ControlUp vs PRTG Network Monitor comparison

ControlUp and Paessler GmbH are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. ControlUp is ranked #37 with an average rating of 7.7, while Paessler GmbH is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.7. ControlUp holds a 0.9% mindshare in IM, compared to Paessler GmbH’s 4.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ControlUp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Paessler GmbH users who would recommend it.

ControlUp

Read 11 ControlUp reviews

1,307 Views
883 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 102 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

6,193 Views
4,344 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

ControlUp

PRTG Network Monitor

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

PRTG Network Monitor and ControlUp both offer comprehensive monitoring solutions in the IT management category. PRTG appears to have the upper hand in cost predictability with its bundled features, while ControlUp is favored for its advanced capabilities, particularly in integration with VMware.

Features: PRTG is noted for easy deployment and scalability, and provides robust alerting and real-time data presentation, supporting a broad range of technologies with minimal customization. ControlUp focuses on endpoint and real-time performance monitoring, offering rich insights into user experience and resource usage, especially in VDI environments. ControlUp also supports automated responses through scripting.

Room for Improvement: PRTG could enhance its application monitoring, improve dashboard intuitiveness, and expand distributed monitoring capabilities. Reports of slower technical support responses indicate a need for development. ControlUp would benefit from stronger network infrastructure monitoring and more advanced data export options. Both could improve in integration and automation features to enhance overall usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PRTG is recognized for its straightforward setup and comprehensive knowledge base, though it could improve support response times. ControlUp is praised for its easy cloud-based management, with generally effective technical support, although service charges sometimes lack transparency. Both solutions offer smooth deployment experiences, with PRTG often noted for its particularly seamless installation process.

Pricing and ROI: PRTG provides a cost-effective solution with predictable expenditures, despite potentially increasing fees in complex environments. Its perpetual licensing is ideal for monitoring large infrastructures, offering quick ROI through reduced downtime. ControlUp, frequently integrated with VMware, offers premium features that justify its costs, providing efficiency across numerous devices. Both solutions demonstrate ROI flexibility depending on application and integration, aiding in strategic resource management.

To learn more, read our detailed ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

ControlUp

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

37th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.4%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Richasvi Tripathi

Solutions Developer at HCL Technologies

Used to monitor several devices, but most reports do not give information of all the devices

We have approximately 10 to 20 feature requests pending on the vendor side. Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices. In our case, we are monitoring 200000 devices. So, we need details for all those devices, but that is limited to 100, which they have improved to an extent in some reports. I'm thinking of one feature request for ISPs because the dashboard does not provide a detailed list of ISPs, and it provides the wrong list. I feel some firewall issues are blocking that, and the team cannot send that detail. That may be the case. One feature request pending on the vendor side is the data format change. Once you see a detail in the report, it is mentioned in some other format, which is hard to analyze sometimes.

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Tochukwu Uzomba

Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited

Efficiently monitor networks across regions with seamless setup and robust feature set

PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational. It is an all-in-one monitoring solution without extra costs. For example, we set it up for an insurance company with branches across Africa. We are able to monitor from Lagos without installing anything in the branches, using the agentless feature. We just put in the IP address and the parameter, and we monitor from those ends. Additionally, all the sensors are very useful. Most people are interested in the bandwidth monitoring sensor to see what bandwidth the users are consuming. The pricing is affordable compared to SolarWinds.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It has a great career time monitoring tool."

"The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities."

"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."

"Integration with Netscaler and Scoutbees can provide a proper end-to-end analysis of the user's experience and give us a real ROI."

"It shows you so many details of what's going on in that log-on that, if there's a problem, you can identify it in five minutes."

"ControlUp has an easy installation process."

"Security, uptime, and reduced capital expenditures are the main reasons we use ControlUp. So basically, the money that we consume is based on the amount of time we are using a service."

"ControlUp is beneficial as it provides a web interface through which you can access all your infrastructure—servers, devices, and VDI infrastructure—all on the same platform. It supports gathering all infrastructure components in a single, unified dashboard. This helps you identify performance issues or high resource utilization, allowing quick troubleshooting. I appreciate the solid interface that ControlUp offers."

More ControlUp pros

"Network Discovery is a feature that our customers like a lot."

"I can create my own program sensor. This means I can add extra monitoring capabilities into the already fundamentally strong foundation."

"PRTG Network Monitor helps us quickly and easily discover a large number of sensors, so we can spend minimal time monitoring customer sites."

"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."

"PRTG Network Monitor is user-friendly and offers flexible alerting systems."

"We can see which fiber links have been used heavily and, if they are used heavily, we can introduce more links to particular buildings or particular areas."

"The best feature is that it lets me know what is going on. I need to know if something has gone down, I need to know if something is running very slowly. PRTG tells me that."

"The most valuable features of PRTG Network Monitor are bandwidth utilization, user-friendliness, all past report simple retrievals, and timeout features. Additionally, if the solution does go down it is simple to bring it back."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

Cons

"The graphical user interface needs to be improved from version to version."

"It can be improved by including script-based scheduling."

"Something I would love to see from a partner perspective would be maybe a way to do this in a surface hosting provider."

"We'd like to see the mobile app working again so that we can get alerts 24/7. This is especially useful for the person on call."

"ControlUp could improve the integration. Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring has better integration."

"Solve is a quick and intuitive tool for quickly mapping data together, however, once you have the view of the data that you like, it is difficult to share this with colleagues."

"Integration is always a problem, and we feel that we are doing our best and the service provider thinks they are doing their best. I guess if ControlUp's system could be more capable or if people could understand the integration part, that would be better."

"This solution be improved by including load throttling tools. For example, I can identify a service where we spend a lot of CPU but I cannot restrict the service from ControlUp. I have to use another tool like AppSense."

More ControlUp cons

"Its price can be better. Its price is a problem for us because it is in dollars, and there is a high conversion rate. In terms of new features, it can have BGP monitoring. It should also have a dashboard and maps editor."

"It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."

"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."

"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 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."

"Mostly, this software has sensors for devices to monitor specs and you can build or develop or modify various sensors, according to your company's needs. But you may need to do that with coding or plugins or with the support of Paessler AG, the manufacturer."

"PRTG Network Monitor needs to show bandwidth utilization in proper graphs. It isn't easy to learn."

"The inventory of the device should be improved."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."

"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."

"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."

"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is reasonable."

"We've got 1,000 nodes and I believe it's a few hundred quid a month."

"The price is pretty comparable."

"If you are not too sure about it, try the free version. Then, if you like it, you can go to the paid version and roll it out."

"It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using."

"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is reasonable for the features that the solution provides. They charge you per monitoring, not per node, it is per port that you need for a device."

"Our licensing costs are 10,000 euros over three years."

"It's a cost-efficient tool."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

12%

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

46%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ControlUp Real-time?

Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive. It is a cheap tool because it is deployed to many devices where I work.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ControlUp Real-time?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?

We use the tool to monitor approximately 2,00,000 devices for a client. We check how the devices are doing in terms of hardware and software. We also check their health and alerts every day. If som...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it avoid the configuring the device in PRTG. It automatically discover the device an...

See all answers

What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?

The pricing is in the middle. It's not too high, nor too low, but it's reasonable.

See all answers

Comparisons

Nexthink vs ControlUp

Compared 26% of the time

Citrix uberAgent Monitoring vs ControlUp

Compared 21% of the time

eG Enterprise vs ControlUp

Compared 9% of the time

Liquidware Stratusphere UX vs ControlUp

Compared 9% of the time

vRealize Network Insight vs ControlUp

Compared 2% of the time

More ControlUp Competitors

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

LibreNMS vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

PRTG Enterprise Monitor vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp

May 2025

Download ControlUp product report

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

May 2025

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Overview

ControlUp is a digital experience monitoring management platform that makes it possible for IT teams to deliver a work-from-anywhere experience for employees. The solution makes fixing and preventing issues easy, enabling IT teams to make smarter decisions. It also provides monitoring performance, availability, and useful productivity metrics.

The ControlUp platform supports:

Any digital workstyle
Physical endpoints
Virtual desktops
Apps
SaaS
Web apps
Unified communications tools

ControlUp Features

ControlUp has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Out-of-the-box device and performance metrics
Custom metric and device data collection
Non-intrusive, secure agents with offline mode
Custom reporting
Easy-to-use dashboards
Scalable SaaS infrastructure
Built-in troubleshooting & remediation actions
Remote assist
Custom script actions
Multiple scripting languages
Automation and alerting

ControlUp Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing ControlUp. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Wide range of platform options: ControlUp offers multiple platform options including Windows, macOS, Linux, and IGE, independent of device location.

Powerful analytics: With ControlUp, you can analyze across your entire infrastructure or you can collect detailed individual device performance.

Optimizes performance: The solution enables you to remediate issues and optimize performance with its support of both manual and automated actions.

Minimize user downtime: ControlUp helps you catch common issues that lead to workflow interruptions. Self-correcting capabilities and comprehensive early-warning systems address issues before they impact employee productivity.

Resolve issues faster: The solution enables you to spend less time on support calls and more time driving value via its real-time troubleshooting and remediation solutions.

Increased visibility of remote environments: Gain real-time visibility across your entire network and find new ways to deliver the best end-user experience possible.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the ControlUp solution.

A Chair, IEEE Consumer Technology Society - Dallas,Texas, USA at a non-profit says, “In terms of the public cloud, ControlUp's features make us feel very secure. Security, uptime, and reduced capital expenditures are the main reasons we use ControlUp. So basically, the money that we consume is based on the amount of time we are using a service. ControlUp offers a return-on-investment type of approach that helps us.”

A VP Virtualisation and Citrix Engineer at BlackRock mentions, “Solve is quickly becoming one of the most-used features. Its interface allows us to connect to all 54,000 monitored endpoints in real-time. The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities. Combined with the triggers, we have been growing their usage to fix things before they become an issue. Lastly, the controller view allows us to compare the configurations of settings side-by-side which is extremely helpful when tracking down the RCA of an issue.”

A Senior Citrix Remote Access Engineer at Rabobank comments, “The high-level view of the estate coupled with powerful administration tools has been great. We can see real-time performance and trends and can create triggers for common issues with associated scripts that can automate a lot of the previous manual remediation steps.”

ControlUp

PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.

To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.

Paessler GmbH

Sample Customers

B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor

April 2025

Free Report: ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about ControlUp vs. PRTG Network Monitor and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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