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PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application 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

PRTG Network Monitor
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (5th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (10th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), Server Monitoring (10th), Active Directory Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. PRTG Network Monitor is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 4.1%, down 4.2% compared to last year.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, on the other hand, focuses on Server Monitoring, holds 2.7% mindshare, down 3.3% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PRTG Network Monitor4.1%
Zabbix11.4%
SolarWinds NPM4.4%
Other80.1%
Network Monitoring Software
Server Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor2.7%
Zabbix24.7%
Checkmk9.9%
Other62.7%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

madhan kumar hs - PeerSpot reviewer
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 PATHAK - PeerSpot reviewer
Offering reasonably good dashboarding features but needs to improve the application performance monitoring
My company uses Riverbed for application performance monitoring. I was doing research so that I could understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provide APM capabilities similar to Riverbed, which allows our company to get a packet capture of an entire session, and on the basis of it, we look at the application performance monitoring part. With SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, my company does SNMP polling, so it can drag an entire session, but it focuses more on availability, CPU memory, and server connection status. In Riverbed, my company catches an entire system, so when we deal with two applications, we have end-to-end app visibility. All the application monitoring happens through Riverbed. Our company's main problem is that, as of now, we have two different products in our organization, and we don't want to continue with the multiple products currently. I wanted to understand if SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor already have capabilities like Riverbed, and if they do, then I wanted to figure out why our company should not go with SolarWinds and why we are using products from multiple vendors. My company needs to continue with either Riverbed or SolarWinds. I wanted to see which products are good for the organization and how much I want to continue with Riverbed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"PRTG Network Monitor's best features are its flexibility, ease of implementation, user-friendliness, and intuitive interfaces."
"The remote probe feature in PRTG Network Monitor helps you monitor remote systems or your network at a lower cost than other solutions."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The feature I like is that it can easily do a lot of mapping."
"The network visualization helps us to drill down deeper."
"There was only one feature I liked about PRTG Network Monitor a lot, and that was bandwidth monitoring, though, in the newer versions of the tool, that feature is now a bit lacking. Pricing for PRTG Network Monitor is also not as expensive. It's a good tool, even for beginners."
"It is great for service level agreements and can comply fully with internet monitoring or any interface."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"The product integrates with Remedy."
"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."
"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."
 

Cons

"We would like to monitor certain aspects of the user experience. We should be able to analyze the cause of end user experience, bad or good, so we can do some research and development on our own."
"PRTG Network Monitor needs to show bandwidth utilization in proper graphs. It isn't easy to learn."
"PRTG Network Monitor can improve by adding prevention and detection features."
"Sometimes the error messages are too vague and don't directly tell me what went wrong."
"There are some vendor-specific sensors in PRTG Network Monitor, particularly for older hardware, that don't always provide consistent results."
"I have an issue with DFS, distributed file services... there isn't one by default. Taking into account the difference between DFS and DFSR as well would be great."
"They could improve the process of updating the license."
"A room for improvement in PRTG Network Monitor is its sensors. Its application technology sensor, such as the IAS, .NET, etc., needs some improvement because it doesn't work as expected. For example, the IAS sensor doesn't give immediate information, and the information you get from it isn't of good value. The web GUI of PRTG Network Monitor also needs improvement because errors keep popping up if it's not been updated to the latest version. What I'd like to see in the next release of the tool is end-to-end topology mapping for the business model, and that should be required. There has to be a technical map. Technical mapping and topological creation are missing in PRTG Network Monitor, so I would like to see those in the future."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"PRTG is now available as PRTG Enterprise Monitor, and the price varies depending on the total number of sensors the customer buys"
"I'm paying something like €1000 per year for the maintenance. I've got unlimited sensors."
"The licensing fees are billed annually and there are no costs in addition to this."
"While I am not the person who deals with pricing, I would say that we pay around 1000 pounds a year."
"We have an unlimited license for this solution."
"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."
"In my company now, we are using the free version."
"The price is too high."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"The product is expensive."
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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
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise42
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

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 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 needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

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
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
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