PRTG Network Monitor Reviews

We're using PRTG for network, asset, and infrastructure monitoring. I have five network and infrastructure engineers using the solution, and we're not using it extensively. It's one of our secondary monitoring tools.

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.

One useful feature is PRTG's scripting ability. We can go into the system and create monitoring sensors, for lack of a better phrase. So I can look for something specific instead of just uptime or downtime on a specific asset.

PRTG's documentation could be improved.

I've been using PRTG Network Monitor for about a year.

PRTG's stability is fine.

We're not that big of an organization, so I can't say much about scalability, but we've had no problems with it.

I've had no contact with PRTG support.

In the past, we used SolarWinds. We switched to PRTG because it was more scriptable and customizable.

Setting up PRTG was straightforward and took a few hours.

After the initial acquisition cost, the license is about four grand a year.

I rate PRTG Network Monitor seven out of 10. If you are considering PRTG, you should take into account the fact that the data is going up into the cloud in a private, isolated console or a tenant in a multi-tenant environment. Just be aware of what you want to look for and know how to get it in terms of status, uptime, etc.

We are using this solution for the health check of our infrastructure.

It is user-friendly. It is easy to set up health checks within PRTG and use scans. It is like a self-service tool, and anyone can configure their own settings within PRTG.

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.

I have been using this solution for almost two years.

It is stable.

Its scalability is fine. We have between 300 to 500 people. We have plans to increase its usage.

Their support is good. We can easily reach out to the vendor or the Paessler support team.

When I started with my company, they were already using PRTG and SCOM. PRTG is more user-friendly than SCOM. I prefer PRTG over SCOM, but it also depends on the use case.

The pricing for PRTG in our case is reasonable because we have a lot of applications to monitor within PRTG. It is not that expensive.

I would rate PRTG Network Monitor a nine out of 10.

We primarily use the solution for monitoring. 

It's easy to implement and configure.

The client list capabilities are excellent. For us, the solution is a good fit.

Technical support has been very helpful so far.

The solution has been stable for the six months that we have used it.

We've found that the product is scalable. 

I get messages from all the things that happened, and we are informed about issues after that fact. We need something that is more predictive. We would prefer if it wasn't a solution that was corrective and instead offered predictive insights so that we can handle problems before they even occur.

We are using EMC storage and we are finding that it is difficult to implement monitoring for it for some reason. If they could work to make that easier, that would be ideal. It should work with commonly used equipment and offer more templates.

Every time there is an update, the templates should also be updated as well.

We've been using the solution for about six months. It hasn't been too long just yet.

The stability has been great. There are no bugs or glitches. We do not find that it crashes or freeze. It's been reliable. The performance is good.

The scalability is good. If a company needs to expand it, it can.

At the moment, we use it with four technicians and we have our own domain to handle. We have a central monitoring system in our IT office.

So far, technical support has been good. We are based in the Netherlands, however, they do offer worldwide support. They are helpful, responsive, and knowledgeable. We've been very happy with the level of attention we can get.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's pretty easy to configure. it's not overly complex or difficult.

The pricing is reasonable so far. It's proven to be a good investment for our company.

Although we aren't actively searching for other solutions, from time to time, we do check the market to see what else is available and compare it to this product.

We are a customer and an end-user.

We're working with the latest version of the solution at this time.

I'd advise new users that, although the setup and configuration are pretty easy, it's a good idea to start with training so that you get to know the product before you begin using it.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten We've been happy with it in general.

We use it specifically for our network devices and service providers. We're able to know if the connection with a certain internet service provider is still alive.

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

I would like to have a VM version that can be installed on a cloud such as Azure. We're using Azure, and we're eliminating on-premise servers. It would be helpful to have a PRTG version that can be installed on the Azure cloud.

I have been using this solution for five to six months.

It is stable. So far, we didn't have any problem with the product.

We're using the free version, and we can only enroll up to 100 sensors. 

Currently, we have two system administrators who use this solution.

We didn't use their support. We're using the free version.

We were using SolarWinds. SolarWinds is much more expensive than PRTG.

For those who have no experience with PRTG, it would be quite complex. Luckily, we have an experienced and knowledgeable staff. Our team did not encounter any problems. The whole set up took two to four days.

We set it up ourselves. We had two system administrators for its deployment.

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.

I would definitely recommend this solution. I have friends in other companies who are also using PRTG, and their feedback is also good.

I would rate PRTG Network Monitor an eight out of ten. We're happy with the results.

We are primarily using this product for alerting. We receive notifications for events like the interface going up or down and remote access, as well as information such as the interface volume.

We're using the basics of it to monitor our switches and routers and primarily just the networking equipment for up-down status.

This solution makes it easy to group devices. 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 maneuverability within it is fairly intuitive, especially once you get used to it.

I would like to see them take their graphing tools and convert them into a collector so that we can point telemetry to them. This is a general comment about all of the network monitoring equipment and I think that it would make the product more valuable in the long run. As it is now, you have to point telemetry at Kibana or another open-source solution and then graph out of that. I don't see the point of that, given that I've got SolarWinds and the choice of other network monitoring software. However, none of them allow you to use it as a collector for telemetry, so the stream is part of the switch.

I posed this question to PRTG and they were unresponsive, so it seems like not enough customers are complaining about it or would be potentially using it. But that's where I think in the long term, it would be of benefit. Licensing becomes an issue, and I understand that, but I think that if they could allow a collector of telemetry and re-displaying that graphically, it would be the next best thing.

If you don't have something that is doing the SNMP manipulation then it is a bit clunky, although they have good documentation on it. You can add as many SNMP MIBs as you want to, and it's just a matter of processing them into their format.

We have been using the PRTG Network Monitor for between three and four years.

This is a fairly stable product and we don't have to do a lot of maintenance. They do come out with patches and we're applying them. We do have to occasionally reboot it, although I'm thinking it's not nearly as buggy as SolarWinds. In this version of PRTG, I don't have any issues that I'm aware of.

Scalability is not bad and you can add extra to it. We don't have a scaling issue right now but from what I can tell, it appears that it can scale well.

We have used SolarWinds products and currently use them for backup. We have problems with stability and we fix them by rebooting the device. PRTG seems to be more stable, in general.

One of my senior engineers performed the initial setup. I am doing the maintenance on it along with my engineer. Applying patches if required is not something that we've had an issue with.

It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using.

We have created several maps for this product, and there is at least one map that people specifically use. It is put up on our wall for the helpdesk, and it has all of the switches and routers in a pie so that you can see what's down and what's up. It is a nice red, green, and blue color coordination. This is displayed along with the utilization of firewalls and our egress points, and some other critical points in the network for the service desk to look at. If they get several calls from a site and they can look up at the map and see that there is a bunch of red, possibly recognizing a network issue, then it is helpful.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

PRTG is a very versatile and flexible tool. We have a vast number of users spread over more than 300 installations in India and neighboring countries. We have many different types of customers who use this tool for project control monitoring and other types of network monitoring.

PRTG Enterprise Monitor comes with built-in analytics capability. This means that if there is an incident, it not only tells you that there is an incident, it will also tell you the root cause.  For large networks, this is beneficial as the network team can easily home onto the problem directly without spending time searching for the root cause, which allows them to attend to the problem as the alerts come in. 

Having an Alliance program is very valuable. The Paessler Uptime Alliance Program focuses on making the core network product, which is PRTG, progressively better. It also combines capabilities from any partners in the ecosystem. For example, we have UVexplorer (a US-based company), taking care of network discovery, network topology mapping, and network asset mapping and we have other partners, like CORP-IT, that provide us with the plug-in to monitor SAP and sensors. In other words, it's an ever-expanding network management system.

If you can get everything into a particular environment, you can monitor your factory automation systems; however, they also need to be monitored for maintenance purposes. If you intend to automate factory information, you cannot afford to fail. Monitoring the equipment and receiving dashboard alerts for maintenance is highly advantageous. This is a great feature of PRTG. Currently, we are competing in the market with SolarWinds and ManageEngine. They are good, but we come out winning.

From a security perspective, PRTG provides you complete Secure Socket Layer-based access. If you're monitoring your network or a private network using a BLS cloud, security is automatically ensured because of the way you're deployed.

I don't believe there is much need for improvement. The product is constantly improving. I used to think that the reporting could be quicker, but presently, there is a solution for that, thanks to the SLA plug-in from CORP-IT. The basic reason why PRTG reportings were slow is due to the fact that the reporting engine is built-in as a functionality in the PRTG application. The application does a lot of things, like monitoring and managing the database and it updates your dashboard in real-time.

The last priority goes to the reports. Typically, reporting can wait if there are demands on other aspects of the product, but because of this, the reporting was becoming too slow because it was always the last priority. I used to think that needed to be improved but the formal plug-in has solved this issue. Some customers don't mind the slow reporting, as not everything is urgent. However, if you want faster reporting, the options are available. 

Maybe in the future there will be room for improvement, but currently, there is nothing pressing that I can think of. 

I have been using this solution since 2003. Previously, I used CA, IBM Tivoli, BMC Patrol, and HP OpenView. 

I have not come across any situation which was so bad that PRTG has crashed.  

The stability and security of this solution are intertwined. PRTG is not static, it's always evolving and updating. Basically, the security situation at any given time makes PRTG's functionality vulnerable. Thankfully, they take this as a top priority, providing new solutions all the time. Paessler releases 7 to 8 updates a year to combat this issue. Because of this, I would say we're in lockstep with our security needs which also tie into the stability of the solution.

Presently, PRTG is extremely scalable. In fact, I would boldly say that this is the most scalable network monitoring tool that I know of. 

If you have PRTG on a single server, the server can perform many functions. PRTG has a local probe that probes according to the configuration settings; however, even the best servers cannot take on an infinite load. Thankfully, PRTG offers a remote probe as part of their license return. This has multiple advantages including lessening the load of the server.
For example, should the communication link between the remote probe and PRTG server break down, the local probe will keep on accumulating data locally. When the link to the server is established, all the collected data is then flushed into the core. That is one way of scaling, but keep in mind, that adding multiple remote probes will eventually saturate the core because now you have to manage the data from so many sensors.

 Depending on the types of sensors and monitoring frequency, as your network expands, you can keep adding PRTG digit codes. You can keep adding servers and sensors to focus on monitoring. In my opinion, I don't know of another product where you can do this. Even if you've applied PRTG on multiple servers, you can still manage all of them using a single dashboard.

The initial setup was very easy. What you pay for this product encompasses everything. When we sell this product to a customer, we say "You can do it yourself, you don't need to pay for installation". So far, at least 70% of our customers are able to manage and there are some that don't need our help at all; however, there are occasionally a few customers who email or call us looking for support, in which case, we are always quick to help at no charge. This is all included in the price you pay for this solution. There are no hidden costs and the customers appreciate this.

Downloading and installation take less than five minutes, but after downloading, there is configuration to be done. Installing the software is only one part, about 30 to 35% of the whole picture. Our networking team needs to be organized because this is how we guide our customers in the right direction before the product arrives, which saves them a lot of time. We have a network team, server team, and a storage team. They are very structured and know how to do their job well — they can install some of the largest networks in just three to four hours. In the best-case scenario, it would take them less than a week to install PRTG Excel.

We encourage our customers to use the trial version first, to build a rating. By doing so, when they are ready to purchase the full commercial license, they will be ready to be productive from day one. 

PRTG is now available as PRTG Enterprise Monitor, and the price of it varies depending on the total number of sensors the customer buys. 

PRTG is available as a service network monitoring service in the cloud, with the option of purchasing up to 1000 sensors. For small companies, it's more of a network tool because smaller organizations like to focus on their code builders. Smaller companies cannot afford or attract very technical people to monitor the network with cloud hosting. PRTG can fix that, but it's only good for small workloads.

The process of network management itself has to be organized. You have to organize yourselves in terms of how your network is structured: how do you want to monitor and manage it? Even that has to be organized as well. For example, if there is a problem with the database, PRTG should be able to alert the data administrators, not anybody else. Only they should take care of any pressing issues; if they don't, the method will go to the wrong person, which can be very damaging. There is a lot of human organization required in administering a method between technologies and that needs to be organized well for the network monitoring process to be effective.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine because everything has room for improvement. 

Our primary use case with PRTG is measuring and monitoring the system. We have a few servers running in redundancy. There are two monitoring ones. One for the maintenance staff with more details and the other one is for general control and assessing when there is a user error or 401. We use it on the business logic level. With redundancy, the FRC is just to monitor whether there is a complete down or only one system goes down.

We see everything being monitored on the screen. When we do mapping it's easier for us to monitor whether it's the server's fault, the feature's fault, or it's the router, or some other device, or some other legacy system. It all starts with the monitoring.

The feature I like is that it can easily do a lot of mapping. 

I can easily access the maintenance map and the four control maps. By looking at it I can roughly know why the system is behaving as it is, and I can click to the second or third layer to identify the fault. I also like the 365 days statistical graph. These are very helpful for me to analyze the flow and to record the trends.

Because our system doesn't connect to the internet, it wants us to put in the license and then the activation should occur. Sometimes we do the activation when we are passed date. When we try to activate the license past date, it's not as easy as we thought it should be. In other words, they could improve the process of updating the license.

If I do it correctly before the activation expires, it should be okay. But if I try after the due date has passed then you can't get the correct security patch.

I would prefer if PRTG could work in redundancy mode with an external database rather than how it is now with the database inside PRTG, where I can access it only through the report. If you have an external database you can do another trace on the data with the redundancy while the monitoring system is still going on.

I have been using PRTG Network Monitor for almost two years.

So far there are no issues with the stability. The only setback is that I don't know why there's only one PRTG running the system. If one fails then redundancy is not there.

PRTG is quite easy to use as long you have the hang of it. The only problem are the legacy systems that don't have direct connection.

The issues to pay attention to in terms of scalability are the sensors. The sensors help you isolate your problem. Let's say my only problem now is field monitoring. I might also want to have central monitoring but I couldn't do it. If you have a field monitoring system you may also want to have a central monitor as well. I haven't tried to do that yet on PRTG because I need higher levels to monitor my three or four PRTG systems. In other words, the product is not so easy to scale.

Right now it is just me and my colleague working on this product. We use it on a daily basis. We have groups for the maintenance center and the reporting center. Both are monitoring and mapping. I configured this for them.

The support is fantastic. Because of our time difference I get my message replied to by the next morning. It's quite fast.

My client is asking me to look into Icinga. Icinga is still new to me and I'm not yet sure about it. I think it's a Nagios software. I did use Nagios before, but I didn't configure it, it was part of the system delivery.

With Nagios, I can't see the graph, or the trends, or the mapping of an individual site. I'm not really sure about Nagios.

When I joined the company PRTG was already setup. They subsequently added more servers, so I got to learn it through my colleagues.

In the beginning, I downloaded PRTG for free and did my own experiments. I would advise others to do that, too. Download it and try it out. When you do that you'll see where the limitations are.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate PRTG Network Monitor about an eight. I still think there's room for improvement, especially when it comes to updating the event configuration.

I use the solution to monitor the availability of devices and check if ping has generated ICMP requests.

They should work on syncing the solution with Gmail. Also, they should add a feature to monitor the bandwidths of different devices. In addition, it should be possible for us to check the connectivity of the devices via DNS servers.

I have been using the solution for more than two weeks.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution but depends on the license version. We have about 1000 devices integrated with the solution.

We have used OpManager. We switched to PRTG as per our customer's request.

The solution's initial setup was straightforward. I had to enable FTP to copy the server and then install the solution over the server. Further, I was able to access it remotely via a web browser.

I implemented the solution myself. 

I rate the solution as a nine. It is very user-friendly. I have downloaded it to my home devices. I receive an alarm when the network of any of the devices drops down. I can also add users by giving them static IPs. It is easy for a nontechnical person to use it as well. It can be used both for personal and enterprise purposes.