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Security66f5 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Engineer at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Within 24 hours of setup, we had a days worth of logs to look through
Pros and Cons
  • "The real-time monitoring and alerting are its most valuable features."
  • "Sometimes, it is difficult to drill down further to get information, e.g., if we saw spike in traffic, then we would want to drill down and find out what is causing that spike in traffic."

What is our primary use case?

It is for monitoring the up/down of our core infrastructure: Internally, the edge routers in our major occupancies, core switches, access switches, etc. It sort of give us real-time feedback for what is going on.

We use it to determine if a switch is up, our traffic is running optimally or at a normal rate.

How has it helped my organization?

We set up the solution, and it provided us with feedback on our IT infrastructure instantaneously. Because of the sensors that we are using, the graph started populating straightaway. Also, Pings and SNMPs were coming back straightaway. So, within 24 hours, we had a days worth of logs to look through.

Yesterday, we were having an issue with one of our major occupancies. We were able to quickly determine whether or not it was because of network performance. Because we could literally just look at the graph and screen on our wallboard, and say, "It wasn't because of network utilization." 

It is easy to rule things out, or say, "Because we had this huge spike it traffic, it maxed out our line. Therefore, it was a bandwidth problem."

What is most valuable?

The real-time monitoring and alerting are its most valuable features. 

What needs improvement?

Sometimes, it is difficult to drill down further to get information, e.g., if we saw spike in traffic, then we would want to drill down and find out what is causing that spike in traffic. Now, it could be because of the way we're using it, but we find that it' difficult to do, which is why we are using another product for this.

SolarWinds has server application monitors (SAMs), which we are using to check our processes on critical systems to see if they were to go down that we would get an alert for it. Because it's all network-based, it would be great if this was something that we could have included.

Buyer's Guide
PRTG Network Monitor
August 2025
Learn what your peers think about PRTG Network Monitor. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have never seen it go down. I think it has only ever gone down when I have been messing with it and caused it to go down. The solution is nice and stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is really good. At one point, I did enable a sort of clustering and found that much easier than SolarWinds. 

SolarWinds clustering is an absolute nightmare, whereas clustering with PRTG, was ridiculously simple. In order to scale and add more load balancing, PRTG was a lot smoother and quicker to do it. 

Obviously, there are different levels. We're currently limited to 100 sensors, but if we were to purchase an enhanced version of it, we could scale to whatever we purchased.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't used the technical support. I haven't needed them.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were actually using PRTG before we were using SolarWinds. From the feature side of things, I don't think that we ever fully implemented and tested PRTG. Then, we started testing SolarWinds and found SolarWinds was giving us a more detailed reporting. So, that is the avenue we went down for actually purchasing a product. We chose SolarWinds, but we still keep a hold of PRTG for its real-time stuff.

How was the initial setup?

We just installed it, then started configuring sensors. That was about it. There wasn't much to it.

What about the implementation team?

We set it up in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The historical data does not help us optimize our network performance, as we are not really using it to that level. We could, but because we are only on the free version, we have a limited number of sensors. Therefore, we are not monitoring as much as we want to be to obtain historical information.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also have monitoring with SolarWinds, as well. What we find is that SolarWinds is great for reporting and delving back into logs, but PRTG is better for that instant on knowing what is going on right now.

There are quite a wide array of different sensors with PRTG. However, we are only really utilizing SNMP, Ping, and similar functions at the moment. Because our NetFlow data goes into SolarWind, we want that report inside it. We find SolarWinds better for this. Though, we know that we could do this if we wanted and put some NetFlow data into PRTG with its multiple different sensors.

We are not using the solution to its fullest capacity. At this point, I don't think we will because we are so involved with SolarWinds. We are getting out of PRTG what we want to get out of it, but we are not getting enough from it that we could ditch SolarWinds and move over to it.

What other advice do I have?

For the solutions features that we are using, they are great. We have no issues with the feature set.

I don't think we've ever used the desktop app, as I didn't know there was a desktop app. We just use the web.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Cloud Engineer at Software Cloud Limited
MSP
Provides us with immediate feedback on our IT infrastructure; we were blind before
Pros and Cons
  • "The alerting is the most valuable feature. I also like the iPhone app. I get alerts in an email on the iPhone app."
  • "In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution. We had to install a probe on one of our cloud servers and then let that probe out from there. It would be really cool if it just monitored Azure without having to install something on the device."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to keep an eye on the equipment we've got out there. We've got a Citrix farm which we shut down on an evening. We have alerts to tell us if they haven't come back up.

How has it helped my organization?

We were blind before. We implemented PRTG to get visibility and to get alerts on when CPU is spiking or RAM is spiking. The benefits are that it keeps us proactive. It keeps us in front of any issues that might arise. For instance, if we've got ten Citrix servers on one site and a couple of those are spiking and we get an alert on it, we can just stop users from logging onto them and spin up an extra server quite quickly.

With the Citrix solution, it now gives us clear visibility if, for some reason, some of the servers haven't come up in the morning. Before the users come in, we've got the servers set to power up by Smart Scale in Citrix to be ready to be used. If they haven't come up, PRTG's telling us they haven't come up. It enables us to jump on that before the users get in. It makes sure that the users' experience is seamless, that it's the same every day. We know every single day if the servers are up or down. PRTG tells us that.

The historical data will help optimize our network performance. We're still relatively new in deploying it. It has given us indications of when CPU spikes, when the most users are on from the most sites - because we have worldwide sites. It's given us an insight into when the busy periods are.

It doesn't necessarily make us more cost-effective but it certainly makes us be on the ball. It makes us be more proactive and it makes us better. In turn that should make us more cost-effective because it allows us to focus more on projects rather than on support. We're not firefighting, we're actually in front of the fire.

It provides us with immediate feedback on our IT infrastructure and it will give us more. We've only got a little bit so far because we've only implemented it recently. We're hoping we're going to get all kinds of really cool analytics out of it.

What is most valuable?

  • The alerting is the most valuable feature. 
  • I also like the iPhone app. I get alerts in an email on the iPhone app.
  • There are plenty of sensors for what we need. It's great.

What needs improvement?

In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution. We had to install a probe on one of our cloud servers and then let that probe out from there. It would be really cool if it just monitored Azure without having to install something on the device. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It hasn't gone down so far, so all good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It looks pretty scalable. At the moment we've just got this on one client's site; quite a big client of ours. And the plan would be to include this in our support package, so when we get new clients we'll put PRTG on their systems as well.

How are customer service and technical support?

We've not used technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were just using the Azure monitoring because all our resources were in Azure. We knew we needed to switch because the service kept filling up in terms of space and the client was alerting us. From a service management point of view, that's horrendous. We needed to the ones alerting the client.

Once we got PRTG on, we were able to not only alert the client, but we were able to rectify the potential issue prior to it being an issue and then alert the client: "We've identified this. We've rectified it. You need to do this."

We did experience system downtime before implementing the solution, but it wasn't a driving factor in our decision to go with PRTG.

We went with it because it looked quite simple. It almost seems too simple. It gives all the information we need. It has that dashboard for alerts on one of our monitors and we get alerts whenever there's an issue. It looked really user-friendly and really simple and it did what we needed it to do. As an IT engineer, you don't really want to be spending all of your time tweaking the monitor. It needs to be a tool.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was straightforward because a colleague of mine used PRTG previously. He knew how to use it and set it up. I had a look at it. I had never used PRTG, but I found it okay to set up. I did a free trial on one device to see if it worked for us and I found it okay to set up.

It took a little while, from the time we set up the solution until it provided us with feedback on our IT infrastructure, because we wanted to get the probes right. It took a little while to set it up on our terms. We didn't just flood it out there. We took our time and got it out. It was used in Azure monitoring and, even though what we were getting was rubbish, it was getting something, and we wanted to make sure we put it out right.

What about the implementation team?

We went straight to PRTG.

What was our ROI?

The solution is actually costing us money. We're taking the hit on the subscription because we haven't been able to bill it to our client yet. When the contract with our client comes up for renewal, we will then factor this into the client's renewal.

It is certainly letting us, as a DevOps team, have some sleep at night. We had a few servers that were limping and we were blind to them. We'd wake up each morning wondering if there was an email or a telephone call saying a server had gone down. This just enables to not worry so much about the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We've got 1,000 nodes and I believe it's a few hundred quid a month.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did trial four solutions, including PRTG. Obviously, we were using Azure, and I can't remember the others. They may have been SolarWinds and Opsgenie but that wasn't really going to do it for us.

What other advice do I have?

Get a trial set up and see what it can do. It's really intuitive. It's really straightforward. You get what you need to know out of it and the email alerts are customizable as well. All in all, it's really a positive solution. If you're looking for monitoring, then this is the one.

I don't use the Desktop app much. A colleague of mine set it up and I just focus on the alerts. From what I know, it's fine.

My overall impression of the solution's feature set is good. I'm pleased with it. It does everything we need to do. It would just be really cool if brought us straight into Azure.

I'd currently rate it an eight out of ten, purely because I'm new to it. I'm impressed with it so far. We're getting the reports. It's doing everything we need it to do. As I said, it would be really cool if we could get Azure without having to install a little piece of software.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
PRTG Network Monitor
August 2025
Learn what your peers think about PRTG Network Monitor. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SystemsS1e9e - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Specialist at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We have complete warning thresholds so we can fix issues before they become issues
Pros and Cons
  • "Speed of deployment is one of the most valuable features."
  • "The Desktop app is good but it can be really sluggish at times, especially when you're editing different elements."

What is our primary use case?

Monitoring of all our disparate sites through a central console is our primary use case.

How has it helped my organization?

The historical data provided by the solution helps to optimize network performance because it gives us trends. We can look at what we're using, what our peaks are, what our lows are, to know if we can downsize our links or if we need to scale-up in the future. It gives us really good forecasting.

In addition, with the solution we're proactive now, we're not reactive. We used to wait for the users to call us with an issue. Now we have complete warning thresholds so we can fix issues before they become issues. Our users perceive it as our being able to provide a very high level of service because we're avoiding situations where they suffer downtime. It's definitely made our infrastructure more reliable from a user's perspective.

It also enables our IT department to be more cost-effective because we're not doing as much hands-on monitoring. We're able to let the system monitor things for us so we can focus on other things. We're getting more value out of our techies.

Finally, it provides us with needed feedback on our IT infrastructure. We can look at individual devices or solutions and see if we're getting throughput, and how to utilize the hours. And that informs our buying decisions. It gives us a perspective from every angle.

What is most valuable?

Speed of deployment is one of the most valuable features. It's really quick to install. You can also scan whole subnets or different networks and it comes back with a full scan of what you've got on your network.

It allows you to do different verticals. There are different ways you can monitor things with custom sensor probes. It's really adaptable to your environment.

The solutions sensors and remote probes are very good, quite thorough.

My overall impression of the solution's feature set is that it's a great product, especially the mobile app. I'm on call and I get push notifications, so it gives me a heads-up before there are any issues that get reported to me by users. It's all good.

What needs improvement?

The Desktop app is good but it can be really sluggish at times, especially when you're editing different elements. If they could speed up the way you maneuver around different OUs that would be really good. The map creator is quick blocky. It's not very user-friendly.

Also, when doing an auto-discovery, I wish that there were an approval stage. If you pick "full detail scan", it comes back with everything, and then you have to go back and delete them bit by bit. If there were an approval saying, "These are ones that are available," you just go click, click, click and be done. That would be great.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's rock solid. We've had zero downtime with PRTG.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's hard for me to talk about its scalability. We've got the basics, the 2,500 sensors, and that's what we use. It's fine. It has grown with our business but we've only grown marginally.

How are customer service and technical support?

We haven't had to use technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used various open-source options like Nagios. They were quite limited and required specific agents being installed on all the hosts. They were slow to roll out. PRTG was a completely different ballgame. It was click and go. It was great.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was super-easy. It was a simple click-and-go install, give it your basic SNMP strings and your subnet ranges, and away it goes. It took less than an hour from the time I set up the solution until it provided feedback on the IT infrastructure. It's really quick.

What about the implementation team?

I did the deployment myself.

What was our ROI?

It's hard to answer definitively, but I would say it has saved money because it has avoided system downtime by enabling us to be proactive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had previous experience with things like HP OpenView, but it's been many years now. Our experience with it was that it was quite sluggish, very expensive. PRTG seemed to be at a very attractive price point, and its speed and the reviews we'd seen about it were really compelling.

What other advice do I have?

Give the demo a go. You'll find it super-quick and you'll love the benefits of it.

I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. It's super-easy and cost-effective.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
IT Manager at SILVERSTRING LTD
Real User
Tells me when things are about to fall over, allowing me to preempt, preventing downtime
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "It would be good if there were better graphical interfaces when you have it on multiple monitors... Because we have so many servers, things can get lost in the fog a little bit. Maybe having a better way of showing different geographies, Flash, etc., would help."

What is our primary use case?

I use PRTG because I have six clouds around the world, a mixture of our own and our customer data, so I need to know when it's all up and running and when it's dead. My team is the main point of call for all the infrastructure around the world. I get called out at all times during the night and day, including this morning at five am.

How has it helped my organization?

It allows me to spend less time firefighting and patching servers, and to spend more time with our customers, fixing their environments. Ironically, some of them have moved on to the monitoring tool as well. Time is the biggest thing that I have, and it's given me that back a bit. I'm no longer spending as many nights on call-outs as I used to, so for me it's been brilliant.

It also helps our IT department to be more cost-effective. Historically, people would build servers and they'd put far too much memory in them. When we would see that they're only using one percent, we'd know someone had specified far too much and been a bit cocky with what they were doing. It definitely helps to do tuning and save resources.

In terms of feedback on our IT infrastructure, it tells us when updates haven't been applied in a while, which is not a bad thing, especially with how Microsoft has been recently, breaking stuff. PRTG been great. It has let us know when a few of our SX servers have been having little issues, things you wouldn't necessarily notice under the covers unless you started hammering the system. It's definitely prevented downtime which, at the end of the day, is what we're after. It's done well.

What is most valuable?

One of its valuable features is the fact that it handles multiple operating systems. I've started moving over to Linux and away from Microsoft. Having the guys try to catch up on their Linux skills, it has been good to have a backup to make sure that we're not missing anything. It's definitely helped us a few times to make sure that stuff hasn't fallen over. 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 Desktop app is good, although it's a bit in your face at times, but that is what you need. I normally just have it installed on a monitor in the background, so it doesn't keep flying up on my computer when I'm in the middle of an email. Other than that, it's really good.

The overall feature is set is very good. Originally, there were a few different solutions that we were looking at. I looked at the features that PRTG had and I bought it. I realized after I bought it that it could do a lot more than I wanted it to do, which was a godsend because I was looking for another bit of software to do just part of what it was doing. I managed to get a complete system. We don't use the ticketing side because we have our own ticketing from our managed services, but for other customers, big or small, I can see how it would help out massively.

What needs improvement?

It would be good if there were better graphical interfaces when you have it on multiple monitors. The way I use it is on multiple monitors so the department can see what's actually going on with the different geographies. It would make it an easier, visually, when they're working on emails or something else, to quickly work out if something is going on, without having an alarm saying that something needs doing. That's the one thing that is - I wouldn't say lacking - but the illustrations could be better for the different geographies. Because we have so many servers, things can get lost in the fog a little bit. Maybe having a better way of showing different geographies, Flash, etc., would help.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been great. It even says when to do a reboot, generally. I've only ever had a couple of issues where I've left it on for too many months without rebooting it and it's gotten its knickers in a twist, but other than that it's been absolutely fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. I know we don't push it to what it can do. The Remote Probe feature is definitely fantastic, especially with the different geographies we have. I can't really fault it too much. With the auto-updates it pushes out, it almost looks after itself.

The solution grows with our business. Having the miniature silo sites is very good. That's helped out quite a lot with keeping track of our clouds because we can have everything in a "tiered system." If we've got a customer who rings up and wants to check on something, we can easily navigate, see what's going on, do some predictive analysis, and then see if we can help the customer make their environment any better, or just make sure it doesn't blow up in the middle of the night.

How are customer service and technical support?

We've only had to use technical support a few times, because everything's been pretty sorted. But when we have contacted them we've literally had a call back within half an hour and the problem has been fixed, or they've walked it through and told me to read the manual.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used to use an old product called Servers Alive. It was good but very basic. It helped every once in a while, but it just didn't have anywhere near the kind of insights that you do with PRTG.

We knew we needed to invest in a new solution because I was getting stressed out and annoyed at the fact that I was getting called out so often, firefighting and fixing and stuff in the middle of the night, as well as doing the day job. I needed another pair of hands to be able to handle the infrastructure that was rapidly growing.

Downtime wasn't really a driving factor in our decision. We just upped and moved to the cloud. We wanted something that could keep an eye on what was going on in the back doors. That was one of the main reasons for the switch. We used to have a data center down in London, and driving down there to fix things up in the middle of the night wasn't exactly ideal. Although cloud is a little bit more expensive, regardless of what people tell you, it frees up time in the fact that you can literally rebuild stuff on the fly now, so much faster than you would if you had to procure servers. Having something keep an eye out to make sure all that is working in the background works for me.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was so easy: 

  • Insert IP address here. 
  • Is this your password? - Yes.
  • Do you have a VM server? - Actually, I do, thanks.

It then told me: "This is what you've got, and this is broken." Okay, thanks then.

From the time we set up the solution until it provided feedback on our IT infrastructure would have been about 12 hours.

What about the implementation team?

I rang up and said, "I like your product," and within half an hour I had it downloaded and semi-configured and spent the next couple of days just tuning the environment. It's fantastic.

What was our ROI?

It has definitely saved the organization money. We see ROI from the fact that the company hasn't had to employ another person to back me up because I'm fixing stuff in the middle of the night. It's like having another admin there to help look at stuff.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is not too bad. It's not massively expensive, and the ability to upscale or even downscale licenses every year is brilliant for us.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I tried out a few of the free solutions, but I just couldn't get on with them. Since going with PRTG, we haven't bothered looking anywhere else because it has done whatever we've needed it to do.

What other advice do I have?

Give it a try. You can do a lot with the free version that you download. But the sensors that you get with the extra packs make life so much easier because you can literally customize anything according to your whim, depending on your application or your data type. It has worked well.

In terms of the sensors and probes, there are a lot of them. It takes a while to go through them. It's probably a bit of overkill. It's a situation where if you have too many sensors running you end up knackering your network. But then again, it has the sort of metrics you're looking for. If you want to look at stuff like disk and CPU usage, or use the new stuff where it is monitoring your websites so you can pick out key elements, that's fantastic. But when it goes into bytes that the adapters are going in and out every second, that's a little bit much. Some people might want to look at that. But overall, there's so much that you can do with it. It's fantastic.

The historical data provided by the solution hasn't helped us optimize our network performance but that's because we change our infrastructure quite a lot. Historically, they would sweat the assets quite a lot, but we have moved a lot of our stuff to the cloud. So every couple of years, if we see a new operating system is out we'll migrate to it. I will have a quick look to see if there's anything that's been stolen, but we've got quite a good development team and we hope that serves us well. They're constantly upgrading it every couple of weeks, so it's always on the move. Where the solution does help is with the trends, to know what has been breaking so we can either move away from operating systems or spend a bit more money on the dev side of it to increase performance.

I would rate PRTG at eight out of ten because it has literally saved my bacon on numerous occasions in the middle of the night, making sure our production servers haven't gone out and caused our customers outages. The only reason I wouldn't give it a ten is that it's not exactly clear what some of the sensors are for, and because of the graphical interface. Other than that, as I'm using it over time, it's just getting better and better.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
IT Manager at Berrys Ltd.
Real User
Ping and bandwidth utilization sensors help us be proactive when something is down
Pros and Cons
  • "Its proactiveness is its most valuable feature. We already know when we come in, in the morning, if a server or site is down, as opposed to someone telling us."
  • "It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is monitoring when our network fails, when a server goes down or a site goes down. We have five sites.

How has it helped my organization?

We're more proactive. Usually, we already know when something has gone down by the time we get the phone calls. When someone says, "We can't log in," or "We can't get on the internet," we probably already know about it.

It makes us, as an IT department, more "time-effective" and if time is a cost then it makes us more cost-effective. Rather than getting 20 phone calls, we can just send an email out, company-wide, saying, "We know this has occurred, we're looking at it." It's cost-effective, time-wise.

What is most valuable?

Its proactiveness is its most valuable feature. We already know when we come in, in the morning, if a server or site is down, as opposed to someone telling us. Before, we'd have to find out ourselves, check it ourselves, which we were not likely to do, realistically. I wouldn't come in, first thing in the morning and see if all the servers were up, are all the sites were up. It was not the first thing I'd do.

The sensors and remote probes are good. I've used them for a while. The sensors are good because you can change the length of time before they notify you. One of the problems we used to have was that we had it on 30-second alerts, so as soon as there was a slight network blip we would get an email. What's good is that they're adaptable.

Overall, the solution's feature set is really good. I've probably only used about ten percent of it. We use the Ping sensors and the bandwidth utilization sensors. We don't use half of the rest. What we are using is fairly key to what we do.

What needs improvement?

It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is very good. We've had no issues with it. It's pretty sound. It always works. I can't really fault it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We've only got a small infrastructure, but if we had a larger infrastructure it would be fine. We probably only monitor 20 to 30 devices on it. We could do more but we don't.

How are customer service and technical support?

I've never used their technical support, but I suppose that's a good reflection on the product itself.

I've used it for quite a while. I just played around with it initially, it's pretty intuitive. I might google the odd problem I've had with it, and how to do this, that, and the other but most the time it's intuitive enough.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We had system downtime before implementing the solution. I've been where I am now for about eight years. Before, there were issues all over the shop. I walked in and we had servers that had no disk space, which this product can look at. We had issues with poor connectivity to certain sites which this will obviously flush out.

One of the reasons we went with it is because I had used it before.

How was the initial setup?

The only downside - and it's a minor thing - is when I've uninstalled it. I usually install it on a server to use the probe. When you uninstall it, it requires a reboot and sometimes it doesn't quite warn you enough that it's going to reboot the server, so you have to be very careful.

From the time we set up solution until it provided with us with feedback on the infrastructure was 20 minutes. Install it and it's working 20 minutes later.

What other advice do I have?

It has a free trial so I would give it a go, you have nothing to lose really. Just try it. It doesn't take long to set up.

I rate PRTG at eight out of ten. I wouldn't go higher because I haven't investigated it, used it fully-optimized. But I'm really happy that it does what it needs to do.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Network Administrator at a construction company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Provides us with feedback on our infrastructure; for us, it is critical to know if something is down
Pros and Cons
  • "The best feature is that it lets me know what is going on. I need to know if something has gone down, I need to know if something is running very slowly. PRTG tells me that."
  • "There seems to be a big jump from the basic scan to the really thorough scan. There is a big jump in the quantity of sensors it uses for certain things. One minute you might get ten and then the next you get 200. There seems to be a big jump between the two at times."

What is our primary use case?

We use it mostly for monitoring our servers, network equipment, firewall, etc.

How has it helped my organization?

The historical data provided by the solution helps us optimize our network performance. And where it comes in very handy for me is in problem solving. I need to look at what has been going on for the last week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, even months, and it gives me that information. I was having an issue at a particular time of day and it actually helped me fix the issue. It was absolutely invaluable.

We're a very small department so the need to find an issue quickly is important to us. PRTG has helped us with that a lot. It enables our IT department to be more cost-effective because we don't have to keep going through support departments.

It also provides us with needed feedback on our IT infrastructure. It is really critical to us to know what's gone down. I received an email the other day saying that one of our servers was down. It's very important to us to receive that information. I received it at ten o'clock at night and I was able to remote on and fix the issue before anyone had even noticed it had gone down.

What is most valuable?

The best feature is that it lets me know what is going on. I need to know if something has gone down, I need to know if something is running very slowly. PRTG tells me that.

I like the dashboard and the new feature which makes it a black dashboard. I also get emails and notifications, which I love.

The sensors and remote probes are very good. Sometimes they pick up far too much information, but I'd rather have far too much than not enough, so that's a benefit. They show the performance of hard drives and the like. How fast a process is going is critical information for our service. We have a 24/7 business so I need to know what's going on 24/7.

What needs improvement?

There seems to be a big jump from the basic scan to the really thorough scan. There is a big jump in the quantity of sensors it uses for certain things. One minute you might get ten and then the next you get 200. There seems to be a big jump between the two at times.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's pretty stable. It's been up and running now for about two years, which is very stable. There has been the odd crash but that was more the server it was on rather than PRTG. It's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling is very easy. You just need to buy licenses to increase the scale and away you go. It takes minutes to scale it.

How are customer service and technical support?

I've never used their technical support. I've never needed to. I've never had problems that I couldn't fix myself.

I do use the knowledge base online quite a bit, so that might count as technical support, but I have never contacted support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used a free product, although I can't remember the name of it. It was good but it wasn't giving us the feedback we wanted, especially for alerts. As I said, for our company that's extremely important but we just weren't getting those alerts. We did some research, found PRTG, and I spoke to another company that used it. They really loved it so we went ahead got the free license initially, did a trial, found it absolutely amazing, and then bought it.

We went with it because of a good review from somebody I know, which is always a good start. Also, the price was pretty good, very competitive. Finally, we experienced system downtime before implementing the solution and that was a driving factor in our decision. We needed something to help us stop that from happening, or at least to alert us that it was happening.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was dead-easy. It was just pretty much "next, next, next," put in some credentials, set up a scan with the IP addresses and away it went. There really wasn't much to it.

From the time we set up the solution until it provided us with feedback on our infrastructure wasn't long: two to three hours max. Even with setting up the probes, setting up the scan, and the IP addresses, it didn't take long, maybe a couple of hours.

What about the implementation team?

I did it myself.

What was our ROI?

The ROI for us is time, massively. We had an issue a few weeks back, it was after work hours and we had a server that had gone down. I was at home and noticed it - got the alert - connected up and fixed the issue. Most people didn't even notice. If that had been left until the morning, there would have been big issues for directors, time and money, if that server had been down.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at SolarWinds and we looked at NetManage but went for PRTG in the end.

What other advice do I have?

I'd highly recommend PRTG. It's a very good product and the price is pretty good as well. Some of the others I looked at were very expensive.

I don't really use the Desktop app. I prefer to see the web-based version.

The overall feature set is very good. It can be a little memory-intensive, that's one downside as it does eat quite a bit of memory, but other than that, it's very good. It picks up all the sensors, does everything I need it to. I've not really found a product yet that it doesn't scan, which is great. Overall, really good.

I would never give a ten out of ten, but I will go with an eight. It is a little bit memory-intensive and sometimes it gives a bit too much information but, as I said previously, I'd rather have too much than too little so it's not too bad. I would give it a solid eight.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user865332 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering and Pre-Sales Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
It improves the status of my infrastructure, from networking devices to real-time machines
Pros and Cons
  • "I really love the activity library. It gives the flexibility to discover data and metrics about my interface and data server."
  • "It improves the status of my infrastructure, from networking devices to real-time machines."
  • "The scalability is good. You can improve a remote host or the clustering. This gives it the flexibility to monitor another infrastructure remotely."
  • "I would like to see a more robust platform and a new dashboard. In addition, the code is good, but it needs improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for monitoring servers in our data center. It performs pretty well. 

How has it helped my organization?

It improves the status of my infrastructure, from networking devices to real-time machines. 

What is most valuable?

I really love the snmp library. It gives the flexibility to discover data and metrics about my interface and data server.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see a more robust platform and a new dashboard. In addition, the code is good, but it needs improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is OK. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. You can improve a remote host or the clustering. This gives it the flexibility to monitor another infrastructure remotely.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was simple. 

What about the implementation team?

In House 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were previously considering Nagios Core, because it is over Linux and an open source solution. However, its problem is you have to do everything from scratch.

What other advice do I have?

It is important when choosing a vendor to consider the connectivity.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
IT strategist at Convergent Wireless Communications
Real User
It is easy to deploy and cost-effective, helping the entire organization become digitally enabled
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is simple and easy to implement."
  • "I can create my own program sensor. This means I can add extra monitoring capabilities into the already fundamentally strong foundation."
  • "It helps the entire organization become digitally enabled."
  • "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."
  • "In a very few cases, customers want more detailed reports, which we cannot meet."

What is our primary use case?

We sell the product to customers and handle their problems. From every problem that we handle, we learn from it.

As a company, we deploy WiFi network in major hotels (four or five star level). The guests who come to stay in those hotels are very sensitive to availability and performance. So, we have to monitor the bandwidth high availability, as well as the basic infrastructure, such as checking the system and all the IT infrastructure in those hotels. 

Today, we have a lot of customers, hundreds in India and neighboring countries, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Some of our customers have taken us to Malaysia because they did business with us in India. We also work with two countries in Africa, Congo and Nigeria.

How has it helped my organization?

We use the product internally. Because we are a networking company, we are able to diagnose customer's network problems so our customers are happy.

We go to the customer telling them that we are not here to sell the product. If you don't like it, don't buy it. If we have an unhappy customer, we can't sleep.

What is most valuable?

  1. The product is simple and easy to implement.
  2. The licensing is quick and simple.
  3. I can create my own program sensor. This means I can add extra monitoring capabilities into the already fundamentally strong foundation.
  4. I can write a few pieces of code in the partial capture.
  5. It helps the entire organization become digitally enabled.

PRTG is very good to do business with. The contract is simple. They are very responsive. 

What needs improvement?

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.

In a very few cases, customers want more detailed reports, which we cannot meet.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

PRTG has another level of scaling. There are XL1 and XL5. XL1 has one core and XL5 has four cores. If your network is big, you can distribute the database and reporting load on five different servers. You can have a common view of the entire global network using the enterprise console.

It is scalable. We have yet to hit a ceiling.

How is customer service and technical support?

95% of the problems or more that we get from customers are solved locally.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

When you buy PRTG, everything comes in one bundle. Licensing is very easy. It is not like SolarWinds or Ops Manager, where I can buy pieces separately if I want high availability or Syslog. It becomes painful. The basic version looks cheap, but NetFlow has to be bought separately on SolarWinds. In PRTG, there are no questions asked, and everything comes together.

SolarWinds is a bit complex, so the customer may have to buy the product license and have to pay a little extra for training and deployment of the license. In the case of PRTG, the product is so easy that we give the customer three online sessions, and they are happy since we don't charge them for that.

What other advice do I have?

Don't believe what you see in writing. Deploy it, then test it. It is easy to deploy and cost-effective.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

  • Easy to do business with.
  • Responsiveness.
  • The vendor should be committed.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free PRTG Network Monitor Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: August 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free PRTG Network Monitor Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.