PRTG Network Monitor Reviews

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.

• Monitoring network
• Uptime
• Resources on servers
• Better monitor our network, local, and remote hosts, and network usage as well.

• PRTG has improved our visibility and response time to issues related to remote sites. 
• Nice product with an easy interface to use and a large variety of sensors.

• Ping monitoring
• WMI for RAM
• Hard drive space on servers
• Monitors site uptime (and notices when it is down), along with thresholds when server RAM or HD is running low, which has helped us.

Needs ability to monitor standard notification time (notify after X time). 

Web-based interface is easy to use, but it is cumbersome to make changes across several devices.

No issues.

No issues.

Tech support and sales have been great.

Setup was straightforward. It is too easy to use up sensors on fluff items (core switch, etc.).  Took effort to focus on key items, such as uptime, etc.

Did not use the vendor to setup.

Currently, we are using the free version. ROI was immediate after receiving notifications with low HD or RAM on servers.

Sensors on free version can run out quick. However, the ability to use the base version with 100 free sensors is great. The cost on other packages can be very reasonable.

It was recommended by our network engineers. Other clients use PRTG and have had a great experiences with it.

It is a good solution. We are evaluating the advanced features and client PC application monitoring.

We have deployed this solution on numerous platforms.

The most valuable feature is the ability to span multiple technologies and multiple vendors. For example, we have an HP Server, but we do not need an HP Server monitor, or a separate storage monitoring system that is specific to HP. We are able to use this solution for a centralized, multiple-technology safe.

The dashboarding definitely needs improvement.

It would be nice if they included support for analytics, such as functionality to help understand trends in the data. The data might include network outages, network utilization, and storage utilization. Also, if there is any kind of predictive ability coming out then it would add a lot of value.

This solution is very stable.

This is a very scalable solution.

Our environment contains two and a half thousand servers and ten thousand desktops.

We have six people who perform the support functions. It is used on a daily basis, and we are planning on expanding usage to include access to our help desk. There are automated tickets generated when PRTG picks up faults on the network.

I have never needed to use their technical support.

We used WhatsUp Gold prior to this solution. There were multiple problems with varying versions and support channels, and there is no standardization or central visibility with all of the instances.

What we wanted was a tool that is scalable and could be used in a modular approach, so we chose PRTG and moved away from WhatsUp Gold.

The initial setup of this solution is fairly straightforward.

The deployment took approximately three months. There are a vast number of files and a level of complexity in our environment, but that is not the fault of the vendor. Unfortunately, given that we do not have a small environment, the deployment took time.

We used a reseller for the deployment, and we were very happy with their service.

We have not been measuring ROI from a financial perspective. Rather, we are looking at measuring efficiency. This is determined by looking at how quickly we discover faults and how quickly they are remedied. We have just started with this.

We have an unlimited perpetual license, so we just pay support costs and it can scale throughout the organization. 

For anybody who is interested in implementing this solution, I would say that planning is essential. It can be very complex and can generate a lot of data. You can become overwhelmed and then the solution becomes irrelevant because of the number of reports and alerts that it can generate. Planning is critical.

This solution is geared towards practical alerting and monitoring. It is not really meant to give advice or any sort of analytics.

Overall, this is a very good platform and provides value to the organization. However, in terms of the dashboards, there is room for improvement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We haven't had to use technical support.

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.

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.

I did the deployment myself.

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.

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.

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.

PRTG Network Monitor is used for monitoring internet service providers, and we want to receive the downtime of the network devices mapped. PRTG Network Monitor is hosted in a local host server in our three data centers.

The most valuable features of PRTG Network Monitor are user-friendly, and the graphical interface is good for all the network devices that are mapped in this organization. It's very easy to find reports for any devices that we are looking for.

PRTG Network Monitor can improve the reports. In the reports, you have to give an alert for that SMS and email, the emergency calls and downtimes have to be reported accordingly. You have to enable email services or an SMS gateway service to receive more alerts at the proper time.

I have been using PRTG Network Monitor for approximately four years.

PRTG Network Monitor is stable.

We have approximately 3,000 users using PRTG Network Monitor in our organization.

I have not used the support from PRTG Network Monitor.

The setup of PRTG Network Monitor is simple. The deployment can be done in a few hours.

We pay for PRTG Network Monitor annually. The price is approximately 10,000 rupees annually.

The solution performs well.

I rate PRTG Network Monitor an eight out of ten.

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 are a service provider in the IT industry, and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients. We are using this product ourselves, and we have several customers who are also using it.

It is basically used for monitoring alerts, such as memory from a server has gone down.

Network Discovery is a feature that our customers like a lot.

The ability to maintain the health of the network is very good.

The user interface is okay.

This is a very lightweight solution.

The technical support could respond a little bit quicker.

A better console would be an improvement.

I have been working with PRTG Network Monitor for approximately five years.

The stability is excellent.

The networks in Guatemala are not very large, so scalability has not been an issue for us.

Our clients are typically medium-sized businesses.

We are working towards increasing the number of deployments.

I would rate the technical support and eight out of ten. They could be a little better in terms of response speed. Usually, they respond the next day.

The initial setup is straightforward and very simple. The length of time required for deployment depends on the size of the network but usually, we're talking about two hours.

We provide technical support to our customers who are using this product.

On average, two people are required for deployment and maintenance.

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

The other product that our customers normally consider is SolarWinds.

SolarWinds is a more robust solution, and as such, it is much more expensive than PRTG. Most of the time, based on budget, our customers choose PRTG.

For me, this is a nice solution and I would rate it an eight out of ten.

It is great for service level agreements and can comply fully with internet monitoring or any interface such as hardware or network interfaces and database instance. Irrespective of the MID, it can detect and monitor it. It is a vast platform and can make the cluster for the DC and DR. If one is down, it'll last shorter than the second one.

We prefer to use the PRTG because it has a low price. We provide solutions to the customer, and customers always prefer to pay less for the best output and quality. In addition, the solution allows customers to monitor anything within their network. For example, they can monitor their servers, application levels and virtualization instances.

The technical support service should be improved and is not as good as Cisco. However, PRTG support is better than before as they now have remote and TeamViewer support. Before, it was only based on mail communications and forum discussions. Irrespective of this improvement, the technical support response time is still prolonged, and the reservation can be better. I rate the response times a six out of ten. We've had very good experiences with Check Point, Juniper, and Cisco technical support.

Regarding additional features, currently, the default database has some limitations. There is a specific capacity that it can trigger. So, if they can make the enterprise-grade DV integrated, then a separate part will be needed to integrate. We want to customize every six months and do not need data older than six months.

It is the best solution. Personally, in my 20 years of experience working with monitoring systems, this is the best. Their software is very light and fast. Everything is great except the technical support response time. If they improve this, I'm sure it will be a top-class product competitor.

We have been using this solution since 2006. The price is user-friendly, and the monitoring system is sound. The solution has a clear advantage as it can monitor per second. We use the enterprise paid version.

It is a stable solution. The performance is excellent, and the reporting system is good. We can customize, and if we want to detect a particular time in demand or an outage for a service provider, we can easily identify it.

It is straightforward to scale, similar to SolarWinds.

The setup is very easy, and for someone with no experience, which a few clicks, they can figure it out. However, if you want to integrate at a wide level, it will require some experience. I rate the setup a ten out of ten.

The deployment was short and took just about two to three minutes.

We provide maintenance services to customers, and this solution is suitable for larger companies. Most of the companies we work with are banks and government organizations, and if we include the interfaces, we are about 4000. It is also suitable for smaller companies, which can easily purchase the solution with minimal cost.

Regarding ROI, we can easily use and afford the licensing costs for a small office of about 100 to 200 users. This is impossible from the NPM, as they have the minimum interface values they must process.

PRTG Network Monitor is a very affordable solution compared to other solutions. Other solutions cost nearly double or triple the cost. Not only is the pricing reasonable, but the quality is also.

The licensing cost depends on the number of interfaces. The details for the enterprise are published on their website, and because we partner with them, we receive a 15% discount. They do not customize their products for specific customers. Other solutions like SolarWinds and Cisco do not provide product customization support, but PRTG Network Monitor includes documentation for customization to the particular interface. For example, we wanted to monitor 300 SNMP nationwide and try to integrate them into the online UPS. It was very tough because no MIB value was published on their website. We had to request it, and they generated the script and made the MIB value, allowing us to initiate.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. Regarding advice, comparing WhatsUp Gold and PRTG and SolarWinds NPM, I would always recommend PRTG. They integrate a lot of features. Every month, we get the latest updates and better features within the support service and maintenance contract. The updates are free and included in the cost.

NPM is aware of the five-second values compared to other solutions, and PRTG has the first-second values, so it is very high. Therefore, for any incident within five seconds, PRTG can detect it. PRTG is the par, and it stands with the interface-based licensing category. But NPM's licensing category is different. It is the business policy of the individual which doesn't make sense.