We compared PRTG Network Monitor and SolarWinds NPM across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: PRTG Network Monitor customers like its user-centric approach, straightforward reporting, and customizability. SolarWinds NPM is commended for its adaptability and extensive network surveillance functionalities.
Room for Improvement: PRTG Network Monitor could improve its performance and resource efficiency. Other pain points include usability and cross-platform compatibility. SolarWinds NPM needs improvement in edge computing capabilities and data reporting. Users also said the performance could be better and that they would like to see expanded IPAM functionality.
Service and Support: 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. While some customers described SolarWinds support as helpful and responsive, others reported delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: 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. Some users said SolarWinds NPM was straightforward to set up, while others perceived it as complex.
Pricing: PRTG Network Monitor is deemed reasonably priced and cheaper than its competitors. The cost of SolarWinds NPM varies depending on the customer’s size and requirements. Some users find it costly.
ROI: Users said that PRTG Network Monitor has proven to save time and money through automation and proactive support. Some users reported immediate benefits from using SolarWinds NPM in terms of security and business outcomes, while others have not.
Comparison Results: 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. SolarWinds NPM is a customizable solution that’s easy to deploy and features comprehensive network monitoring capabilities. However, some users consider it costly and voiced concerns about technical support and user experience.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"Nice product with an easy interface to use and a large variety of sensors."
"It gives me a live view of the traffic on the WAN."
"The most valuable features of PRTG Network Monitor are bandwidth utilization, user-friendliness, all past report simple retrievals, and timeout features. Additionally, if the solution does go down it is simple to bring it back."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is its ease of use."
"We like the alerting system, the SNMP monitoring and the customization of the bandwidth."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization."
"I can do everything remotely, including running PowerShell scripts or performing standard updates."
"It covers everything from end to end, from the standpoint of endpoint machines and the routers and switches. The switch port also comes there."
"The product is lightweight in terms of memory use, requiring only 10 megabytes or less."
"The SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
"I like SolarWinds support because it's 24/7. You describe your issues, your situation and maybe two or three hours later you can discuss a solution with a technical engineer."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"A room for improvement in PRTG Network Monitor is its sensors. Its application technology sensor, such as the IAS, .NET, etc., needs some improvement because it doesn't work as expected. For example, the IAS sensor doesn't give immediate information, and the information you get from it isn't of good value. The web GUI of PRTG Network Monitor also needs improvement because errors keep popping up if it's not been updated to the latest version. What I'd like to see in the next release of the tool is end-to-end topology mapping for the business model, and that should be required. There has to be a technical map. Technical mapping and topological creation are missing in PRTG Network Monitor, so I would like to see those in the future."
"The thing that we do struggle with a bit is in the historic data. If I want look over 30 days, because it averages out onto one graph, you can't zoom in and drill down information."
"PRTG Network Monitor could improve the price."
"We run it in a cluster, so we have two that run together. The cluster behind it is sketchy at times."
"There is room for improvement in this solution for the performance and third-party monitoring protocols. They need to be updated to the latest ones."
"PRTG Network Monitor could improve by having a feature to allow uploading of preset standard network switch configurations and the ability to monitor the SLA configuration, such as uptime for the switches or internet connectivity. This would be very useful."
"Once you start going above 5000 sensors, things do start to get a bit shaky. There are some best practice out there that you will need to adopt and be aware of."
"Their penetration within the market could be much better. If their pricing was lower, even though it's reasonable now, it might help them achieve this."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support."
"Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable."
"Real-time analytics is the major weakness of the SolarWinds NPM platform today. They've done a fantastic job enabling the collection of data. Users are now demanding the ability to generate their own graphs, views, and so on; all of this must be done by an admin today."
"We decided that we were no longer going to trust that their products have not been capitalized."
"SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
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PRTG Network Monitor is ranked 5th in Network Monitoring Software with 96 reviews while SolarWinds NPM is ranked 4th in Network Monitoring Software with 147 reviews. PRTG Network Monitor is rated 8.2, while SolarWinds NPM is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of PRTG Network Monitor writes "It's an all-in-one solution, and net flow is included in the licensing ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds NPM writes "High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface". PRTG Network Monitor is most compared with Zabbix, Centreon, Nagios XI, ManageEngine OpManager and Fortinet FortiSIEM, whereas SolarWinds NPM is most compared with Zabbix, ManageEngine OpManager, ThousandEyes, Entuity and LogicMonitor. See our PRTG Network Monitor vs. SolarWinds NPM report.
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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.
PTRG would give you almost the same functionality as solarwinds at less cost. the key is to understand the protocols that run monitoring which would include SNMP, and netflows which actually show you human readable data in terms of monitoring your network bandwidth. in my opinion if you wnat cost savings go with PTRG if you can afford it then go with solarwinds.
My Pittsburgh experience shows that Zabbix is worth checking out:
www.zabbix.com
add Grafana for custom charting and dashboards:
play.grafana-zabbix.org
I would strongly recommend that you perform a Proof of Concept with at least two candidates. Look at how they will be able to scale both in number of input sources as well as handling for instance different data centers for storage... Also how is per node licensing or costs handled.
We're really happy with PRTG. It's a graphically-rich environment that really has helped us to diagnose difficult issues and solve them. And hey, Germans make good stuff...
I used both and found SolarWinds to be the more intuitive, more full-featured, preferred product.
I strongly recommend to use SevOne. The SevOne toolset is the fastest and most scalable on the market through our distributed architecture approach. Where similar tools can take hours to report once used at scale SevOne can monitor and report in seconds on all digital infrastructure including network, compute, storage, cloud, virtual, SDN etc.
I used both in large network environments; Solarwinds outlook interface is quite simple than PRTG but if you want to monitor real time traffic using SNMP, PRTG is the best choice but Solarwind counts on an average basis from interface. Even PRTG better to monitor hardware ram, harddisk, processors utilization , SQL traffic status , AD information is good than Solarwind. Two separate PRTG server at remote place support clustering in WAN environments with same costing but Solarwind has limitations. I used to generate customs SLA with respect to defined time frame ; PRTG is good choice for best report generation than Solarwind. PRTG license cost is flexible against interfaces but Solarwind counts per device , users, interface basis.
Now weak points of PRTG : 1) Log kills huge spaces as it counts per second basis. It doesn't have auto removal option based on duration. I made a scripts to remove logs earlier than 365 days. 2) Solarwind quickly detects interface up status than PRTG. Another fantastic NMS software is "whatsUpGold' which is better than Solarwind and cost is device based (not interface ) and cheaper than Solarwind. With respect to log/event management /SIEM /SOC Solarwind is good for SME type environments.
-moshiur
Would prefer Solarwinds for the following reasons -
Tight integration with major vendors - Cisco, Arista, Juniper and more
New NetPath feature enables faster troubleshooting
Scales well to support larger setups
Modular platform to include Servers, Applications, NetFlow, IPAM, DB's, Storage devices & more