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PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds NPM vs Wireshark 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 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 (%)
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Zabbix5.0%
PRTG Network Monitor3.3%
Other88.1%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wireshark14.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO10.3%
LinkRunner8.1%
Other67.3%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Central monitoring has improved outage alerts and now needs smarter detection and modern dashboards
Regarding the automated network topology and mapping feature in SolarWinds NPM, I am not satisfied with it. For static monitoring, it is acceptable. However, if it is possible, I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment. We did not have any facility to detect that in SolarWinds. I think it would be better to incorporate those types of features. Regarding customization options in SolarWinds, the ability to customize the dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard is quite old, and we need some improvement in it. Nowadays, we have multiple tools with AI-based monitoring and web-based dashboards. SolarWinds also has a web-based dashboard, but I think there is scope for improvement in the UI. There may be other areas I would like to improve in SolarWinds NPM.
Vijay Duggal - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Specialist at Squarepoint Capital
Provides detailed traffic analysis and helps troubleshoot issues
There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. While the solution supports sampling as fine as one millisecond, it requires a copy at that interval. My Python script allows me to achieve a granularity of up to ten microseconds, but I can't go beyond that. When dealing with provisioning on both issues, it would be beneficial if I could go down to the microsecond level, if not the nanosecond. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"PRTG Network Monitor helps us quickly and easily discover a large number of sensors, so we can spend minimal time monitoring customer sites."
"The pricing of the solution is pretty good; we don't find it too unreasonable, and it offers good integration capabilities with an initial setup that was easy and rolled out smoothly."
"We like the alerting system, the SNMP monitoring and the customization of the bandwidth."
"PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational."
"One of its valuable features is the fact that it handles multiple operating systems... And I like the fact that it tells me when things are about to fall over, which means I can preempt it and not have to wake up at three in the morning to fix it."
"The initial setup was easy. We didn't have any issues with the process and everything rolled out smoothly."
"My advice to those wanting to purchase a monitoring solution with simple and easy-to-use features, go with this solution."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers."
"The most valuable features in SolarWinds NPM are the network search and diagnostic tools."
"The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one; I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is."
"If your infrastructure is big, and requires a good kind of reporting tool, then SolarWinds fulfills all these requirements."
"We found that it was easy to operate, and it was simple if anyone has entry-level working experience or even if someone is not experienced."
"The product covers our needs for the basic care and feeding of servers, whether they are physical or virtual."
"This solution offers a very good view of our network and allows us to effectively monitor performance."
"Solarwinds network performance monitor is a strong product that combines management (SNMP), monitoring (SYSLOG) and configuration of routers and switches."
"What's best about Wireshark is that it doesn't require installation, supports cards and monitoring permissions, and is sufficient for appending and capturing activities, so you won't need to install other tools and can capture packets at any time from your laptop through Wireshark."
"Wireshark's best feature is that it's adaptive, which means it's the go-to tool for network-related developers, as when the new protocol comes up, it's rapidly applied to the system, so I can just look into the packet."
"I find Wireshark a very useful tool. Its best feature is that it allows me to deeply understand what's going on at the packet level, as well as any adverse signatures that I can analyze. When I need to create an IPS rule, I need to check the traffic deeply to get more insights about the actual traffic, what's the name of certain flags, etc., and I'm able to do all that through Wireshark. The tool is also user-friendly."
"This is a tool that gives you a clear-cut idea about where the issue is, and where the packs are dropping."
"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."
"The options that are required to get the details for the packet drops are good."
"For example, while debugging through food issues, we can draw the graph of the data captured in the solution and see how the throughput is moving."
"It helped in the sense that it allowed the team to troubleshoot networks faster."
 

Cons

"Other monitoring tools that I have used are easier to use."
"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."
"There are some vendor-specific sensors in PRTG Network Monitor, particularly for older hardware, that don't always provide consistent results."
"I would like to see network mapping."
"The Desktop app is good but it can be really sluggish at times, especially when you're editing different elements."
"The scalability of this solution could improve as well as the automated provisioning of the infrastructure."
"The technical support could respond a little bit quicker."
"For smaller networks, I would recommend this solution. That said, if the network is complex, I would recommend a company evaluates another product instead."
"The user should be able to customize the dashboard to their own requirements."
"If they’re going for a “cover everything” approach, then they need to do so and enable a bit more of the "cover everything approach" within every one of the tools."
"It would be good to have high security."
"The SolarWinds notification and alerting configuration could be simplified as it would be easier to find if it was within the NPM web application instead of in a separate client application."
"The cost is based on the number of nodes, so it is expensive when you have a lot of them."
"SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow."
"The solution could improve in many areas, such as the marketing and description of the products, providing areas of improvement, cloud capabilities, and being able to be more streamlined with the current integration points with other applications."
"Map section and Bandwidth."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"The product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."
"Wireshark is restricted when any sort of encryption is involved, such as XSL encryption or DLX."
"One con is that this software is only an observer, not an interactive component of the network, meaning you cant change anything with it."
"The product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."
"The product has been using the same GUI for many years."
"There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain."
"It’s helpful only if you have the basic knowledge of networking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very low compared to other solutions."
"PRTG Network Monitor is very expensive."
"The ability to use the base version with 100 free sensors is great. The cost on other packages can be very reasonable."
"When you have a lot of devices, PRTG Network Monitor can be costly."
"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."
"Pricing for PRTG Network Monitor is a nine out of ten. It meets my company's budget and monitoring requirements. My company is on a perpetual license."
"The price is pretty comparable."
"Sensors on free version can run out quick."
"I find that the pricing is acceptable."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India."
"Licenses depend on the number of devices, but all license levels come with technical support."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
"You have to license it per year, for the support. You don't really need to have support once you've already set it up. Once you install SolarWinds, you can skip on the licensing. It will still work."
"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"
"The tool is free."
"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."
"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."
"We're using the free version of Wireshark."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
"Wireshark is open source and gives great value and functionality to the network investigation."
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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
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise85
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

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 is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Wireshark?
Wireshark is priced at a medium range, not too high, not too low. The pricing could be more flexible, and they might ...
What needs improvement with Wireshark?
The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance. Performance can sometimes be a challenge due...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Comversion, ADP, Talbots
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.