Paessler PRTG – The full-stack alternative to Kentik

Choosing between Paessler PRTG and Kentik depends on several factors, such as your specific network monitoring needs, budget, and technical resources available in your organization.

PRTG is ideal:

• If you prefer an all-in-one, easy-to-use solution with minimal setup time.
• If you need sophisticated, customizable visualizations like dashboards and network maps.
• If you want to monitor an unlimited number of remote locations and networks at no extra cost.
• If you prefer high scalability and a software tailored to large, complex environments.
• If you want to get real-time alerting, custom notifications, and automated reporting.
• If you want to have the choice between an on-premises or cloud-based solution.
• If you want a straightforward licensing model at a comparatively low price.

Kentik might be your choice:

• If your primary use cases are network observability and traffic monitoring
• If you don't need full stack infrastructure monitoring capabilities
• If you don't need full stack infrastructure monitoring capabilities
• If you're comfortable paying for greater data volumes and advanced features as and when you need them

Easy: PRTG. Why? Because it's designed specifically for full-spectrum, end-to-end infrastructure monitoring. Which means it can track key metrics for all your local and distributed hardware and software — routers, firewalls, latency, and other device and application performance metrics, including SaaS vendors’ compliance with SLAs — virtualized environments, and environmental metrics like the temperature and humidity at your data centers. 

Kentik, on the other hand, specializes in network observability and traffic analysis. It excels at providing real-time visibility into traffic flows and cloud services interactions. The trade-off is that, if you want to monitor other aspects of your IT infrastructure, you'll need to deploy other monitoring software and switch between different environments.

Both PRTG and Kentik are simple and straightforward to set up, with friendly, intuitive interfaces and setup automations that do the heavy lifting. But PRTG has the edge over Kentik when it comes to flexibility and customization. 

While Kentik integrates seamlessly with major cloud platforms and network infrastructure, it can't be deployed on-prem. PRTG’s monitoring solution, by contrast, can be deployed in the cloud, on-prem, or as part of a hybrid setup. PRTG is also more customizable, with out-of-the-box integrations for major IT, cloud, and SIEM tools, and drag and drop workflows that make the process quick and painless.

PRTG uses sensor-based pricing, which means you pay for the metrics you want to monitor, not depending on data volumes or what functionality you need. All features are included in every plan. Yes, even the free forever one. 

Kentik's pricing, on the other hand, depends on data volume, which key features you need access to, user count, and number of devices. That means costs can be harder to predict, especially as you scale.

In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive. On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.