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NetBrain vs PRTG Network Monitor vs Zabbix 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetBrain3.1%
Wireshark14.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO10.3%
Other72.3%
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PRTG Network Monitor3.3%
Zabbix5.0%
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Other88.1%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zabbix5.0%
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
PRTG Network Monitor3.3%
Other88.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC
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.
madhan kumar hs - PeerSpot reviewer
software engineer at Capgemini
Alerting precision has reduced incident response times and improved department-level network visibility
The auto-pause sensor during the maintenance window is good without any false alerts, and it prevents me from getting flooded with alerts during planned maintenance, helping department heads understand their own network usage better. It has reduced incident response time by giving clearer ownership of each alert, ensuring alerts go to the proper recipient. SNMP testers and auto-pause are among the best features of PRTG Network Monitor, which is particularly useful for different departments such as HR and finance, where alerts can be filtered accordingly. The alerting features and dashboard of PRTG Network Monitor are very helpful, especially in our industry. However, the dashboard can look cluttered on smaller screens, which is one negative aspect. PRTG Network Monitor has impacted us positively; we have stopped getting flooded with alerts during planned maintenance or unplanned outages. Compared to others, this gives specific alerts very quickly and helps department heads understand their own network usage better, thus reducing incident response time so that each alert has clear ownership.
KamranBhatti - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Helps reduce response time but has room to improve customization complexity
We are not working on simple standalone solutions like Kaspersky DDoS Protection or Hybrid Cloud Security. Once you understand Zabbix, then it is easy to customize those web pages and graphs for our customer use. It is fully automated to your requirements. Zabbix is working fine with no issues, and I am satisfied with it. We have combined Zabbix and SolarWinds. The integration works fine, and it is easy to integrate Zabbix with the IT environment. We were trying to purchase MDR (Managed Detection and Response), but we are not working on that. I don't have real experience with MDR. We are using Falcon software for that. We are working with Falcon Complete, not with Sandbox. We are not using Kaspersky for business or cloud protection. For that, we are using Zabbix CrowdStrike Falcon Complete solution. I have given this review an overall rating of 8.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"NetBrain is very good when it comes to network mapping, as it looks for different assets within the network available, so router, firewall, applications, et cetera, and it gives you the full mapping, asset mapping along with the full range including the firmware software update and all those things."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"NetBrain is faster, better and level sets the engineering technical sets."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"PRTG Network Monitor has positively impacted my organization as we are not seeing any critical issues or major impacts for our applications, our servers, and our networks nowadays."
"The solution is easy to manage and the reports are very accurate."
"It is easy when it comes to dependencies of devices, so if your router goes down, the three or four switches behind it will automatically be paused so that you don't get multiple alerts."
"The remote probes are very useful. They allow us to provide a reference across different areas in the network. In trying to localize issues, that's very useful."
"The most valuable features of PRTG Network Monitor are bandwidth utilization, user-friendliness, all past report simple retrievals, and timeout features."
"The most advantageous aspect of PRTG Network Monitor is that you can start quite fast because there are many sensors you can use, and it's ready to use."
"I really love the activity library. It gives the flexibility to discover data and metrics about my interface and data server."
"The solution is scalable."
"The initial setup was pretty straightforward, we did not face any issues and it was up and running within a day."
"We delivered a project for telemetry but not just for IT, monitoring different parameters for radio communication sites and collecting information about alarms and analog values, and we use this system in mission critical applications for radio communications, police, firemen's, health, etcetera."
"The features I found most valuable are the user interface and a wide range of network devices that are easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides network segregation for server monitoring."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the ease with which we can set it up at customer sites with our custom Zabbix proxy and tools."
"The initial setup was straightforward; it was easy and, with the help of suppliers, it did not take much time to deploy and was not complex."
"The most valuable feature is the protocol to manage anything."
"We have found that Zabbix is more easy to use than other applications."
 

Cons

"If you're comparing NetBrain as an NDR, I would rate it as a four or five, however, NetBrain has a different aspect of looking at things within the network."
"It's okay on the value, a bit expensive for just maps, but makes it a lot easier to see things visually and take it from there."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"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."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"The desktop app is the one area where it do with some improvement. From a user's perspective, I would like to be able to get more out of the desktop app as opposed to where we are now with it."
"The reporting features look very technical and that can be improved."
"In our organization, we encounter performance issues with our PRTG probe service. I saw documentation from the vendor or Paessler mentioning that there are limitations for WMI sensors. Other than that, we are okay with PRTG."
"The automation should be improved."
"It's expensive to maintain."
"More training videos for installing and configuring PRTG Network Monitor would have been nice, especially when working with a lot of devices."
"The product could be improved by being cross-platform friendly."
"I wouldn't mind better categories for the sensors."
"If you want to use all of the features then you have to pay a licensing fee."
"The APM monitoring has room for improvement, although I hear that the new 5.2 version has some improvements in that area, and I'd like to give that a go."
"There are a lot of areas for improvement, specifically in the dashboards and reports functionalities."
"As far as improvements, sometimes I get a bit frustrated when I move from a previous version to a new one because some configuration has changed—I need to investigate the documentation to deal with some configuration. But it doesn't take much time, so it's okay."
"My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement."
"Zabbix has it all except for predictive trending."
"In the area of the solution where you write the command, it is not very user-friendly and could be improved."
"I am having difficulties connecting it to Grafana, as well as some of the other plugins like Kibana."
 

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."
"It is expensive."
"We've got 1,000 nodes and I believe it's a few hundred quid a month."
"The price is pretty comparable."
"The pricing is reasonable for the features provided."
"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."
"The price of PRTG is reasonable. PRTG's competitors like SolarWinds and ManageEngine charge more for the same functionality."
"It is about £4,500 for the first year, then about another 15 to 20 percent annually after that. So, we are looking at about £1000 running costs a year. When you think about how much an outage costs per minute, it's negligible."
"We have an unlimited license for this solution."
"If you have 20,000 hosts, the support costs around €95,000 for a year."
"It's free software released under the GNU/GPL license."
"I was using the free, Community Edition."
"I use the tool's free version."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"Zabbix is an open-source tool, and it's free to use."
"The solution is free. However, many open-sourced tools start out free but eventually start charging."
"Its licensing is fair. It seems to be much cheaper than others."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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 a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?
The pricing was higher at the beginning, but the recurring licensing cost is affordable and reasonable. Overall, the ...
What needs improvement with PRTG Network Monitor?
The reporting features look very technical and that can be improved. If they can change the report so everyone can un...
What do you like most about Zabbix?
The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?
I think Zabbix is economical, whereas SolarWinds is expensive. SolarWinds has a lot of secure features, but Zabbix is...
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
The potential and customization is a little difficult because you have to learn scripts. I think Zabbix needs to impr...
 

Comparisons

 

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
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about Auvik, NetAlly, Wireshark and others in Network Troubleshooting. Updated: March 2026.
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