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NetBrain vs PRTG Network Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (15th), Network Automation (4th)
PRTG Network Monitor
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (5th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, up 1.6% compared to last year.
PRTG Network Monitor, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 4.2% mindshare, down 4.4% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.
Noman-Saleem - PeerSpot reviewer
Detects suden changes but significant pricing concerns affect the effectiveness of network traffic troubleshooting
We use PRTG Network Monitor for monitoring traffic on interfaces and the behavior of network traffic. If there are sudden changes in traffic or any configuration issues, we can sort them out using PRTG. It's very helpful for troubleshooting and monitoring traffic utilization on our interfaces…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"The solution has excellent redundant features."
"It is great for service level agreements and can comply fully with internet monitoring or any interface."
"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is the dashboards. We can check to see the resources and the uptime."
"It is very flexible, and we can monitor many aspects of IT as well as ERP and CRM services. It has a very powerful interface and APIs for customization."
"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."
"The alerting is the most valuable feature. I also like the iPhone app. I get alerts in an email on the iPhone app."
"One of the valuable features is the diversity of metrics available to us to monitor. It's all there, it's all in the box. It's all made very easy, by virtue of it being pre-configured."
"It helps the entire organization become digitally enabled."
 

Cons

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
"Along with more room for automation, more room for advanced configuration can be integrated into the solution."
"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 run it in a cluster, so we have two that run together. The cluster behind it is sketchy at times."
"We're using more cloud services now. It would be useful to be able to get information back from these cloud services in detail, and display any issues within PRTG for the rest of our systems."
"I know we're going to move to Docker applications and I understand that PRTG does some monitoring regarding this. I do not know if it is complete. If it's not yet complete, it's something they should consider improving."
"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."
"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"
"PRTG Network Monitor can improve by adding prevention and detection features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"At the moment I'm only using 500 sensors. I pay yearly, so it's a cost that's easily swallowed."
"We pay nothing for it. Its 100 sensors have allowed us to put a magnifying glass on some systems, providing an extra layer of detail. Therefore, our outgoing is nothing and our incoming is a lot of useful data that we can react to proactively."
"The pricing is comparable."
"The pricing is okay and it is cheaper than some competing products."
"It's a cost-efficient tool."
"While I am not the person who deals with pricing, I would say that we pay around 1000 pounds a year."
"I rate the price of PRTG Network Monitor an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"We've got the unlimited package... I believe it was around the £15,000 per year mark."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?
The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.
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.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
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
Find out what your peers are saying about NetBrain vs. PRTG Network Monitor and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.
864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.