PRTG Network Monitor Reviews

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 is network performance monitoring, but we also use it for things like network traffic flows and getting a better idea of the actual types of traffic that are going through our network.

We've used the historical data quite a bit. It has fed into our DR process, which was not a main use case but has been quite handy.

We've got monitoring on a number of our key apps. The alerting comes from PRTG and goes into the Slack channels of the development team. That is all segregated away from the operations team, so the alerting goes to the people in the format that they like most of all. That has really helped the turnaround and issue identification.

The solution has also enabled us to consolidate and be more cost-effective as an IT department. About two or three years ago we had two or three legacy apps in place and we've been able to consolidate that into one. It has definitely been a cost-saver.

Finally, while we hadn't necessarily experienced downtime, we were having issues with stability in the network. Some of the output from PRTG helped to narrow down where those issues were coming from, so it gave us a much clearer idea of where we need to go.

The most valuable feature is the dashboard interface. It's very clean, it's very simple to use.

The alerting is also excellent, it's just what you need. It's not too fussy, it's not too difficult to set up, and from an operational perspective, the feedback that I get from the guys is always excellent.

The overall feature set is good. We're probably not doing it justice. It has an awful lot of integrations which we're just not using at the moment. It's very vendor neutral, very vendor agnostic. I wish we could be using it more, to be honest with you. At the moment we've got an on-premise solution. We're looking to move to the cloud, but we haven't actually explored that with the vendor yet.

We've got a few sensors deployed in the network but not too many. 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. We've had to tune that down a little bit over time. That is something that we've spoken to the vendor about and we've been able to work through those issues.

Our experience with the remote probes has been similar. At scale, we've found that they can struggle sometimes, but that depends on the type of query that you're throwing at it. That's probably more a limitation of the query itself than the software.

In terms of additional features, we are potentially exploring things like containerization and I'm not really what sure the ability of the software is around that.

The reports I've had from the team on its stability are all good. It seems to get patched on a very regular basis. There are constant updates. We haven't any problems, we haven't had any downtime yet, and we've been running it for 18 to 24 months now. It's excellent.

We've had some issues with the sensors and remote probes. We're a relatively small environment, but we've started to see limitations based on the actual type of queries that we're throwing at it. We've been able to work around that and the support from vendor has been excellent in that respect.

The technical support has been excellent. We've predominantly raised support tickets but we've also gone through our account manager, and a couple of issues that we've had have been escalated.

We had two or three solutions and we wanted to consolidate. One of them was SolarWinds ipMonitor, but I can't remember what the development one was now. They were going end-of-life and we wanted to consolidate, we wanted a single platform that we could work with. In terms of the feature set, PRTG seemed to cover all the bases.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We took quite a phased approach so we were probably rolling it out over the space of six months. We took our time with it. The experience that we had was good.

From the time we set up the solution until it provided us with feedback on our IT infrastructure was within the space of a month or two. That was mainly due to the pace at which we rolled it out. We started to get some good feedback quite early on, during the first week or so, but overall the time it took was due to the speed of our implementation.

We went directly through the vendor, and we deployed in-house.

It has definitely provided us value. It's just that we haven't necessarily measured that value.

We've got the unlimited package. I don't know the licensing situation today, but I believe it was around the £15,000 per year mark. It's probably about a couple of grand per month, at most.

We had a look at SolarWinds, their network monitoring suite, which was the big player in the market. It's got a price tag to match and that was certainly a factor. Admittedly, it is a much bigger product, it's got broad capabilities and it's got different kinds of integrations. For what we needed at that time, PRTG absolutely suited.

Scrub out your requirements. PRTG does the network side very well indeed. If asset monitoring and integrations with other products are really important for you then it might be worth looking at this as well as a secondary product. Also, you need to plan your deployment and understand where and how to deploy the remote sensors.

I prefer the web client. I've had limited use of the Desktop app and, from what I've seen, it's good, but I find using the web app is a lot cleaner in my workspace.

The product has to be about a nine out of ten. From my somewhat more high-level view, the summary dashboards are excellent, they give me what I need. Having spoken to the operations guys, it gives them everything they need. It's quite a simple interface, it's very expandable, and has allowed us to get control of it in a single console. That is really what we need for a small team.

• Monitoring network
• Uptime
• Resources on servers
• Better monitor our network, local, and remote hosts, and network usage as well.

• PRTG has improved our visibility and response time to issues related to remote sites. 
• Nice product with an easy interface to use and a large variety of sensors.

• Ping monitoring
• WMI for RAM
• Hard drive space on servers
• Monitors site uptime (and notices when it is down), along with thresholds when server RAM or HD is running low, which has helped us.

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

Web-based interface is easy to use, but it is cumbersome to make changes across several devices.

No issues.

No issues.

Tech support and sales have been great.

Setup was straightforward. It is too easy to use up sensors on fluff items (core switch, etc.).  Took effort to focus on key items, such as uptime, etc.

Did not use the vendor to setup.

Currently, we are using the free version. ROI was immediate after receiving notifications with low HD or RAM on servers.

Sensors on free version can run out quick. However, the ability to use the base version with 100 free sensors is great. The cost on other packages can be very reasonable.

It was recommended by our network engineers. Other clients use PRTG and have had a great experiences with it.

It is a good solution. We are evaluating the advanced features and client PC application monitoring.

Bandwidth graph and Layouts

Map designer could be improved by adding more flexibility to the links instead of the straight line.

No

No

No

Previous solutions had to many dependencies and were unstable for the most part. Overhead and additional cost of critical features were costly.

Initial setup is as easy as it will get for a software of this type. The entire application core and probe literally install and run in less than 5 minutes. I am used to having dependencies and multiple modules taking over an hour to fully install for similar product.

SolarWinds, WhatsUp, OpenNMS, Nagios, Netcool, OPManager, Splunk

This is a review of PRTG version 14. As far as network monitoring and analysis, I cannot think of a more intuitive and flexible product on the market today. Where PRTG shines is in its speed and compact design. The latest interface is ideal for complex networks and as useful for simple networks. Initially, I had a negative reaction to the idea of the sensor based license approach. Once I deployed PRTG on the network, the sensor model makes perfect sense. For the amount of sensors that I used and the included features, the cost of PRTG is over 80% lower than other software suites that claim to have similar features. I am not an employee of PRTG, I am just a very satisfied user. If you are a sysadmin or netadmin and have been struggling to find the ideal monitoring tool, I urge you to give PRTG a try. The trial is free. You will not regret it. I just wish someone had told me about this application a few years ago.

I use the solution to monitor the services for our customers or for ourselves.

The availability of services has been good. Getting the alerts for the critical services is quite helpful, and having the indicators of the business needs is great.

It's working fine. It gives us the information that we require so far.

The monitoring services it offers are great.

The solution can scale.

It is stable.

Technical support is helpful.

The initial setup isn't too complex. 

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. 

We'd like to see integration with other solutions like ServiceDesk software or an instant messaging app. We'd like to integrate all the information into other systems so that you can process and have different kinds of indicators.

I've used the solution for maybe 15 or 16 years. 

There is maintenance required on the server, database, and files. That said, it is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

I'd rate the ability to scale nine out of ten.

The scalability potential is high. I would rate the ability to scale eight out of ten.

We have about ten users using the solution in our company. They are all engineers.

We do hope to increase usage in the future. 

Technical support is good. They are fine. They are in Germany. They may take a day or so to answer; however, they normally get back to us fast and assist us.

Positive

We have used other solutions in the past. For monitoring, this solution has been great.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I'd rate it eight out of ten. It's very easy and not overly difficult to get everything set up.

The deployment times vary. It depends on the number of sensors, the type of infrastructure, et cetera. There are many factors, so you need to analyze every case.

We work with a couple of engineers dedicated to these solutions.

We handled the setup ourselves, in-house. We didn't need outside assistance.

I can't speak to the exact pricing. I don't handle licensing. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

We've deployed both on the cloud and on-premises.

Users need to know the solution to work with it effectively. They need to update and need to know all the specifics, including the features. 

Also, users need to know what to monitor and what they need to monitor. They need asset management. They need to know the critical services that they want to monitor so that it can be clear for the tool. Before the implementation before the installation, they need to do that - all the configurations.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We're using PRTG for network, asset, and infrastructure monitoring. I have five network and infrastructure engineers using the solution, and we're not using it extensively. It's one of our secondary monitoring tools.

PRTG gives us true visibility of the downtime of particular circuit functions. So if a circuit is up but not routing traffic, I will know with this tool. I can write a customized script for a sensor to detect specific things.

One useful feature is PRTG's scripting ability. We can go into the system and create monitoring sensors, for lack of a better phrase. So I can look for something specific instead of just uptime or downtime on a specific asset.

PRTG's documentation could be improved.

I've been using PRTG Network Monitor for about a year.

PRTG's stability is fine.

We're not that big of an organization, so I can't say much about scalability, but we've had no problems with it.

I've had no contact with PRTG support.

In the past, we used SolarWinds. We switched to PRTG because it was more scriptable and customizable.

Setting up PRTG was straightforward and took a few hours.

After the initial acquisition cost, the license is about four grand a year.

I rate PRTG Network Monitor seven out of 10. If you are considering PRTG, you should take into account the fact that the data is going up into the cloud in a private, isolated console or a tenant in a multi-tenant environment. Just be aware of what you want to look for and know how to get it in terms of status, uptime, etc.

Our primary use case for this solution is for every computer operator in my data center to be able to easily operate and use devices.

PRTG does not allow us to scan devices like we can scan software or another problem in it. Also, I cannot draw graphical graphs in Woodview/look. Another problem is that we cannot draw a good diagram in PRTG.

In the next release, I'd like to see more integration with, for example, SolarWinds.

I have been using this solution for about five or six years.

I would say that this solution is stable, but we'd like something more out of it. We need it to improve a little bit.

My opinion is that this is a scalable solution. There are currently 10 users of this solution in our company.

My opinion is that the setup was straightforward. It took seven people to deploy this solution.

The licenses are paid on a monthly basis. My opinion is that this solution is not very expensive.

We are using a cloud version of this solution.

Overall, I would rate this solution a 10, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

The primary use case if for monitoring bandwidth, uplinks and using SNMPs. We are slowly scaling out to monitor hard drive disk spaces, as well. 

Our bandwidth solution, which are the uplinks that we have at the moment for circuit breakouts, and ISPs don't give us the best information. So, we use what we can and monitor the uplinks before they hit the equipment.

Historical data provided by this solution helps us optimize our network performance by providing network trends. Therefore, we can go back 30 days or six months, saying to my boss, "We can see an upward trend over this amount, and these are our projections going forward." So, it allows us to predict and move forward.

We use a Citrix application, which we use to monitor certain ports and ensure we get response times that are essential. It makes it easier if we can benchmark scenarios rather than asking users if the speed has improved, etc.

This solution provides us with the needed feedback on our IT infrastructure. It allows us to grab all the information from a single point of view.

The most valuable feature is being notified before we ask if there is an outage. Visibility is the main thing for us, which I can give to my boss. So, when people start asking him for information, he's not on the back foot straightaway. He can say, "Yes, we are experiencing this." We can at least get that information to the ISPs and provide them the correct timestamps and information, then go from there.

The sensors and remote probes are phenomenal. We use them for all of our global sites. The problem with our global sites are that they are all VPNs. If the link goes down, you can't monitor other solutions, as it just goes off the grid. Having remote probes allows them to still carry on and get the information that we need when it comes back up, sending the information to us.

We have been happy with the feature set, so far. It has compatibility with most of the product that we use, such as Juniper hardware.

They just released a newer version of the desktop app, a beta version, that I have been trialing out. I prefer the older version, only because of how the layout is designed, but they're making improvements to it all the time.

The clustering aspect needs improvement, as there is a bit of confusion about you do when hit that 5000 probe mark.

I would like there to be more cloud features with cloud stats. However, in every update, there seems to be more things add. 

I would also like there to be more APIs and access to them.

It is fairly stable. It gets a bit interesting the closer that we are etching in to the 5000 probe mark. 

There are some HA concerns. However, PRTG put that on the website and are not hiding it. One thing that I want to know, "Where the company is going with HA from here?"

Previously, we were easily under a 1000 sensors. We are now up to 3500. In the future, depending on how we scale out, we will be over the 5000 mark.

The product can easily grow with our business.

The technical support is good. They are fairly responsive. I have a ticket with them at the moment and am waiting to hear back on them, but it's all good.

For online resources, I pretty much go to Google more than anything else, rather than a dedicated place.

The time that it took to get the information required to be as proactive or reactive as possible is what drove us to PRTG. With the multitude of products that we had, it was the best solution since it allows us to see everything in one window.

We used the free trial of PRTG. Did a benchmark to see if the product is what we required, then went to the paid version.

The initial setup is straightforward. You just install it, and as long as you have got the right credentials and know the subnets to scan, it is fairly easy.

It took hours from the time that we set up the solution until it provided us with feedback on our IT infrastructure. However, in the time to get the core setup, we scaled it out for the rest of the business. The analysis that it provided was good and quick.

We implemented in-house.

This solution enables our IT department to be more cost-effective by saving. The product provide a single pane to see a lot of information, especially at an engineering level. Looking at multiple products takes more time. Having a single pane in effect can provide all the information in one place.

I had previously used PRTG 

Give it a shot. They have a free trial. If the product meets your needs, take it further. There is not much in terms of prerequisites, other than knowing the subnets and credentials.

The product does everything that we need it to do at the moment.