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.
$2,149
per year
Zabbix
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Zabbix is an open-source network performance monitoring software. It includes prebuilt official and community-developed templates for integrating with networks, applications, and endpoints, and can automate some monitoring processes.
N/A
Pricing
PRTG Network Monitor
Zabbix
Editions & Modules
PRTG 500
$2,149
per year
Hosted 500
$2,149
per year
PRTG 1,000
$3,899
per year
Hosted 1000
$3,899
per year
PRTG 2,500
$8,099
per year
Hosted 2500
$8,099
per year
PRTG 5,000
$14,199
per year
Hosted 5000
$14,199
per year
PRTG 10000
$17,899
per year
PRTG Enterprise
Custom Pricing
subscription license
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PRTG
Zabbix
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PRTG Network Monitor
Zabbix
Considered Both Products
PRTG
Verified User
Manager
Chose PRTG Network Monitor
PRTG wins on price. Other tools have similar capabilities. However, there was always some trade-off to make. Products like Zabbix and Nagios are overly complicated to configure, so there is a significant time cost. Tools like Datadog and OpManager just cost too much for a small …
PRTG offers more versatility in monitoring when compared to the other solutions we tested. The other solutions were also limited as far as customization options, which made them less adaptable to our networks.
When compared to Auvik, for instance, we prefer PRTG as it offers …
First of all, PRTG Network Monitor allowed me to use a demo with full functionality with a limited number of sensors, which the others do not allow because the demos with full functionality are for a short period of time. I consider PRTG Network Monitor superior to the others …
The native iOS apps and desktop apps for alerts and easy visibility set PRTG Network Monitor apart from others. Websites are available with the others and Checkmk has connections to telegram or splunk to get push notifications, but not as easy to see the whole organization at …
PRTG Network Manager is an easy to get going tool, easy to implement, and can go really deep into the monitoring. It's a powerful tool to store monitoring data and to do network dashboards. Paessler, the PRTG Network Monitor proprietary has an excellent partnership with other …
Verified User
Professional
Chose PRTG Network Monitor
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 …
PRTG is much better than some tools in its class like ManageEngine Application Manager for example due to it's easy to use interface. Its workflow is also more streamlined and intuitive. It is probably more expensive and I am not a fan of the sensor licensing system. For …
PRTG has superior performance, a greater community and online documentation, more accurate data collection, and more complete configuration and operating environment than competitors.
PRTG is what you'd expect from a solid tool for network and infrastructure monitoring. The hierarchical structure of the device views, the ability to group like sensors with tags, and even the printable QR codes at each level are key usability features that put a wealth of data …
Most of the SolarWinds are separated out, whereas Zabbix includes templates and capabilities for all of them out of the box. Other solutions listed include most or all of them to varying degrees as well.
Zabbix has no financial cost, PRTG is very expensive but just as impressive capability wise.
Verified User
Engineer
Chose Zabbix
The software's I mentioned are great, but they are overpriced comparing to Zabbix while it's a free open-source application. The value its adding has high price than any other free open-source apps. the monitoring and alerts details and the friendly user interface is stacking …
As I have mentioned before, its free, open source, very customizable and easy to use. I think anybody with minimum networking or computer knowledge can watch tutorials and implement this solution easily. Also it has great community support and forums
Zabbix was adopted in our framework due to the value, the hardware requirements, the knowledge we had available and the vast documentation on the internet.
Features
PRTG Network Monitor
Zabbix
Network Performance Monitoring
Comparison of Network Performance Monitoring features of Product A and Product B
integrates seamlessly with Windows servers via WMI and PowerShell, providing deep insights into resource usage, performance metrics, and system health. It's excellent at tracking CPU, memory, disk space, and event logs, enabling rapid troubleshooting and proactive maintenance. PRTG Network Monitor also effectively monitors Fortigate devices, providing detailed data on firewall health, traffic patterns, bandwidth utilization, VPN status, and security alerts. This visibility helps detect and resolve network security issues promptly.
Zabbix is great for monitoring your servers and seeing alerts when the system uses too much CPU or memory. This allowed the system Engineer to be proactive and add resources to these systems to avoid interrupting the services. Especially servers running operations applications and services. This is one of the best usages for Zabbix.
Collecting hardware data - CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk Metrics are collected and reported on.
Flexible design - It is very easy to build out even very large environments via the templating system. You can also start where you are - network monitoring, server monitoring, etc. and then build it out from there as time and resources permit.
Provides a "plugin architecture" (via XML templates) to allow end users to extend it to monitor all kinds of equipment, software, or other metrics that are not already added into the software already.
Very complete documentation. Almost every aspect of Zabbix has been documented and reported on.
Cost - Zabbix is FOSS software and always free. Support is reasonably priced and readily available.
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
I would renew it because the platform has brought us many technical and economic benefits that make the cost-benefit ratio very good. Additionally, to do so does not require large investments in training, licensing or infrastructure, and at the administration level, extensive knowledge is not required to be able to bear it.
It is free. It didn't cost anything to implement (other than my time and the cost incurred for it) and it is filling a badly needed gap in our IT infrastructure. Support is available if we have issues and can be done annually or paid for on a per incident basis as needed. Expansion, updates, and all other future lifecycle activities are likewise free of cost, so as long as someone is able to implement/maintain the software (and the OSS project is maintained) then I imagine the company will never leave it.
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.
I think every organization, especially the IT department, needs a tool like this. I know of another product like Zabbix that gives a similar or the same solution, but its range makes it very useful. You can see almost all the device info in one place: disk usage, disk space, network usage, etc.
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!
The setup is the most time-consuming portion of using zabbix. It takes a lot of effort to shape it into a usable format and even then it can get very messy. It's not exactly intuitive and as mentioned the UI seems a bit antiquated. If I was to roll out a monitoring solution from scratch, I'd probably look for alternatives which are easier to use and maintain.
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.
We are a mainly Windows environment, so it would be useful if we could have used Active Directory to deploy agents. As of version 4.2, Zabbix has announced a new agent MSI file to allow exactly that. Unfortunately, we didn't have that option. Also, for Linux and MAC deployments, there is no simple way to deploy that. Using remote scripts you may be able to create something, but most places will opt for either SNMP (agentless) or manual installation of agents to add to Zabbix. A way of deploying agents via discovery would go a long way to helping in the adoption of the tool.
PRTG offers more versatility in monitoring when compared to the other solutions we tested. The other solutions were also limited as far as customization options, which made them less adaptable to our networks. When compared to Auvik, for instance, we prefer PRTG as it offers immediate notifications through the desktop client - not limited to email notifications as with Auvik. We also appreciate the fact that PRTG can be self/on-prem hosted vs Auvik's cloud model. This makes for an easier deployment and less firewall adjustments to allow traffic to cloud-hosted solutions.
We're using the Solarwinds suite as our global monitoring standard, but it is very complex and its licensing model makes it difficult to monitor a wide range of technologies. So, we're using Zabbix as a complement on our monitoring process. Zabbix is a way more flexible and has free integrations to a wide range of technologies. It is also more 'user friendly' and easy to manage.
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.
