PRTG Network Monitor Reviews

We use the solution for monitoring the bandwidth and reachability of a big network. We rely on reachability to generate an alarm as banks have different branches and routers. We use the PRTG to assess whether there is any fault in any branches or ATM buses. We have been using a site with 5000 sensors in 60-78 sites.

The solution is good, very friendly, and simple to use. I have been taking training. As far as it's not complicated, you can use it.

The automation part can be more flexible. It will be much easier for an administrator to work on. It can discover all the devices in a network and design its network.

I have been using PRTG Network Monitor as a customer for eight years.

We have observed many things when we were analyzing the bandwidth.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

I've used FortiMonitor, Huawei, and SolarWinds before. SolarWinds is complicated. An administrator needs more skills to work with SolarWinds. If you're going for a data center or vendor monitoring, it's good to have PRTG set up because it's very reliable.

The initial setup is easy.

The solution is expensive compared to FortiMonitor. PRTG is costly for small scale, but for large scale, FortiMonitor is more expensive.

The solution is very user-friendly. You get whatever you need, but it has room for improvement too.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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.

We use the solution to monitor customer sites.

PRTG Network Monitor helps us quickly and easily discover a large number of sensors, so we can spend minimal time monitoring customer sites. This allows us to focus on other important tasks.

PRTG Network Monitor could develop more tie-up sensors so that we can get more detail on the monitoring system. We have a lot of tie-up devices, and many of them we cannot monitor. However, we have to go to the price of this product to monitor them. I hope that in the future, Paessler could develop more sensors.

Sometimes, our PRTG Network Monitor system crashes and a lot of sensors go down. I have to reboot the prop to get the system back to normal.

I would like PRTG Network Monitor to add backup abilities.

The solution can be more stable.

The technical support needs improvement.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

I give the stability of the solution a seven out of ten. We have faced a lot of crashes in PRTG Network Monitor in the past.

The technical support is not good. I was not happy with some of their responses.

The initial setup of the solution is complex and our environment relies on three PRTG systems to monitor many customers. In the event our PRTG Network Monitor was to go down, we would have a lot of problems as we would have to check the sensors manually.

We used a consultant for the implementation.

PRTG Network Monitor is very expensive. We pay around $100,000 per year for each installation. We have four installations, so our cost is $400,000 per year.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

We haven't used other solutions because we think PRTG is the best monitoring system at this time.

We have 30 people using the solution in our organization, but we monitor around 200 customers.

I recommend the solution but it is very expensive and some organizations don't have the budget.

We use PRTG to remotely check if devices are still online. It can also monitor temperature, traffic, and device connectivity. We configure it to send us alerts. For example, if a device exceeds a specified bandwidth, PRTG will send an email notification.

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

The icons on PRTG's network diagram are hard to find. For example, finding the icons for firewalls and servers is difficult, so we're struggling to create the network topology.

We have been using PRTG since the start of the pandemic. 

I rate PRTG nine out of 10 for stability. We haven't encountered any problems.

I rate PRTG 10 out of 10 for scalability if you have the budget to buy the license.

I rate PRTG support eight out of 10. They respond immediately. 

Positive

I did trials of SolarWinds and PRTG simultaneously and decided to go with PRTG because it's user-friendly and easier to understand. 

I rate PRTG six out of 10 for ease of setup from a beginner's perspective. Total deployment time was about a month because we had to do some studying and revisions. It was a continuous process because we would think about some improvements and apply them step by step. Two people were involved in the deployment: the network admin and our network security admin.

The full version of PRTG is a little costly, and the free version is limited to only 100 devices.

I rate PRTG Network Monitor eight out of 10. I would recommend it. 

The solution is used for infrastructure monitoring and for some limited automation and SNMP monitoring. If any parameters cross any threat, then it would trigger some healing, like restarting by sending some special commands.

The features I found valuable are its reporting modules and the graphs, along with SNMB utilization and the bandwidth utilization for reports.

Along with more room for automation, more room for advanced configuration can be integrated into the solution.

I have been using PRTG Network Monitor for almost ten years. I use it in my business company on my account. I am a customer of the solution.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Around 50 people in my company use the solution.

I am very satisfied with PRTG Network Monitor because it's easy. Also, I have been using it for a long time, either for configuration or providing any reports or support needed for PRTG.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

On a scale of one to ten, where one means difficult to implement and ten means easy to implement, I rate it an eight.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises.

The ROI is currently looked upon at the management level.

It's a cost-efficient tool.

The reporting module is easy to configure. Also, it is easy and nice looking, with a nice presentation triggered for utilization and for monitoring health. Also, you can integrate as much vendor hardware as possible using SNMP, and it has easy configuration and troubleshooting. Along with the solution being cheap, there is also support from the vendor, which is its main point.

There are more powerful software solutions available apart from PRTG Network Monitor.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We are using PRTG to monitor networks, applications, and databases like Oracle Database or SQL Database. Now we plan to use PRTG for IT aggression management. 

Though it's not suitable, I think we can also use PRTG for operations monitoring. We will make a dashboard in PRTG and use it to control when we have a problem. We can analyze which part has a problem so that we can analyze and report to our SQL. We have about 10 to 12 people in the IT department working with PRTG. 

I think net flow is PRTG's most valuable feature because it doesn't cost much for us because the net flow sensor is already included in the PRTG license. We can monitor our traffic in our proxy and router.

The operations dashboard is only available in PRTG's enterprise version, but I wish it could be accessed in the standard licensing. It would also be nice if PRTG had templates for dashboard monitoring, software monitoring, etc. It can help me set up a dashboard because now we don't have a template from PRTG, so we need to create one from scratch. 

I've been using PRTG for four or five years.

I was using a free product called Nagios, but it was challenging to deploy, so I changed to PRTG. It's a similar configuration, so I can easily switch using PRTG.

It's easy for me to set up the server because PRTG guided us through it. The installation only took a day, but it takes two to four weeks to collect data from other devices because I need to coordinate with another database person.

I deployed it by myself. 

We see a return, but I've never calculated ROI for this application. Monitoring takes time, and anything that cuts down on time spent monitoring saves money. 

When monitoring hardware before using PRTG, I needed to check the capacity, etc., and then create a report, but PRTG does it and reports automatically. This makes operations more cost-efficient and increases the return on investment.

I pay for a yearly license that's all-inclusive. We get all the resources, but PRTG doesn't have local support in Indonesia, so when I have a problem with PRTG, I need to create a ticket with global support. 

I rate PRTG Network Monitor nine out of 10.  

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.

I am a partner company and use PRTG Network Monitor as a monitoring tool for our customers. We use it to monitor entire IT infrastructures, like AWS devices, and other IP kind devices.

PRTG Network Monitor helps us monitor the IT infrastructure for our customers without requiring significant downtime. The solution completes upgradation or migration within one to two hours, minimizing disruption.

PRTG Network Monitor is user-friendly and offers flexible alerting systems. It integrates well with mail alerts via SMTP, SMS, Teams, and Slack. We can monitor the entire IT parameters, including AWS devices, through the dashboard.

PRTG Network Monitor could improve interaction with customers by offering direct support involvement instead of just mail responses. The solution could also enhance database observability and provide clearer pricing explanations when converting customers from perpetual to subscription models.

I have been using PRTG Network Monitor for three years.

The stability of PRTG Network Monitor is high. I would rate it eight to nine on a scale of one to ten.

The scalability for network monitoring is rated eight to nine ut of ten. However, for asset management and configuration comparing with other NMS technologies, it is less scalable.

PRTG provides support via mail only, which can be inconvenient due to time differences. There is no direct interaction or remote calls.

Positive

The initial setup of PRTG Network Monitor is very easy to use. There are no significant difficulties encountered.

PRTG Network Monitor used to be reasonably priced, but after changing to subscription models, the costs have increased. The solution remains user-friendly, which usually convinces customers despite the higher pricing.

I would recommend PRTG Network Monitor specifically for monitoring purposes. 

It is a suitable solution to monitor various IT devices and their internal performance. However, for comprehensive asset management or network traffic analysis, other modules or tools may be necessary. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.