Nagios XI vs. PRTG Network Monitor

Nagios is best suited in an large organization where it is production 24/7, but in SME (small/medium enterprise) you have to pay a lot to the administrator. Instead use some graphical and easy to use tool like IDERA.

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

• 3rd party integrations via open API.
• Extremely flexible and configurable long term storage of the very detailed performance information (years of per 1-5 min perf data numbers).
• Small Nagios XI footprint (very efficient MySQL DB and flat files for perf data), making it powerful tool for thousands of checks and hundreds of reports.
• Responsive support, willing to provide resolution outside the box and by various means possible.

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

• The mobile interface is newly developed and needs more development. It should provide more options for the audit log and add more detail for the configuration rollback options.
• The scheduled report should be included in standard edition.
• Master Node is configurable on LINUX platform only. We had to hire a Linux administrator

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

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

Only because I never give out 10s. Nagios support goes above and beyond in helping with issues, workarounds, specific cases and requirements. Tracks customer implementation and history of the most important issues. Can’t complain (except that the team is small and quite probably overworked). Time to resolution could be much improved if only there were more folks to help around.

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

Cost efficiency is the main reason which we opted [for] Nagios as we were previously using IDERA tool with comprehensive database monitoring solutions, but the slow performance we are getting while monitoring the instance of the database.

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

• Reduction of at least 10% of false alarms.
• Increased network traffic by 5%.

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