We compared Centreon and PRTG Network Monitor across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Centreon features a user-friendly interface with useful options for customization and manual configuration. Users like the solution’s flexible dashboards and the ability to create plugins. PRTG Network Monitor customers like its user-centric approach, straightforward reporting, and customizability.
Room for Improvement: Some Centreon users requested better documentation and more flexibility to customize reporting. Other areas for improvement include auto-scanning efficiency and integration. PRTG Network Monitor could improve its performance and resource efficiency. Other pain points include usability and cross-platform compatibility.
Service and Support: Centreon is highly regarded for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service that offers support in multiple languages. However, some customers feel that the lower levels of support are inadequate. PRTG Network Monitor received mixed reviews for its customer service. Some users commended the support team’s prompt service, while others reported slow response times and noted the lack of remote session support.
Ease of Deployment: Centreon's initial setup is described as time-consuming and complex. The deployment varies in duration depending on the IT infrastructure. PRTG Network Monitor’s setup isn’t considered to be overly complex. Deployment times may vary depending on the environment's complexity and device count.
Pricing: Centreon's cost depends on the company's size. It is affordable and suitable for small companies, but it can be costly to scale up. PRTG Network Monitor is deemed reasonably priced and cheaper than its competitors.
ROI: Centreon delivers value by helping users identify and resolve critical issues fasters, which could yield large savings. Users said that PRTG Network Monitor has proven to save time and money through automation and proactive support.
Comparison Results: Centreon is a flexible solution offering a range of customization options. The solution has earned high marks for support and affordability. At the same time, users say the setup can be complicated and time-consuming. Others said that auto-scanning and integration have room for improvement. PRTG Network Monitor is regarded as a simple, user-friendly, and cost-effective solution, but users would like to see improvements in performance, documentation, integration, and technical support.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The most important feature is that it permits us to receive alarms if there is an incident within the infrastructure. The feature I love the most is the reporting feature, the MBI (Monitoring Business Intelligence) which permits us to send advanced reports to our customers in PDF format or in Doc format. We also deploy Centreon Map which gives our customers intuitive views of their information system."
"Another feature we use is Business Activity, which provides us with an end-user perspective when a service is down or isn't working correctly. This is helpful when monitoring the KPIs. When we see a device or server that isn't working, we find the root cause."
"I can't point to one valuable feature. All of Centreon is good."
"The product is available in ISO image format, ready for deployment. Centreon also has a comprehensive guide and documentation that are simple and easy to follow."
"We have the business activity monitoring, the map, and the MBI modules and they are all very good."
"It supports active monitoring so we don't have to use traps. From time to time traps are not very useful because we never know if they are actually working or not. The reporting part is also valuable as are the event logs. Using them we can check right away if something has had a hiccup."
"The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."
"We have a single GUI where we can view the status of all our infrastructure."
"PRTG gives us true visibility of the downtime of particular circuit functions. So if a circuit is up but not routing traffic, I will know with this tool. I can write a customized script for a sensor to detect specific things."
"I think net flow is PRTG's most valuable feature because it doesn't cost much for us because the net flow sensor is already included in the PRTG license. We can monitor our traffic in our proxy and router."
"It is easy when it comes to dependencies of devices, so if your router goes down, the three or four switches behind it will automatically be paused so that you don't get multiple alerts."
"The technical support seems to be quick, clever, and has a comprehensive knowledge base online, which is fantastic."
"Accessibility, ease of use (Web GUI, MobileApps). In general, compared with other software"
"There is a simplicity to setting up the extra sensors. It's really easy for us to build infrastructure and start monitoring very quickly."
"The reporting module is easy to configure."
"It is able to satisfy all our requirements in terms of email notifications and specific errors on the devices."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Release management and quality of testing need improvement, because with each major upgrade we have many issues coming in. Then, it takes several minor upgrades to get rid of them."
"The most important issue is the capability to interconnect with other systems. It already exists for some of them. For example, the Stream Connector is something we use to populate data in another system. This kind of facility for connecting should exist for all products that it makes sense to have connected to a monitoring solution."
"Sometimes, when the GUI and some of the search fields are being reset, and I return to the page, then I have to set them again. Therefore, some improvement on the UI and the filtering is needed."
"There are improvements that they need to make to their API. When we're using different systems and we want to disable monitoring for a specific server, we still can't do that through the API. That's something that's lacking."
"Centreon introduced network discovery in the most recent update. However, it doesn't work well. Our previous monitoring tool could discover networking equipment on the network and identify the relationships between the devices."
"The Home view could be improved by adding customization functions that allow users to change the size of the widgets for a more uniform layout."
"I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful."
"During the initial setup we faced some issues. Part of it was because we had to become more knowledgeable in the solution. There are some gray areas and if you don't know the product well you may have issues. Another part of it was some bugs that we came across, although that's part of every software solution in IT nowadays. But the initial setup could be easier."
"In the next release, PRTG Network Monitor should add a backup solution."
"Along with more room for automation, more room for advanced configuration can be integrated into the solution."
"The database needs improvement."
"In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution. We had to install a probe on one of our cloud servers and then let that probe out from there. It would be really cool if it just monitored Azure without having to install something on the device."
"The product could be improved by being cross-platform friendly."
"The operations dashboard is only available in PRTG's enterprise version, but I wish it could be accessed in the standard licensing. It would also be nice if PRTG had templates for dashboard monitoring, software monitoring, etc. It can help me set up a dashboard because now we don't have a template from PRTG, so we need to create one from scratch."
"We've had some issues previously with the performance of the sensors. We tend to deploy quite a bit of WMI, which is quite processor-intensive, and we've found that that impacts the sensors quite a bit."
"The dashboarding definitely needs improvement."
Centreon is ranked 11th in Network Monitoring Software with 27 reviews while PRTG Network Monitor is ranked 5th in Network Monitoring Software with 96 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while PRTG Network Monitor is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of PRTG Network Monitor writes "It's an all-in-one solution, and net flow is included in the licensing ". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, Nagios Core, Icinga, Nagios XI and Datadog, whereas PRTG Network Monitor is most compared with Zabbix, Nagios XI, SolarWinds NPM, ManageEngine OpManager and Fortinet FortiSIEM. See our Centreon vs. PRTG Network Monitor report.
See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors, best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors, and best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.
We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.