OpenText SiteScope vs. PRTG Network Monitor

SiteScope is definitely well suited in an HP server environment. It is also well suited for virtual server environments. It is also well suited for those who are happy with email and text based message alerting. It may not be appropriate in other environments where monitoring physical components is critical. Because HP SiteScope does not monitor certain physical components, it does fall short of being able to be a "one stop shop solution" in regard to monitoring. It is not well suited for those looking for logic in how alerts are sent and cascade to other people or groups.

Incentivized

If there are a number of different protocols and devices to monitor PRTG is really an all in one solution. There are network specific solutions, telephony solutions, server solutions, etc - but this tool can do anything. Even if you don't use this tool as your main "monitoring solutions" every IT professional should have access to this tool for at least troubleshooting purposes. If you are looking for something specific built for a task you may be able to find [a] more direct and easy tool to use that would be easier and quicker to setup as customization is not needed.

Incentivized

• Alerts can be configured as per business requirement.
• It can take remedial action, when defined for a particular situation.
• Severity, priority of tickets which are created upon a trigger can be well defined.
• The teams which need to be alerted can be configured in the tool itself, in case of any event.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Sitescope is particularly used for infrastructure monitoring. Other kinds of monitors cannot be set using HP sitescope.
• Sitescope cannot have graphs like splunk which is why we have splunk as well which is an additional cost for the company.
• We can't have a direct regex operations on data inside HP sitescope. We need to have the logs placed as a single log and then do that.

Incentivized

• The probe service can be quite resource-intensive. This can cause false-positive readings from some sensors sometimes.
• The software gets updated very regularly. Whilst this is usually a good thing to fix bugs etc, it does meantime downtime of the monitoring quite often while they are installed.
• The ability to create Maps from Libraries. Very specific issue but a lot of people have been asking for it for years and it is still not available.

Incentivized

It is now an essential tool for monitoring and maintaining the health of our network and systems.

Incentivized

Very straightforward and easy to use once you get past the short learning curve.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Can't really answer this. Setup was easy and no support has really been used at this point.

Incentivized

I am giving this a 6 simply because I have never had to contact support. The online documentation is adequate for most things, and the user-maintained knowledgebase is excellent. The few times I have run into issues that were not easily resolvable with intuitive UI, I was able to find the answers that I needed either in the PRTG-provided documentation, the knowledgebase, or with a quick online web search.

Incentivized

SiteScope unified console is a powerful tool for operators to easily detect warnings and alerts grouped by its hierarchical organization with real-time status displaying continuously the whole health map.

Incentivized

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].

Incentivized

• Sitescope does exactly what it was purchased for. It may take some time to set it up but once its set up it is a rock solid product.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized