PRTG Network Monitor vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

PRTG Network Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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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

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

4th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

112

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (5th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

16th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (19th), Container Monitoring (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.8%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 2.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
PRTG Network Monitor	4.8%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	2.0%
Other	93.2%

Cloud Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

madhan kumar hs

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.

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Ajay Shukla

Consultant at HCLTech

Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome

The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

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 is a central solution in terms of how to actually use it. It has a very easy dashboard. Everything is concise. We are able to create custom sensors. For different parts of the business, we have many products across many environments, and it works for everything."

"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."

"We use the remote probes a lot for our branch offices. Instead of deploying the full instance of PRTG, we'll put a remote probe out there. This simplifies the whole deployment for us."

"PRTG Network Monitor offers valuable features that save a lot of time as the reports are automatically available, and I rely on them because they provide proof during escalation, with exact downtime logs and related information."

"Good compilation of the system's information."

"It is able to satisfy all our requirements in terms of email notifications and specific errors on the devices."

"The auto-pause for sensors during maintenance windows is awesome, as there are no false alerts till now and the built-in SNMP tester tool has saved me multiple times during setups, making PRTG Network Monitor a one-stop monitoring solution for my industry."

"PRTG gives us true visibility of the downtime of particular circuit functions. So if a circuit is up but not routing traffic, I will know with this tool. I can write a customized script for a sensor to detect specific things."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."

"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"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."

"The Desktop app is good but it can be really sluggish at times, especially when you're editing different elements."

"The free version only gives us 100 free sensors to use. It would be nice if there was double that."

"PRTG Network Monitor can be improved as there is a lot of manual cleanup needed, which could be reduced."

"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."

"PRTG would be improved if it required less memory to run."

"PRTG does not allow us to scan devices like we can scan software or another problem in it. Also, I cannot draw graphical graphs in Woodview/look. Another problem is that we cannot draw a good diagram in PRTG."

"Their penetration within the market could be much better. If their pricing was lower, even though it's reasonable now, it might help them achieve this."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."

"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is okay and it is cheaper than some competing products."

"We are using the basic PRTG that we can download for free. For now, we only need to monitor less than 100 devices. For more than 100 devices, we would need to buy a license. PRTG is much cheaper than SolarWinds."

"We are using the premium version of PRTG Network Monitor. The price of the solution is a bit higher than competitors but it is worth the extra money. However, it would be helpful if the price was lower."

"We've got the unlimited package... I believe it was around the £15,000 per year mark."

"The price of PRTG is reasonable. PRTG's competitors like SolarWinds and ManageEngine charge more for the same functionality."

"If you're looking for a cost effective software I’d suggest this product."

"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."

"I rate the licensing for PRTG Network Monitor an eight out of ten."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

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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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	47

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

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 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 pricing, setup cost, and licensing is fair for our industry. They have quoted us...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

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Product Reports

PRTG Network Monitor

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

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

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

Broadcom

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

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

PRTG Network Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications