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."
"We use the remote server functionality on some customer sites, because you can see an independent view and are not dependent on a single connection. If you have branch offices or bigger office outside your headquarters, you can use remote servers because if the connection is broken or disrupted, then remote server will obtain a view of your environment and server availability. This is a good point against using other solutions. Because with other solutions, you don't have this feature. Then, you will be blind if you have this type of a situation."
"I find the product's scalability to be one of the most valuable features since it allows us to add unlimited devices for monitoring and to set up additional polling servers without additional license cost or downtime in our monitoring."
"In addition, the flexibility, customizability, and analytics of Centreon's dashboards are all very good. The dashboards help us see the whole network map, and that is quite valuable for us. In addition, the dashboards have helped to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time... The flexibility has given us the ability to add in our own monitoring metrics and that has been quite interesting and very useful for us."
"Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime."
"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."
"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."
"E-mail alert notifications are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of servers and networks, because we have a lot of them and need to maintain control."
"The most valuable features of PRTG Network Monitor are the threshold notification when certain traffic increases and goes beyond the defined threshold. The up and down status email notifications and other notifications are useful. Additionally, it is user-friendly, and customizable, and there are many features available."
"The real-time monitoring and alerting are its most valuable features."
"The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts."
"Stable solution for monitoring networks and bandwidth, with multiple functions and features such as NetFlow Collector, graphical monitoring, etc."
"It gives me a live view of the traffic on the WAN."
"The technical support seems to be quick, clever, and has a comprehensive knowledge base online, which is fantastic."
"We have asked questions of their technical support and they have a very good response time."
"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is the dashboards. We can check to see the resources and the uptime."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Centreon is very bad with auto-scanning. It's very monolithic software. It doesn't have microservices and it only has basic clustering. You cannot, for example, have six or seven nodes for Centreon's cloud processes."
"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."
"Currently, we have to go through all of the different templates and take a look at how the template is configured, and how specific parameters may change across different templates with different precedents, megatons, etc. It's a lot of work and involves trial and error. I wish they could simplify the process."
"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."
"The reporting has room for improvement."
"Improvements are needed in the area of cloud monitoring, as that's a newer feature."
"There is room for improvement in the area of artificial intelligence. The product gives us a lot of information, but it's only information. We want the product to do more auto-remediation."
"I would like to see an improvement of the communication with big data systems, because Centreon is a monitoring system. In our point of view, Centreon should be a part of a source for a big data system, not a big data system itself. So, it should be easier to add data from the Centreon system to a big data system. For example, it should be able to teach machine learning."
"It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."
"In our organization, we encounter performance issues with our PRTG probe service. I saw documentation from the vendor or Paessler mentioning that there are limitations for WMI sensors. Other than that, we are okay with PRTG."
"PRTG's documentation could be improved."
"The remote probes seem to be a little bit buggy at times. They just stop working or they say they can't communicate. What we tend to do to is install the remote app onto the servers that we use. That seems to clear it up."
"Mostly, this software has sensors for devices to monitor specs and you can build or develop or modify various sensors, according to your company's needs. But you may need to do that with coding or plugins or with the support of Paessler AG, the manufacturer."
"The icons on PRTG's network diagram are hard to find. For example, finding the icons for firewalls and servers is difficult, so we're struggling to create the network topology."
"The clustering aspect needs improvement, as there is a bit of confusion about you do when hit that 5000 probe mark."
"This solution is a good product so far, but I haven't been using it long enough to know how it could be improved."
Centreon is ranked 11th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 27 reviews while PRTG Network Monitor is ranked 7th in Cloud 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 IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors, best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors, and best Network Monitoring Software vendors.
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