positive

I've previously used HPE and SolarWinds products in the past. 

The initial setup is really fast. We didn't need to download the setup on the webpage. You just click through. It is traditionally Vista for Windows.

We have ten users that are capable of handling maintenance tasks. 

We had a consultant assist us during the initial setup.

We have seen an ROI as it allows us to avoid downtime. When you have a problem with your network, and it goes down, it's a really big problem.

The solution is very cheap. You can buy 600 sensors for $1000 or a bit more. 

We did not previously evaluate other solutions.

Currently, I have Privileged Access Management solutions, Identity solutions, Privileged Cloud solutions, and Identity solutions. We use both cloud and on-premises deployments. 

I'd advise new users to implement a hybrid architecture. That way, you can get visibility around cloud solutions and on-premise solutions. It's very important to get visibility around these architectures.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We're using PRTG Network Monitor for server-level monitoring and network-level monitoring, and in our network, we have switches and firewalls.

We're also using the solution for bandwidth monitoring and internet link monitoring.

We're also planning to use PRTG Network Monitor to monitor CCTV and other IoT devices.

I like that PRTG Network Monitor is evolving as a product. For example, it's releasing new sensors on the OT, Modbus, and MQTT side, but its most valuable feature is the remote probe.

Other OEMs in the market will charge you after some time if you have multiple sites distributed within a particular region. Suppose you have four or five locations and deployed the agent; other solutions will charge you extra or add commercial charges to your invoice. Still, PRTG Network Monitor allows up to sixty or eighty remote probes for one server, particularly when you buy the PRTG main server license. I find this pricing model helpful, mainly because my company has multiple sites here in India, between thirty to forty sites. The company doesn't need to buy an additional license or commercial license.

The remote probe will be deployed at the site remotely, and PRTG Network Monitor will monitor the site and feed all monitoring data to the central server. It is beneficial because it ultimately gives you visibility from the central server. The remote probe feature in the tool helps you monitor remote systems or your network, so it's an outstanding feature available in PRTG Network Monitor compared to other OEMs in the market. Some OEMs may have the feature, but the charges would be huge for such a feature.

Here's an area for improvement in PRTG Network Monitor: my company needs to perform SNMPv3 monitoring, and by default, SNMPv2 is there. From a security point of view, SNMPv3 monitoring needs to be stronger. Otherwise, it'll reduce performance when you need to monitor it at the server level. It'll impact performance, including the PRTG Network Monitor performance.

If my company does a large number of SNMPv3 queries, that will reduce server performance, so PRTG recommends not scanning or monitoring a massive amount of SNMPv3. If PRTG Network Monitor can evolve into agent-level configurations rather than server-level configurations, where you can install the agent on the server and the agent provides the necessary feedback, that would improve the tool.

Performance-wise, PRTG Network Monitor still needs improvement because a large number of SNMPv3 queries reduces tool performance. It could also impact the server level. If the monitoring method for PRTG Network Monitor could be similar to other OEMs, such as SolarWinds, where the agent is on the server and provides server performance information to the main console server, that would be great.

Another area for improvement in PRTG Network Monitor is reporting. For example, if you want the report or the dashboard in a particular format, you'd need to exert some effort. You cannot do it without the support of the vendor or an expert. As a customer, you cannot configure PRTG Network Monitor reports independently because reporting is difficult.

I've been working with PRTG Network Monitor for three years.

I didn't see many stability issues in PRTG Network Monitor, so it's a nine out of ten. Most of the time, the tool works fine.

PRTG Network Monitor is a scalable tool, and I'd give it a rating of nine out of ten.

At the moment, PRTG Network Monitor support is only email-based, and that has to be improved. You never receive remote session support from PRTG.  If you're facing an issue, you either need to work with the vendor, or if you need OEM support, you must send an email.

The PRTG Network Monitor support team responds to your email, but it usually takes a lot of time. If support can directly join the remote session to brief you on the process, it would be easier than just getting email-based support.

Whenever my team communicates via email, support will provide a reference link or KB article link that tells you how to configure PRTG Network Monitor.

It would be helpful for any customer if PRTG had remote-based support, and it'll be simpler to show customers how to configure the tool.

My company only takes a little support from the PRTG Network Monitor team nowadays, but I'd give support a seven out of ten. The PRTG technical support team usually responds quickly over email, and it's good. The only limitation is the absence of remote support.

Neutral

I didn't use other solutions apart from PRTG Network Monitor. My company had a lot of issues at the time the decision to use the tool was made. My company was blind as it didn't have any monitoring tool, yet it had a lot of sites, internet links, and services. Because I worked on the PRTG Network Monitor in my previous company, I was aware of its performance and that it meets basic requirements and the company budget, versus SolarWinds, which would require a larger budget, so my company went with PRTG Network Monitor. I deployed it within the environment, and the tool works fine so far.

Setting up PRTG Network Monitor was easy, so I'd rate its setup an eight out of ten.

Installing the tool was straightforward, and there wasn't much required to set PRTG Network Monitor up. It's only the dashboard that requires a lot of effort.

Completing the setup for the tool took around two to three weeks, including the onboarding of all devices.

I followed the PRTG Network Monitor installation guide. I ensured all prerequisites by PRTG were ready, including the recommended OS or server, such as Windows OS, and other software prerequisites. I then installed the tool, and it had a GUI-based, intuitive installation, so it was instant.

What took time was onboarding the devices, though I gradually updated and onboarded the devices. I didn't do a bulk update, and onboarding devices into PRTG Network Monitor wasn't that difficult. You can even show how it's done to anybody, even a person with a limited skillset because installing the tool doesn't require much.

I implemented PRTG Network Monitor because, in my previous organization, I also implemented the tool, so I was aware of the process.

PRTG Network Monitor is very easy to use and doesn't require a lot of manpower for deployment and management, so based on this, the features of the product, and the cost, the ROI for PRTG Network Monitor is good.

You can get ROI from the tool quickly within a year. You won't have to wait three or four years to get ROI because PRTG Network Monitor is cheaper than other solutions.

I'd rate ROI from the tool as ten, so it's a hundred percent.

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, particularly a basic license that doesn't require purchasing an additional license.

Regarding PRTG Network Monitor support, my company pays for it annually compared to other vendors, and the support cost is lower. You need to renew support annually for the tool. My company has an annual maintenance contract with PRTG.

My company is currently using PRTG Network Monitor.

I'm not using the latest version of the solution, but my company plans to upgrade to the latest one.

One person from the IT department handles the day-to-day maintenance of the PRTG Network Monitor.

Between five to six people from the IT team use the tool. Only a few members log into PRTG Network Monitor to generate a report or do additional monitoring. Usually, a person doesn't use the tool. That person receives an email alert based on his respective device and doesn't need to open the PRTG Network Monitor console because my team enabled email-based alerts. Different groups would receive the alerts, such as the application team, the security team, the frontend team, etc.

My company has plans to extend the license and apply the solution to another environment, an OT environment.

I'd tell anyone looking into implementing PRTG Network Monitor to go for it, especially if you're in a medium-sized organization that doesn't have a massive infrastructure, but it still depends on the customer. It varies from customer to customer. A large organization could still evaluate other solutions in the market, but PRTG Network Monitor is a good tool for small to medium-sized organizations.

My rating for the tool is eight out of ten because it has some areas for improvement, particularly the reporting, which could be more user-friendly, and the support, which is only email-based, with no remote support available. If I see improvement in the two areas I mentioned, I could easily give PRTG Network Monitor a nine or ten, but right now, it's an eight for me.

My company is a customer, not a partner, of PRTG Network Monitor.

The primary use case is for monitoring infrastructure: servers, printers, endpoints, and certain services on certain systems. We are alerted in regards to any issue with them.

The remote probes are absolutely fine. They allow us to connect from sites. We have a few different sites spaced across the UK. The remote probes serve a purpose, like separating stuff logically, which is handy. 

The historical data provided by the solution helps us optimize our network performance. Though, we had a few issues with a specific performance, we managed to pin it down because it wasn't throttling in any way. Seeing the history six months ago compared to what it was six months down the line, where there have been more computers put on the site, we could start slowly seeing the bandwidth increase. Then, we were able to identify what the issue is, and resolve it.

In general, 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.

The nitty-gritty that you can get down to in terms of monitoring individual things. While seeing if the service or hard drives have halfway fallen out is fine, being able to monitor stuff with custom scripts (such as SQL scripts) and know whether your data warehouse is built in the morning, this is something which ticks all the boxes for us.

The sensors work as they should. There are hundreds of thousands of them with custom scripts that you can put out there to do different things, like file counts, monitoring SQL Server databases, and specific entries. There are a plethora of sensors out there that are really cool.

It gives us feedback on our servers. For example, we've an ERP server which we monitor for certain files, and it allows us to go back and see that we had an influx around dinnertime or lunchtime of a certain number of files, so this was a busy period. It also provides us the feedback to go back to the business, and say, "This is a busy period of the day for us. Are there any resources that we need to ramp up during that time?"

I would like a live chat solution. This would be useful and handy, especially with the ability to provide logs and an overview of what we are doing at that moment in time to get answers to our questions. 

The setup aspect of it  and getting devices working needs improvement. The reliance between different devices, so if one device goes down on Ping, the whole network will go down if the roots goes down. So, the time it takes to set that up is a bit more than I would have liked and is a bit cumbersome to actually go through. That's the only side that I can see a bit of improvement on. Some sort of relationship between devices, making that a bit easier to see what would be useful.

The stability is absolutely spot on, in terms that it will never go down. 

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. 

We have close to a 1000 sensors on it. I'm sure there are other people out there with a lot more sensors with bigger infrastructures than us. It performs absolutely fine if you have a site which has got a 1000 sensors on it. 

We can just add another probe onto another server on the site and extend that by doubling up the capacity on it. So, it can go as large as we want it to.

The technical support is very interactive. They've invited us to go down to the computer museum down in Milton Keynes, where they run trips. You can go down, they put on lunch, then have Q&A and a bit of a demo. They're very interactive people. They have active forums, as well. If you ask a question, it's not just the employees who will answer. Other key users like to get into the nitty-gritty stuff, which is really good.

We had sort of massive bandwidth bottlenecks, where our sites used VoIP telephonics. So, when something was throttling the bandwidth for one site, they wouldn't be able to make telephone calls. We had a few instances of that before we got the PRTG product in place.

We knew we need to invest in a new solution because of the amount of time that we were spending manually checking if devices were up or not, then troubleshooting those instances, and where devices went down. We realized that we could have seen these a lot earlier and spent a lot less time on them, thus allowing us to have more time to spend doing actual project work rather than dealing with the break/fix side of things.

The initial setup is as straightforward as you want to make it. You will get out of it the time that you've put into it. It's absolutely fine and straightforward to the point. It's only when you go into more specific stuff, like custom sensors, then you might need a little technical support, but they are always there to help.

It took a week from the time we set up the solution until it provided us with feedback on our IT infrastructure.

We used a reseller to purchase it. However, we just sort of integrated it ourselves.

We have gotten weeks and hours back from using the product.

This solution enables our IT department to be more cost-effective. The time that you spend looking at stuff and monitoring services for updates, PRTG notifies you when stuff needs to be done. You could spend eight hours a week looking at stuff manually or you could just wait for PRTG to email you. Once you put in a couple of hours setting it up, it will just notify you to the business critical stuff, allowing you to plan ahead for your next week or month.

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

We looked at PRTG and SolarWinds. From a cost side perspective, compared to PRTG, and from what you get back from it, PRTG was sort of a hands down the winner. We had read a few different reviews of PRTG and had a few of the colleagues that we'd worked with in the past who now used it at their new businesses and recommending it. These were sort of the main driving factors for going down that route.

Spend your time looking into PRTG and give it a trial. They're more than happy to give you a trial license for 30 days or so. Get it up and running on a certain site or system that you want to monitor just to see what you think of it. 

It is a very in-depth solution. You have to take the time to get it up and running the way you want. If you want it to be the best monitoring system, you have to put the time into it, such as creating a reliance on other sensors. E.g., if a ping sensor goes down, you're not going to get a response from the other sensors 99% of the time if the device isn't working.

They've spent a good amount of time refining and turning it into a really robust product.

We don't use the desktop app. We just use the web browser.

We use it to manage customers and to keep an eye on when stuff goes down or when stuff is not working as intended. We monitor mostly servers, but we use it to monitor websites and some of the network infrastructure as well.

With the monitoring, certainly for some of our customers that are hosting websites, we've added in PRTG's advanced http sensors, to provide them site monitoring in addition to the server monitoring which we were doing. We can pass the information on to them when they have issues, as opposed to them not knowing until one of their customers contacts them.

I would say the solution makes our IT department more cost-effective because it allows us to respond to things a lot quicker. We can get an idea of where a problem lies in the server, if it's hardware. It saves a bit of time of trying to track down a problem.

It also tells us when we're running into problems with certain bits of infrastructure that we're monitoring.

• It's really easy to use.
• You can see as soon as there is a problem and you can track it down pretty quickly.
• You don't have to go through loads of options to find when something goes wrong.

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.

I really like the Desktop app. I'm not a big fan of the web app because I've had some browser issues with it. Since finding the desktop app, I have used that exclusively.

Thinking about the overall feature set, I've had no problems with the features that I use. It hasn't happened that I've thought, "I wish I could do this," without being able to usually find an option to do it. Among those options are things like multiple users, different types of reporting, and different actions that occur after a sensor starts. There's always been something in there. I wanted it to auto-confirm when an error does come up in the test lab and, on PRTG's website, they had an API string to do that. Everything that I've needed to do, I've been able to find in the program or on their website.

It has to be installed on a Windows machine. We'd prefer it if we could install the actual control panel on a Linux.

In addition, 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. That's one thing that I always struggle with. 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, if I want something that I may not have used before. 

With their "recommend sensors" feature, I wouldn't mind seeing that being a bit more able to scan the device that it goes on, as it doesn't necessarily pick up everything that is on there, as it should.

It's rock solid. We restart it, and the Windows machine it sits on, once a month because it's recommended to do so, to update it. We have not had any issues with it going down or not working as intended.

We've been able to scale it up as we've brought more and more customers on. Having a sensor pool which we can dip into and use has been good. If we brought on five or ten customers, we could scale it up quite quickly with cloning and copying of templates.

We started off using open source, Nagios/Cacti-type monitoring software utilities. Yes, they're open source and they don't cost you anything, but adding devices is quite cumbersome, the management is quite difficult, and the training is more difficult. Whereas, the UI of PRTG is much easier to use; much more intuitive. 

Everybody generally starts off open-source, something that won't cost you much, but they soon realize the limits of open-source. PRTG is a company that has invested a lot of time and effort building it to make easy to use, to give it a nice UI, and to make it as responsive as it is. It's just a natural progression.

The driving factor in the decision wasn't that we experienced system downtime, it was the fact that we needed something more enterprise-oriented and something that was easier to use and manage, which PRTG is, compared to Nagios. When something like Nagios breaks, it's quite difficult to get it working again, whereas with PRTG, once you buy a block of sensors you get some support for 12 or 24 months, and you've got somebody to fall back on if you ever need it.

It was already in place when I started with the company. We've moved it across to another system and I've re-set that up and it was just a matter of installing it, setting it up. It was fine, no problems. The usual control-panel install wizard made it very easy to import our old data from our previous install into it as well.

It took about 15 to 20 minutes, from the time we set up the solution until it provided us with feedback on the IT infrastructure. That was after we imported all the other data into it.

ROI is hard to measure on something like this. It has helped us out in identifying problems that are likely to happen or that are about to happen or even when they happen. We get notified as quickly as possible. To measure the ROI on that is not an easy thing to do. But, in terms of customer service, it has helped us because we are obviously much more proactive. We notice things before a customer reports them to us. For customer service there would have been some ROI, but it is hard to quantify.

One thing I like is that when you buy sensors, it's a perpetual license, so once you buy 2,000 sensors, you've got 2,000 sensors; it's not a recurring cost. With some products, it's a subscription model where you pay every year.

We looked at SolarWinds. If I remember correctly, it came down to cost. In that regard, PRTG did work out cheaper. In addition, one of our engineers had previously worked with PRTG so he had a bias toward PRTG already. It just made sense to go with it.

You can get the trial version of PRTG, you can get a load of sensors and the actual software package to try. Install it, give it a go, it is very easy to set up. SNMP is very easy to set up on Windows and Linux, and you've got a lot of options within PRTG so you really need to get stuck in and mess about with it to see if it has what you need in it.

In terms of the sensors and remote probes, I don't have many problems with it because everything seems to be covered by it. I've not found something that I've not been able to monitor or that I've not been able to find data for. I have no problems with the probes when it comes to actually sending them and receiving the data. They just go out, collect the data. I have no network problems with it.

We only monitor certain parts of the network with PRTG, but we do compare some of the historical data to real-time data, just to make sure everything's running smoothly and nothing looks out of place.

I would rate it at eight out of ten. It is a very solid product; it does what we need it to do. There are a few bits and pieces that I wish I could do with it which, due to what it is, they don't offer.

It provides a consolidated view of servers, switching, and network connectivity for the offices that I look after.

We are reactive sooner, when we need to be. There is less of waiting for our users to call, and say, "We have no Internet." It has allowed us to move a bit quicker.

The historical data provided by the solution helps us optimize our network performance. I have just taken over the IT infrastructure. I now have six months of history, so I know what my norms are. I can identify the quirks and issues from the history to keep going forward.

The most valuable feature is the notifications. As long as you spend time and think about what and when you want to be notified, it's always accurate. It is always there. I find things out before my Internet provider. 

Without all of the sensors or out-of-the-box functions, the notifications just don't work. For a small companies like us, it keeps an eye on our different offices and the few cloud servers that we have. We don't worry about them because the job is done.

The remote probe is fantastic, particularly since they started adopting. You can run them on smaller hardware. 

All of the sensors that I have needed in their adoption of some specific cloud have been great. 

The general server/client infrastructure is well done.

I don't like the desktop app and never use it. The web client is far easier to navigate with the notifications that pop up. The web app comes with everything that you need.

I preferred the look and feel of the previous version's user interface.

I would like to see more from an Office 365 standpoint, getting a more nitty-gritty app.

I am not sure the solution is giving me all the needed feedback that we need. When something goes off on our IT infrastructure, it does tell me. However, it would be nice if it gave more intuitive information, e.g., the hard drive has gone up by 60 percent in an hour. 

The stability is great in a 64-bit deployment. If anybody mixes it with a 32-bit speed version or with WMI sensors, I have found it to be wobbly. But, a 64-bit deployment is significantly stable.

The scalability is there, but smaller companies might need CAM software to be able afford the product. 

We have not used their technical support.

Our previous solution wasn't aware of what was going on across the environment. It was too focused on server infrastructure. This was a white label SolarWinds product through an MSP.

The initial setup is next, next, next, then done. You can't go wrong.

The installer works. It installs prerequisites. If you want to generate a remote probe for a site, at the other end of a VPN deployment, it creates everything encapsulated. You hit next four times, then it is installed. 

It took two hours from the time we set up the solution until it provided us with feedback on our IT infrastructure. The hardest part was stopping auto discovery, because that goes out, finding everything. Sometimes, you're just not interested.

We deployed the product in-house.

The solution has enabled our IT department to be more cost effective by insourcing some of our functions that we used to throw over the garden fence (outsource).

It has saved us money because we are not paying a managed service provider to monitor 50 percent of our infrastructure. If there was a pricing/licensing model for smaller companies, this would provide me even more return.

Right now, the smallest sensor pack that they have is just a bit out of range for me, as a business. This kills me, as I need the product. Therefore, there is always a balance between needing to buy it or continuing their free version.

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.

PRTG was the only vendor on the list. I knew what I wanted and knew I could get it.

Download the free installer, get it installed on a VM somewhere, and just watch. Pick a server, pick a network switch, and give it a go. 

Having used it from various iterations, the solution's feature set is great. There are moments where I want to go back in time and use the old IP tech product. However, as it evolves, with the quick releases that they bring, it really provides me an all-round product.

Our primary use case for this solution is monitoring all our live servers, their resources and networking equipment like firewalls, routers, switches and network switches. Additionally, we have a bandwidth monitoring map deployed in PRTG Network Monitor to monitor our internet bandwidth continuously. The solution is deployed on-premises.

We have found the ESXi feature very valuable. It allows us to directly add individual VMs independently. We can also add the ESXi so each VM is considered a sensor, and each sensor can get all the resource parameters like CPU usage, memory usage and network usage. Everything is combined in one sensor, and we can utilize it. Unlike other competitors, this feature is only available in PRTG Network Monitor. Otherwise, we have to go with multiple sensors and it will be costly.

The product could be improved by being cross-platform friendly. A feature we would like to see in the next release is support for bare-metal servers. For virtual machines, we have many options in PRTG Network Monitor, but adding sensors to the bare metal servers is difficult because it does not support all ranges of servers. It has to have a much better database of custom servers and resources. Some of the new servers are not added in PRTG Network Monitor. They don't have the database now and we would be glad if they added more databases of server templates.

We have been using this solution for four years and are currently using the latest version.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. Currently, we have about 15 people using it in our organization. These 15 people are in charge of deployment and maintenance. We intend to expand the usage to 2,500 licenses.

Our experience with customer service and support has been superb.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Deployment was done in-house and took approximately two hours.

I rate this solution a ten out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by supporting bare metal servers and cross-platform friendly. I recommend this solution to all types of users because it doesn't require prior knowledge of other configuration sets. PRTG Network Monitor is user-friendly and takes just one click to install the solution in Windows. Amateurs with no previous knowledge of networking can use it because it is very user-friendly. SNMP configuration is straightforward, and unlike its competitors, it seems to be a user-friendly tool.

Additionally, it has a free version which can be used for 100 sensors. If it is a small-scale business they can use the free version with 100 sensors and utilize that as well. If it is for a big enterprise, they can have 2,500 to 10,000 sensors. They also have custom modes for payments. It is a superb product.

It's a globally distributed network. We have multiple data centers or IT setups, and PRTG is deployed at the local data centers. Some of the applications are in the cloud, and PRTG can also monitor those.

PRTG is simple to manage. First, you can create a template for a device, then apply it to hundreds of similar devices. That's a great advantage. Secondly, I can use the 80-20 functional rule for any devices I need to monitor. 

For infrastructure monitoring, 80 percent of parameters are monitored every minute or so. I can define all of them at the highest level, and those definitions are inherited at the lowest level. Then you need to customize the setup for the remaining 20 percent. You can deploy them in various groups and do a group-level setup, which will again percolate down to devices. 

The third thing is the concept of tags. PRTG assigns tags to devices and also the parameters you monitor. For example, if you choose to deploy a bandwidth sensor, PRTG automatically tags it with that parameter while giving you the freedom to apply your own tag. 

Let's say my organization has three or even four ISPs. If I'm globally distributed, the ISPs could be different. Now I can monitor all the bandwidth across ISPs based on the tag, or I can see the bandwidth of each ISP individually. I know my uptime and recovery in case of failure. I can also group by choosing a specific ISP tag and getting a report. I now know which of my ISPs is a better performer, which helps me improve the service and decide who to go with.

PRTG is constantly evolving. You have between eight to 12 releases every year, including enhancements to functionality and performance as well as security and bug fixes, so it stays current with our business requirements. It's a well-rounded product.

There's always room for improvement. The high availability feature is good, but it's an area that PRTG could marginally improve. For example, in PRTG, both servers have a different IP, but it would make things a lot easier if they were bound by a single IP.  I'm not necessarily trying to say PRTG should imitate other products. 

I'm saying it should be like a typical HA solution should be. It is a fail-safe feature, and the HA component should act like one. In PRTG, it is in an active-active mode, not active-passive. Now, the customers don't need to know the mechanism behind the high availability. They just need to know how many servers are required for deployment. If there is a cluster with a single IP address, it's much easier from the customer's point of view. 

We've been working on various versions of PRTG since 2003. While we are using PRTG, we are also looking at various alternatives, but we haven't seen a reason to switch so far.

PRTG itself is a highly reliable product because of large installed base.

Overall, PRTG is easy to install and understand. We provide frontline support for our customers, but our more competent customers don't come back to us for any support at all. If they don't have the skills, they can install and do the basic deployment, but they require hand-holding and coaching for some things. Still, I think it's a straightforward product. Once a user gets started with the product, they don't need hand-holding for basic functions.

The price of PRTG is reasonable. PRTG's competitors like SolarWinds and ManageEngine charge more for the same functionality. They are much more expensive at licensing level. What's more, PRTG comes as one bundle. For example, the database is part of the PRTG release, so Paessler takes total responsibility for all components they deliver. With other products, you need a separate database engine and databases, and these NMS companies don't take responsibility. When they put out new releases, what if it doesn't work with the previous release of a database? Things become a little tricky. You have to deal with two or more entities for NMS but only one with PRTG.

I rate PRTG Network Monitor 9.5 out of 10. If you're planning to implement PRTG, my advice is to first create a master plan. Set a goal for monitoring. Decide what you want to monitor and why. You need to get ready by organizing network management at the technical and policy level. If you start with a clear understanding of your goals and your environment, PRTG will be a cakewalk.