SolarWinds ipMonitor vs. PRTG Network Monitor

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds ipMonitor
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds ipMonitor is a lightweight performance monitoring tool. It enables monitoring from a single console and out-of-the-box visibility, with some automation available.
$1,570
installation
PRTG
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
PRTG Network Monitor is the flagship offering from German software company Paessler, for monitoring local and wide area networks (LANs & WANs), servers, websites, apps, and more.
$1,750
perpetual license
Pricing
SolarWinds ipMonitorPRTG Network Monitor
Editions & Modules
ipMonitor - 500 Monitors
$1570
installation
ipMonitor - 1000 Monitors
$2620
installation
ipMonitor -2500 Monitors
$5770
installation
PRTG 500
1,750
perpetual license
PRTG 1,000
3,200
perpetual license
PRTG 2,500
6,500
perpetual license
PRTG 5,000
11,500
perpetual license
PRTG XL 1
15,500
perpetual license
PRTG Enterprise
Custom Pricing
subscription license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds ipMonitorPRTG
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds ipMonitorPRTG Network Monitor
Considered Both Products
SolarWinds ipMonitor
Chose SolarWinds ipMonitor
IpMonitor is easy to set up and has a clear and easy reading interface. It's user-friendly for entry-level technicians. The price is good.
However, for big enterprises, PRTG Network Monitor might be a better solution.
Chose SolarWinds ipMonitor
ipMonitor is easier to set up and is straightforward. The other products seem to require getting a bit more into the weeds to get everything to work correctly. It was more work than I was willing to do and opted to just go with an off-the-shelf solution that could get my …
PRTG
Chose PRTG Network Monitor
Being able to monitor multiple networks and devices all over the country. and easy of deployment has set PTRG apart from the competition. I have used multiple monitoring tools in the past 20 years and PTRG works right out of the box with minimal configuration compared with …
Chose PRTG Network Monitor
PRTG is more affordable and easier to set up, at least for an SMB than Solarwinds, and is just more user-friendly than Nagios.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SolarWinds ipMonitorPRTG Network Monitor
Network Performance Monitoring
Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds ipMonitor
6.7
24 Ratings
22% below category average
PRTG Network Monitor
8.1
61 Ratings
3% below category average
Automated network device discovery6.710 Ratings9.054 Ratings
Network monitoring8.024 Ratings9.360 Ratings
Alerts8.223 Ratings8.761 Ratings
Network mapping6.619 Ratings7.943 Ratings
Customizable reports4.223 Ratings7.852 Ratings
Baseline threshold calculation00 Ratings8.051 Ratings
Network capacity planning00 Ratings7.243 Ratings
Packet capture analysis00 Ratings6.231 Ratings
Wireless infrastructure monitoring00 Ratings7.743 Ratings
Hardware health monitoring00 Ratings8.958 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SolarWinds ipMonitorPRTG Network Monitor
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Score 9.2 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PingPlotter
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Score 9.5 out of 10
PingPlotter
PingPlotter
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Nmap
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
SolarWinds ipMonitorPRTG Network Monitor
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(24 ratings)
9.0
(61 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(6 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(7 ratings)
8.0
(18 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds ipMonitorPRTG Network Monitor
Likelihood to Recommend
SolarWinds
SolarWinds ipMonitor is well suited in situation where customer do not wants to hold the responsibility of underlying monitoring infrastructure management such as Servers, Database, website and their high availability. And of course when you need Network, Servers, Services fault and performance monitoring. When you have specialized network monitoring requirement such as Configuration backup, netflow traffic analysis then this is not the right tool.
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Paessler
PRTG is well suited for networks of all sizes, however it can be a bit cost-prohibitive when needing to monitor slightly more than their no-cost tier offers, or if you need to monitor roughly have of the amount of devices offered in their first paid tier. That said, it scales and works well in our small network of 300+ devices. It would likely excel in larger enterprise/data-center type of networks as well. It also works very well for remote-site monitoring, which reduces our need for on-site IT staff at our other location.
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Pros
SolarWinds
  • Both network devices and servers may be easily located on the network.
  • It notifies the user whenever any network device undergoes a change in status.
  • Powerful reporting capabilities that provide vital data about your network's devices (uptime, space, utilization of resources on your devices)
Read full review
Paessler
  • Very, very configurable. You can create all kinds of monitors for all kinds of things. Plus it has loads of suggestions out of the box. It can get complicated but monitoring is complicated. Pretty decent interface and good support - active community.
  • I really liked how easy it was to add alerts by SMS. So easy to setup.
  • I like their sizing models (for purchase). We're actually small enough that we are free. But it's not free as in stripped down - it's free because we don't use many "sensors" and don't honestly have the need.
Read full review
Cons
SolarWinds
  • It is a very complete and versatile software, but its price can be somewhat high for small companies.
  • During the analysis of the collected data the process can be somewhat slow, so it takes more time than expected.
  • Its configuration process can be somewhat complex since it requires several configurations so having prior knowledge is helpful.
Read full review
Paessler
  • Licensing on a per entity basis can be cumbersome for devices which have a ton of monitoring points like network switches\routers. Each sensor may count against a license, which could be a lot of you were monitoring every TX\RX of an SFP for example
  • A better method to easily template\copy monitors across devices
  • The navigation in the web GUI could be a little more straightforward in terms of the hierarchy
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Likelihood to Renew
SolarWinds
I have very few pieces of software, that are specific to IT and IT services, that just work. Honestly, I don't need the support as it never breaks, but I believe in rewarding vendors that make valuable products
Read full review
Paessler
We love PRTG Network Monitor. We think that the product could be better with new funtionalities but today we are facinating with it.
Read full review
Usability
SolarWinds
SolarWinds ipMonitor is a perfectly decent network mapper and performance metric gatherer, but it is held back by the UI, which can be hard to navigate once you have more than a couple dozen assets in there. It is fairly priced, but it also sometimes takes a really long time before results come in.
Read full review
Paessler
The tool is very intuitive to use and it is Windows-based (everybody knows how to use Windows) so it's easy to get into. Every time is setup in a hierarchy so if you have a good initial hierarchy design, it will really reduce administrative effort down the road.
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Support Rating
SolarWinds
Although I had not much support ticket with ipMonitor support team but I can share my overall experience with SolarWinds products and support team. I am working with SolarWinds support team since last 7 years and in last 2-3 years I have seen a significant improvement in knowledge documentation which is helping end users to troubleshoot problems by themselves. Apart from this SolarWinds phone call based support is very nice as tickets and emails might take some time but a direct phone call can get your job done quickly comparatively.
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Paessler
PRTG does everything we need it to do and more. Ease of use, ease of management and maintenance and clarity of monitoring of hundreds of different types of device and service gives this a large advantage over other products on the market that I have tried. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who needs a network monitoring product in their environment and even to people who don't know they need a solution yet!
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Implementation Rating
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Paessler
It's very important that de project's teams have different member of the TI. We have learned too late the importa of Security Analyst at the design architecture moment. We have to rebuild part of the implementation for made this big mistake.
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Alternatives Considered
SolarWinds
We were trying to evaluate different providers and ipMonitor suited us because we had on-prem and cloud instances and management decided to check the paid tool. The ipMonitor is a very responsive tool and it served the purpose well but as IT is evolving and needs are changing, we discontinued the ipMonitor and shifted to Zabbix due to the customization which was the need at the time.
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Paessler
I have deployed and tested three products for evaluation I found [PRTG Network Monitor] very easy to deploy, the deployment literally took not more than one hour including basic configuration and network discovery. After deployment few configuration changes and creation of maps, reports and little tweaking is required. [Then] it would go through its process of recommendation that took some time to complete, while [on] other hand other software's took lot of time to install and configure. And features were also missing, which resulted in decision in favor of [PRTG Network Monitor].
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Return on Investment
SolarWinds
  • We currently use an outside service to monitor critical network nodes. We will do away with that service shortly.
  • We no longer have to wait to hear from our users if there is a network device down. We will be proactively alerted and we can begin to remediate immediately helping to limit downtime.
  • After initial setup and some tweaking, it requires little to no time to maintain.
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Paessler
  • The ability to analyze multiple pieces of information in one place, especially with historical data, has saved our IT department time and headaches. It would be so much more difficult to trace an issue without PRTG, just relying on event logs and an open task manager window.
  • The cost is not cheap, so it's an expense that hits the bottom line like everything else. Figure in hardware costs as well, ideally a server outside of your main environment.
  • I keep saying this, but the historical data piece is worth so much. There's really no good way to collect all of that information in one place without something like PRTG. And that definitely saves time and money in the long run.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds ipMonitor Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Easy to navigate GUI interfaceScreenshot of Remediation FunctionalityScreenshot of Network Discovery Wizard