PRTG Network Monitor vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
PRTG
Score 8.6 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
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) enables deep visibility into database performance and expert advice for performance optimization and tuning. What can you monitor with DPA? Oracle Oracle Exadata Oracle EBS Microsoft SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Database Managed Instance MySQL DB2 SAP ASE Aurora MariaDB DPA monitors physical, virtual,…N/A
Pricing
PRTG Network MonitorSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PRTGSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PRTG Network MonitorSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Considered Both Products
PRTG
Chose PRTG Network Monitor
Compared to SolarWinds licensing model on monitors, we bought PRTG xl-1 unlimited license monitoring any device without any difficulty and not specific to servers, devices, network devices. We monitor any device in our organisation. We monitor location, temperature, specific …
Chose PRTG Network Monitor
Both PRTG and Solarwinds work great, and they are great systems. But for the specific task of monitoring and alerting if there is a VPN connection failure, PRTG works great at monitoring and sending out a status report when a failure does occur. I like both products, but I find …
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
We actually never tried other products. After some research, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer seemed the best match for our needs, and we were happy after the trial period, so we kept it.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
PRTG Network MonitorSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Network Performance Monitoring
Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
PRTG Network Monitor
7.1
55 Ratings
15% below category average
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
-
Ratings
Automated network device discovery7.449 Ratings00 Ratings
Network monitoring7.754 Ratings00 Ratings
Baseline threshold calculation6.747 Ratings00 Ratings
Alerts7.755 Ratings00 Ratings
Network capacity planning6.739 Ratings00 Ratings
Packet capture analysis5.528 Ratings00 Ratings
Network mapping7.639 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable reports7.448 Ratings00 Ratings
Wireless infrastructure monitoring7.438 Ratings00 Ratings
Hardware health monitoring6.952 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
PRTG Network MonitorSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Small Businesses
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.2 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
PingPlotter
PingPlotter
Score 9.4 out of 10
Redgate SQL Monitor
Redgate SQL Monitor
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Nmap
Nmap
Score 8.8 out of 10
Redgate SQL Monitor
Redgate SQL Monitor
Score 8.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PRTG Network MonitorSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(55 ratings)
9.2
(113 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.6
(4 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(17 ratings)
9.3
(6 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
PRTG Network MonitorSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Likelihood to Recommend
Paessler
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.
Read full review
SolarWinds
This is an easy 10 because I actually have recommended this product to multiple clients and colleagues! Any shop that writes its own SQL queries will benefit from the insight provided by SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, so they know which of their queries is causing a bottleneck. Small shops or databases with only a few tables likely will see far fewer opportunities for optimization.
Read full review
Pros
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
SolarWinds
  • Maintains historical SQL execution data, enabling forensic analysis
  • Has the ability to slice and dice the data so that you can drill down to the execution of a single SQL statement being executed by a stored procedure
  • Alerts to when the consumption pattern changes
  • Shows historical average run times against the current, illustrating problems when they arise
  • Provides tuning advice based on best practices
Read full review
Cons
Paessler
  • 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.
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • Alerts seem to be lacking in DPA compared to competitor's tools. They can be setup but are not quite as easy or as helpful as some other tools I have used.
  • Grooming/pruning the repository database isn't very easy. We don't manage a lot of instances but our repo DB has grown pretty significantly.
  • At times when I am drilled-down to a chart, it can be difficult to navigate around from that point to another time range/query/metric.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Paessler
It is now an essential tool for monitoring and maintaining the health of our network and systems.
Read full review
SolarWinds
We have relied on this product for a very long time and it continues to exceed expectations. The product is a vital part of our organization at this point, it would not be very ideal for us to abandon it. We use it almost every day and depend on its alerts for critical parts of our business
Read full review
Usability
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.
Read full review
SolarWinds
I don't want to think about managing clusters of SQL servers in the future without this tool. We have demoed other tools and SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is the gold standard for usability and insight into what your servers are doing. The UI is a bit dated, but everything is laid out in a logical manner and drilling down into queries or timeslices is extremely intuitive.
Read full review
Support Rating
Paessler
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.
Read full review
SolarWinds
I have had to use their support on a few occasions, for reasons that I am not clear about until recently I have always had problems upgrading the software (although the last 2 updates have gone without issue which I am very pleased to say). On those unfortunate occasions, the support has been brilliant with either excellently documented guides on how to resolve the issue by myself or have been hands-on with calls and screen sharing to remotely fix the issue. Every time the problem was sorted and more importantly, nothing was lost (apart from a bit of time). And as I stated above whatever the problem was that was causing my upgrade issues appears to have been resolved in the last 2 updates.
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Implementation Rating
Paessler
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds
Follow the guidelines for the capacity of the servers. We found that the DPA databases were getting rather large and also that there are ways to reduce their size built into some of the options.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
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].
Read full review
SolarWinds
At the time, we found SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to be easier to setup and to have a richer feature set than Redgate SQL Monitor, plus, from what I remember, the DPA pricing worked better for us over the course of a year. We're very happy with all the features DPA has to offer.
Read full review
Return on Investment
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.
Read full review
SolarWinds
  • It has allowed us to progress as an organization with much less reliance on a direct DBA than would traditionally be required
  • Allowed us to be much more proactive in our performance monitoring and responding to issues that would affect users.
Read full review
ScreenShots

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Screenshots

Screenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Alerts and reportsScreenshot of Application-centric view of DPAScreenshot of Blocking deadlock analysisScreenshot of Collaboration across teamsScreenshot of Intuitive performance monitoring