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Overview

What is PRTG?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

PRTG Network Monitor is a versatile tool that has proven to be invaluable for a wide range of users and organizations. Small and mid-sized …
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Network Monitoring above others

10 out of 10
February 24, 2022
This product is a key part of our overall systems monitoring, environmental monitoring, and logging. We use this system to act like a 24x7 …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 10 features
  • Alerts (55)
    7.6
    76%
  • Network monitoring (54)
    7.6
    76%
  • Automated network device discovery (49)
    7.4
    74%
  • Hardware health monitoring (52)
    6.8
    68%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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PRTG 500

1,750

On Premise
perpetual license

PRTG 1,000

3,200

On Premise
perpetual license

PRTG 2,500

6,500

On Premise
perpetual license

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

PGT 305 : MINI PROJECT - DEMO VIDEO PRTG NETWORK MONITOR

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Prtg demo | Prtg network monitor demo | Prtg

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Giám sát mạng máy tính với phần mềm PRTG Network Monitor

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PRTG Network Monitor Demo

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PRTG Network Monitor Live Demo

YouTube

Monitor Large Scale Environments the Easy Way - PRTG Network Monitor

YouTube
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Features

Network Performance Monitoring

A network performance monitoring system monitors the entire network for performance problems and collects performance data such as network traffic analysis performance bottlenecks, etc.

7
Avg 8.2
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Product Details

What is PRTG?

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. It also includes free VoIP monitoring software.

PRTG Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Network monitoring and Alerts and Network mapping highest, with a score of 7.6.

The most common users of PRTG are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(235)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

PRTG Network Monitor is a versatile tool that has proven to be invaluable for a wide range of users and organizations. Small and mid-sized firms with limited IT resources have found it to be an effective solution for monitoring their servers, switches, storage, and essential services almost 24/7. By providing a quick overview of many systems at once, the software saves these organizations from receiving alerts from multiple places or watching several different screens.

Telecommunications companies also benefit greatly from PRTG Network Monitor's capabilities. It allows them to monitor major backhaul telecommunication links, thousands of devices deployed in multiple locations, and even multi-tenanted virtual environments. The software's event monitoring, alerting, capacity management, and uptime reporting features provide these companies with the metrics they need for OLAs and SLAs.

Similarly, organizations rely on PRTG Network Monitor to keep a close eye on their network devices, servers, and services both locally and remotely. By providing real-time information about the system's health and alerting the team when something goes offline or down, the software enables proactive issue resolution and quicker recovery. The ability to display the software on TVs throughout the department also allows other employees to see the status of the infrastructure.

In various industries, such as R&D departments or customer service centers, PRTG Network Monitor serves as a crucial fault and performance monitoring tool. It helps these teams monitor services, databases, bandwidth utilization, server performance, and application uptime. The historical data provided by the software aids in tracking trends and establishing baselines for resources. Notably, its flexibility in configuration and customization is appreciated by users across different settings.

PRTG Network Monitor is not limited to specific sectors but offers value to many use cases. From monitoring network gear and VPN tunnels to overseeing classroom environments or casinos' game floors' kiosks, this software proves its versatility time and again. Its extensive functionality allows users to consolidate multiple monitoring systems, meet customer SLAs, and proactively address potential problems before they impact users' experience. PRTG Network Monitor truly shines as a reliable and adaptable tool for network monitoring and system availability.

Intuitive Interface: Users have consistently praised PRTG for its highly intuitive interface, which makes it incredibly easy to use and set up credentials and device monitoring. Many reviewers appreciate how the user-friendly interface streamlines the process of navigating the system.

Out-of-the-Box Monitoring: PRTG's comprehensive monitoring capabilities right out of the box have impressed numerous users. The product offers detailed monitoring without requiring extensive customization or additional packages, saving valuable time and effort during implementation.

Automatic Device Discovery: PRTG's automatic device discovery functionality has received positive feedback from several users. They highlight how this feature simplifies the setup process by automatically detecting and modeling various types of devices, ensuring hassle-free monitoring with minimal manual configuration required.

Confusing User Interface: Some users have found the user interface to be perplexing, difficult to navigate, and lacking in intuitiveness. They have expressed a desire for improvements in the management of the user interface, including visual interfaces and simplification of the top ribbon menu.

Steep Learning Curve: There is a learning curve associated with using the software, especially for those who are new to monitoring solutions. Users have reported difficulties with the setup process and the auto scan feature, and they would appreciate a more straightforward navigation system in the web GUI.

Expensive Pricing Structure: Many users find frustration with the pricing structure since costs increase significantly once they exceed the 100 sensor limit of the free version. The licensing cost is considered expensive, particularly for small businesses. Users feel that there should be a more budget-friendly software option available for medium-level customers.

Users recommend purchasing a licensed version of the software for proper functioning. They have found that the licensed version offers better performance and functionality compared to the free version.

Reviewers advise regularly updating the software to resolve any bugs or issues. By keeping the software up-to-date, users have access to the latest features, enhancements, and security patches.

Customers suggest engaging with the user community for troubleshooting assistance. By exploring the user community, users can find solutions to their queries or problems more quickly and benefit from shared tips, tricks, and workarounds.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 55)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use PRTG Network Monitor in our organization since 2021; we started with the free solution with 100 sensors to check with ping our customers connectivity. Now we are certified PRTG partner and we sell our services for many companies for monitoring IT infrastructure (devices as virtual machine, pc, switch, access point, firewall, storage). With alerts and maps, we can easily manage our customers.
  • We can monitor every device on the network
  • With warning and alert notifications we can solve problems
  • With maps you can show the status of your devices; green means everything ok, yellow is a warning and red something not working properly
  • They should add more specific sensors for each vendor, not only few brand
  • Improve icons for maps and the way to manage them
  • More tutorials and guide for non standard solutions (custom script)
  • More integrations with other solutions
PRTG Network Monitor is very easy to deploy and setup; with autodiscovery and recommended sensors, you can get a lot of informations about your IT infrastructure. You can set warning and error limits for each sensor (for example for free disk space or running process). Then you can setup notification triggers for warnings and alerts so you can receive mail or push notification. You can use it with a browser or desktop app or mobile app.
Mohd Rehan Ansari | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It is very easy to use in any type of network infrastructure. The free version of the software provides at least 10 sensors which a basic network setup requires. It is easy to integrate and view. The licensing model for PRTG Network Monitor is also good. We can buy a set of sensors and then can use them as and when needed.
  • It is scalable
  • It has graphical monitoring tools
  • In licensed version you get almost all the features and it is pay per feature
  • It is windows based specifically, so gives issue on Linux systems
  • Managing too many Linux machines causes issues
I can configure all my firewalls, wifi devices, ISPs, etc., and monitor them through this tool. Whether they are down or up can easily be known by warning or alert messages on your mail id. We can get weekly graphs of any device associated with it very easily. Constant monitoring shows any loopholes or bottlenecks in the network.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
Recently we have used PRTG Network Monitor to monitor our customers' data centers, we are using around 30,000 sensors in PRTG Network Monitor and the performance is quite good. We are having some problems with the memory consumption of the application, but with some housekeeping, we are having one of the best experiences that a monitoring app can offer.
  • Monitor the network.
  • Keep services running.
  • Notifications
  • Dashboards
  • More functions on the dashboard maker.
  • More control on users permissions.
  • More backup monitoring options.
  • More storage monitoring options.
If you want precise monitoring of your network and an incredible way to visualize it, you should decide to use PRTG Network Monitor. If you have an on-premises or in-cloud operation and want to know what is going on with your environment. PRTG Network Monitor is well suited to monitor all of the new data centers' needs. PRTG Network Monitor can be less appropriate for old data centers' needs, if you don't have an SNMP connection or MIB it can be frustrating.
Michael O'Riley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize PRTG in the IT department to monitor network devices, servers, and services locally and remotely. PRTG provides real-time information about our system's health by alerting my team when something goes down/offline. I have PRTG Maps displayed on TVs throughout our department so other departments and employees see the status of our infrastructure.
  • Monitoring throughput through network devices.
  • Monitoring services for a critical application.
  • Alerting staff when devices go offline.
  • Providing a log of events and system status at any moment in the past.
  • PRTG Maps\Web Pages are cumbersome to setup and change.
  • The configuration interface is old and is not easy to work with at times.
  • Enhanced triggers with more options.
I believe PRTG is well suited for all environments helping to minimize downtime.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
This product is a key part of our overall systems monitoring, environmental monitoring, and logging. We use this system to act like a 24x7 on-call systems in trouble alerting mechanism for our internal group as well as notifying other business units of systems they rely on. Utilizing ICMP, SNMP, WMI as well as segmentation for other networks to mitigate against numerous holes in firewalls to allow for numerous system monitoring the product performs as expected and at times overperforms.
  • Alerting.
  • Notifications.
  • Historical.
  • Maps.
  • Easy to use GUI.
  • Strong documentation.
It has performed and alerted us to systemwide events as it happens, we are able to react and recover in a much quicker timeframe than ever before. We can review historical issues and consider those events as part of what spare parts are to be had on hand.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PRTG is being used to monitor a number of different IT technologies mainly in the infrastructure realm. There are several key uses:
  • Device monitoring (Security, network, telephony, servers, power)
  • Device troubleshooting (monitoring statistics of problematic device which could be any network connected device) over time to determine a baseline and solve problems
  • Reporting on network utilization for capacity planning
  • Netflow reporting for external connections
There are various problems the tool addresses - both proactive and reactive use cases. It provides baselines, verification reporting and ability to alert to issues present. We use various technologies for alerting, from Teams messaging, to emails to direct incident creation in ITSM software.
  • Ability to monitor ALMOST anything that is network connected
  • Flexibility in monitoring choices (SNMP, Scripts, PINGS, WMI etc)
  • Easy to use web GUI for creating monitors, reports, and alerts
  • 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
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.
Graham Murison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Paessler's PRTG Network Monitor IT operation monitoring. This is used throughout the organization.

We needed a more robust monitoring tool that was capable of delivering more in-depth monitoring of our network devices and other end-user nodes as needed. We had previously set up SNMP on most devices, but the previous free tool had limited reporting.

I was also looking for per-interface traffic stats on my Cisco inventory.
  • Setup was easy.
  • Adding devices/sensor is so easy.
  • Support is great.
  • Cost is reasonable.
  • Updates are automatic.
  • A more built-in dashboard would be nice.
  • Licensing can be tricky since it is not device based. Currently, each sensor (IE interface) counts as a sensor license
We are using PRTG to monitor our NetApp storage device and Cisco switch network activity. It also has uptime and ping sensors to help notify us when network nodes are down or unavailable i.e. we are using it to monitor our information displays (tv's) to make sure we are notified when they go down. All monitoring is done using SNMP.
Rekha Yadav | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PRTG software is being used as the network, servers and appliances fault and performance monitoring, event-based alerting, and network traffic flow analysis. Primarily PRTG was deployed for network monitoring, alerting, and reporting. It provides near to real-time monitoring data and supports the Network team to support their operations SLA.
  • Fault and performance monitoring
  • Alerting and reporting
  • Custom parameters monitoring using custom probes.
  • Support monitoring of large number of devices from same instance.
  • By-default integration with 3rd party tools such as Splunk, Service Now
  • More stability in the product.
  • Probes for cloud services monitoring.
Although PRTG has the capability to monitor each and every aspect of network devices, servers, and appliances (basic only), still it is being treated as the small scale monitoring solution of lightweight monitoring solution and the reason for that is scaling issues with respect to the stability of the product. Hence, it is recommended to small-scale environment monitoring with default probes options.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use PRTG Network Monitor to monitor and alert all LAN, WAN, VPN, and website-related load balancers, switches, routers & firewalls for connectivity, latency, and throughput. It is being used mainly by 1 team/department. It addresses the problems of having high-level as well as finely-granular views in one pane including historical & trending of network throughput and usage, and proactive issue alerting.
  • Allows for very easy agentless additions of monitors.
  • Gives simplified views and customizable dashboards in the WUI.
  • Gives excellent outputting/exporting options for structured historical data.
  • The WUI overall, although it is thorough, could use some simplification to find what you are looking for.
  • The WUI could also give better dependency linking, the existing tool is difficult to use.
  • An HTML5/more enhanced/more interactive UI design.
From my experience, PRTG NM is very well suited for medium to large companies with geo-dispersed, On-Premise/Bare Metal hardware or software-defined network equipment needing robust and efficient monitoring and alerting systems. Also, if you are needing excellent historical logging/trending with visual interpretations (graphs, charts, etc.) PRTG excels in this. The setup and administration of the system itself, although it can vary slightly by make/model of endpoint devices, can almost always be achieved by relatively inexperienced admin staff.
Yaniv Vararu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PRTG is used only by the R&D department in our organization. We're using it to monitor some of our services and databases, but not all of them. It helps us understand if something major "got broken" with our product and if there are servers or databases which are completely unavailable or unstable.
  • Ping for general availability of servers every constant time interval.
  • By doing so, we can check statistics of availability over a period of given time.
  • You can set different monitors for different needs.
  • The UI is very "old" and not appealing.
  • It's also not intuitive enough, UX-wise.
Since I'm not the one who configures the system and the different monitors, it's a bit difficult to explain, but I'd say that, in general, it's a very complex but very flexible software if your needs are diverse. In case you have basic monitoring needs, I guess it'll be easier to use a more basic monitoring service.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[PRTG] Network Monitor system is used as our primary network monitoring solution for monitoring critical business application servers as well as production servers. I had implemented this solution in PSMCL long time ago when I joined, since [then] I have deployed the solution on multiple times. [It's] very simple to deploy, maintain and manage. The auto discovery function along with sensor recommendation works well with minimal configuration. The best thing is that for smaller environments it has 100 sensors for lifetime. That is one more reason I deploy free version on smaller environment for trial then user decides to keep it or not.
  • Ping Jitter to identify connection problems
  • Traffic monitor for monitoring performance of wan links
  • Snmp sensors
  • Maps are difficult to make
For medium to small organizations [PRTG Network Monitor is] very well suited. I found it very easy to deploy and manage, updates are easy to perform, its very rare but if for any reason the system gets problematic it could be redeployed in few minutes and old data could be restored very easily. I recommend to deploy free version for evaluation first use it for as long as you want in that way you can get actual feel of product.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The software is used by our IT Department. We monitor all of our network devices to check our availability. The second goal is to notice failures or blackouts before the user informs us, so we can react and resolve issues without notice by the users. One big advantage of PRTG is monitoring automated processes. We don't need to check them on our own. PRTG will send us notifications if any errors occur.
  • Easy usage and implementing.
  • Fewer resources needed.
  • Low costs for purchases and services.
  • More possibilities for monitoring Windows systems, not only over SNMP.
  • Easier way to create our own sensors without programming.
  • Notification if VPN or internet connection is down.
  • Monitoring printers for ordering toner or ink.
  • Monitoring automated processes that are very important and need to be checked every day/hour.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My Organization is belongs to Automotive factor, so in Production area we need smooth Network with zero DownTime.
Before PRTG we used multiple solutions but we faced lot of issues in Network, therefore we study and deploy this solution in our organization and now we monitor whole network in a glance and rectify issue As quick as possible.
  • Notification: Device down or up quick notification is prompt.
  • Graph, Reporting in a Glance.
  • Complex often during troubleshoot
  • Interface is very complex for users it can be improve.
  • Time tacking configurations(i.e hierarchy etc.)
  • community help is not so good
PRTG Network Monitor is well suited in Large scale Network or sensitive Areas where no down time is acceptable.
we are automotive sector therefore we are unable to face any down time during Production. therefore we need a solution for quick resolution in our whole network, With the help of this solution we get smooth network.
Nikhil Kumar Sharma | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PRTG is used as a light weight Network Monitoring Solution for our customers where team just want to have a visibility on Network Fault and Performance Data along with Syslog and Traps with Netflow Data analysis. PRTG also offer notifications and integration options for ticketing and alerting command center tea and hence PRTG is helping us out for end to end network monitoring
  • Out of the box default probes is available
  • Distributed architecture
  • Light Weight
  • More integration options
  • Enhanced probe management
  • Application Stability and scalability is a must
PRTG is well suited when you want to monitor network infrastructure of small size such as 1000 or 2000, for basic fault and performance monitoring. If you have custom monitoring requirements then make sure you have enough probes to do this or else it will make your system sluggish. Application scalability is another challenge for more number of devices.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PRTG Network Monitor is primarily being used by the IT department, however, the electrical department will also receive notifications for some device down notifications. We primarily use it for the notification functionality but also use the dashboard for some things. We work on a large construction site and have multiple locations - it's critical to respond to outages ASAP as they will have a negative effect on the business.
  • Prompt notifications when a device goes down.
  • Beautiful history graph showing you uptime/statuses
  • Interface is a little difficult to navigate if you aren't tech savvy.
  • Configuration of hierarchy can take a bit of time to set-up.
Particularly if you are a shop that has a lot of devices but not a ton of manpower to manage those devices, this software is a huge benefit. It's inexpensive compared to the big enterprise solutions and far easier to set-up than the open-source alternatives like Nagios. It's the right size for most groups. Node/monitor based licensing allows me to be flexible with what I need. Most devices are just up/down notifications, some have SNTP, etc. It's great!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PRTG is basically a network monitoring solution. It is being used by the whole organization and most of our clients too. When compared with other solutions like SolarWinds in terms of network monitoring, it is far better in many ways. It is budget friendly where you have unlimited licensing XL1 which is one of the best solutions for big enterprise solutions. When it comes to monitoring, auto-discovery of all the nodes, devices, networks using wmi or snmp easily can be done. GUI is easily understandable.
  • Best for small to big enterprises especially XL1 - unlimited licensing.
  • Auto-Discover of all the network devices, VMs in one shot and can easily monitor temperature, latency and such values with less efforts.
  • Customized dashboards for NOC, alerts which glimpse, API many other features are available.
  • Pricing model is very convincing for small to big business.
  • API which you can pull the data from PRTG of your whole network and you can integrate with SOC. This is the best in PRTG.
  • It has its own internal database and does daily auto-backups, just copy-paste is enough.
  • No need to worry about database.
PRTG is not restricted to one business, like you can do monitoring in Aviation, satellite division or in Medical Fields and even Electric substations. We do monitoring of temperature, latency, crc8 errors, monitor IOT devices, medical equipment. OID (object identifier) helps a lot in terms of monitoring any devices other [than] network devices. API are always available where you can easily pull the data.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use PRTG for real-time monitoring of all the servers across our various environments. It is, among other tools, a critical part of our infrastructure and alerts us almost instantly when a parameter has exceeded the specified ranges that we have setup. It is a very flexible tool and I have been extremely impressed with it overall.
  • Very easy to setup new sensors (new endpoints to monitor).
  • High level of customization for various features.
  • User-friendly, intuitive web UI.
  • Documentation could be a little more thorough/easy to understand.
  • Built-in reports could be expanded a little bit more.
  • Does not support SSO or more than one Active Directory sync.
It is an excellent real-time monitoring tool, good for things like device uptime and resource utilization. You can monitor parameters such as ping, CPU and memory usage, available disk space, and also generate reports and graphs based on historic utilization to help plan for future growth. What PRTG is not intended for is use as an Intrusion Prevention System, it will only report to you on what activities that are occurring.
Sam Livermore, MCP, iTIL | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We monitor all production servers, network appliances and services on each. Currently utilizing over 600 of 100 sensors, and used as our early defense mechanism for any health issues or down devices. Easy way to get a baseline of resources, and look back at historical data to track trends or look at disk consumption, etc.
  • Monitor servers, CPU, memory, disk, services.
  • Monitor network and bandwidth, port up/down.
  • Provide options for custom solutions to meet your environment.
  • Support is great and always helpful, the often forgotten value of any product.
  • OID/MIB import tool.
  • SNMP error, doesn't point you in the right direction.
Small to medium businesses where they have an on-staff SysAdmin or Network Admin who can support the on-prem server and all the services. If this is not monitored or set up properly, the app can quickly get out of date, and the sensors not work properly with correct notifications to do the intended job of letting you know that there is a problem.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use PRTG to monitor our entire IT infrastructure, applications, and websites. It is a critical part of our operational strategy to monitor system availability and performance. We use it to pro-actively tell IT staff of a current problem or even a potential problem so we find out in most cases before customers report the problem. I would say the pro-active component is most valuable.
  • Being able to customize sensors for each server or application (what is being monitored)
  • The variety of hardware and software sensors to choose from is great.
  • The accuracy of the sensors. If PRTG is reporting a problem then that event is really happening.
  • We can choose the thresholds for each sensor. So for example what is a down state or warning state.
  • A lot of options regarding notifications - email, text, timeframes, normal business hours, weekend hours, etc.
  • Ability to see and report on sensor history and get uptime stats.
  • There is a reporting feature but the reports are not necessarily "pretty".
  • The learning curve isn't real steep but it can be a little difficult to configure and get things the way you want them. Definitely trial and error.
  • The automatic scan of a server includes a lot of sensors that are not really usable. And considering licensing is based on the number of sensors, it's easier to just pick the sensors you want to monitor. It would be nice if could create a template of sensors to track.
We are a small IT shop, but I could see if your environment is extremely complex with multiple sites and decentralized it would take some effort to configure everything correctly using PRTG Network Monitor. Even if your environment has 100+ servers but IT staff are centralized it's very realistic to configure everything correctly and get the notifications where you want them.
April 16, 2020

PRTG for MSP's

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
PRTG Network Monitor is being used by our organization to monitor the health of all of our servers as well as ISP's. It is also being used to monitor the health of all of our clients servers and ISP's. We also use it to provide reporting on server and netwok usage.
  • System Monitoring
  • Server Monitoring
  • Network Monitoring
  • UI can be confusing
  • Notifications can be difficult to set up
PRTG Network Monitor is well suited for larger organizations who need to consistently monitor the health of multiple servers and multiple ISP's. The custom ping checks are a good tool to allow efficient alerting when a system could possibly be offline or inaccessible. It is extremely well suited for MSP's or larger organizations that monitor multiple sites.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use PRTG Network Monitor across our IT infrastructure to monitor uptime, availability, Windows service status, and various other relevant items. PRTG Network Monitor gives us the ability to tailor monitoring to the individual system and offers a lot of flexibility in configuration. It has a Maps feature that enabled us to design a custom four-display NOC that IT technicians can use to monitor infrastructure health at a glance. One great use case is for player kiosks on the casino game floor. With PRTG Network Monitor, we can get down to the kiosk and have it running long before guests encounter it, report it to staff, and it makes its way to IT for resolution. The same applies to other task-based machines and endpoints that are customer-facing. With configurable email alerts and a heads-up display, IT staff can be far more proactive in our ability to provide a best in class guest experience. This is critical because you only get one chance to make an excellent first impression.
  • Huge array of sensors to allow detailed monitoring of varied systems.
  • Extremely configurable and tuneable to meet custom environmental needs.
  • Active Directory/LDAP integration is rudimentary and needs improvement.
  • Easy to introduce a lot of network noise and load with default sensor recommendations - care is required to avoid causing load problems on endpoints.
  • We've found that PRTG Network Monitor is excellent for monitoring critical endpoints, VMware health, Microsoft Exchange, and other essential items of infrastructure. PRTG Network Monitor licensing is based on the number of sensors deployed, so it's wise not to accept all of the default recommendations. Spend some time thinking about what matters. For example, there's no need for a Ping sensor on a system where you are also monitoring service states - if the service is up, pinging it is unnecessary, and if the service is down. Still, the system is up; the fact that it responds to pings is not very useful. We've found that a good approach is to let PRTG Network Monitor recommend sensors and then remove those that are not relevant to our monitoring needs.
  • Paessler support is also excellent. They've been very responsive and worked with us to enhance the value of the product.
January 23, 2020

Dive into the Traffic

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Current use is within our infrastructure group. I am a networking engineer and am always looking for a better way to monitor net-flow, SLA and SNMP information. Current use has been net-flow traffic out of several of our locations where we have had bandwidth issues. We've been able to tell who the big users are, times, etc., basically what you get from net-flow. The benefit has been the graphical interface that PRTG presents the information.
  • The graphical interface has been excellent in determining bandwidth issues.
  • The ease of setup between Cisco equipment and the PRTG.
  • Setup itself was particularly easy, I believe I had everything up and running within 10 minutes.
  • Granular formatting would be nice. Though I can narrow down several layers, it doesn't allow me to get to the nitty-gritty.
  • Security accessing the interface needs to be better. Able to limit access via certain users.
  • Template changing.
Ease of implementation when you are needing a quick and dirty. I mentioned earlier I had it up and running within 10 minutes and was able to narrow down bandwidth usage at multiple locations. Though I could do this manually at each location, having a single window to view and compare the data made it easy to fix. Only con I really have is the lack of AD integration to create security roles in PRTG since we would like to leave this up as a first look window when issues occur.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use PRTG Network Monitor as a central monitoring platform for our 4 corporate sites (including Amazon AWS) as well as all of our customer locations (around 10 sites) that are spread across the USA. It's our primary monitoring tool for our entire organization. It does SNMP monitoring well and it makes remote support (an essential part of our business model) of all of our sites possible will alerts that get sent to whoever needs to be notified when something happens.
  • Consistent, real-time alerts.
  • A decent repository of MIB's and OID's for quick auto-discovery.
  • User-friendly interface.
  • Its MIB library could be expanded by quite a lot, I have to spend a lot of time with device manufacturer support when I need to monitor something specific (fan speed, firmware version, etc).
  • It's really not that scaleable beyond 10,000 sensors.
Our organization is quickly outgrowing PRTG as an SNMP network monitoring tool. We have around 20 total sites we monitor and we're pushing over 16,000 sensors. For a small organization, it's really great and affordable. Once you grow beyond the 10,000 sensor mark, however, it starts to get very pricey and not very efficient.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used mainly by the network team but is also known to be used by a certain server team, to monitor up/down status of various network devices as well as circuit utilization and other vital stats on the devices.
  • Monitor up/down status.
  • Provides historical and current data of utilization of circuits.
  • Has numerous sensors of different variables to monitor.
  • Would like to see a more intuitive user interface.
  • Provide backup configs where necessary.
  • Update MIBs for more compatibility.
If you are looking for a quick solution to deploy to pull vital stats via SNMP and monitor network and/or server devices, PRTG Network Monitor is very useful.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use PRTG to monitor a fairly large, complex and multi-site network. Monitoring in the region of 4000 sensors over a few hundred servers, network devices, printers, CCTV, Wi-Fi APs, web hosts, etc.
The biggest problem we used to have was that we had several monitoring systems managed by different departments around the business. With the introduction of PRTG, we have been able to consolidate these systems into PRTG and manage it centrally.
PRTG gives us a really good visual overview of all the relevant things we need to monitor to meet customer SLA's and we find that with the help of the email alerts and a visual map on a large screen in the office, we can keep on top of any issues.
  • Visual overview of the whole network making it easy to spot any issues straightaway.
  • Email alerting that is fully customizable.
  • Proactive monitoring using hundreds of different types of sensors giving the ability to actively troubleshoot issues before customers are affected.
  • 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.
PRTG is well suited to any organization that needs to monitor devices and systems on their network. Compared to other products on the market, it is is easy to set up, manage and use on a day-to-day basis.
The only place where it would be less appropriate would possibly be an environment where multiple probes were required for geographic purposes and a probe device (ie, a PC) isn't available in each location. This is fairly unlikely, however, but would depend on the network infrastructure.
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