Paessler PRTG – The more accessible alternative to NetCrunch

Choosing between Paessler PRTG and NetCrunch 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.

NetCrunch might be your choice:

• If you operate a large, complex, device-heavy network
• If you only require topline metrics for each device, and don't need in-depth, granular monitoring
• If your infrastructure is entirely Windows-based
• If you're comfortable paying for advanced features as and when you need them

NetCrunch has robust monitoring policy automation and alerting logic. But, for tailoring your monitoring environment to your exact requirements, PRTG wins hands down. This is because PRTG enables you to:

● Create custom monitoring sensors using PowerShell, Python, or a REST API, which means you can monitor anything

● Design granular, widget-driven dashboards, graphs, status maps, toplists, and visualizations as well as custom reports

● Set custom alerting thresholds, including via custom scripts

Both tools are highly scalable, but NetCrunch is better at horizontal scaling, while PRTG excels at vertical scaling.

NetCrunch's node-based model is specifically designed to handle environments with complex topologies, with tens of thousands of devices connected locally and remotely. The trade-off is that you sacrifice volume for depth. The more granularity you need, the more unwieldy and expensive it becomes.

PRTG, on the other hand, works better for scaling depth of monitoring. Our sensor-based model makes it easy and cost-effective to continually increase the number of metrics and variables you monitor for each device.

NetCrunch charges by the node or interface. It defines a node as a hardware device, virtual machine, cloud service, or other monitored endpoint, and an interface as a network port on a monitored SNMP device. This kind of pricing model is very cost-effective if you have a hugely complex and device-heavy environment. The catch is that many advanced features aren't included and require add-ons. It can also get eye-wateringly expensive if you want to go beyond basic metrics. That is, you need in-depth, granular visibility into several metrics per device.

PRTG's sensor-based pricing means you pay per metric, rather than per device. This works out cheaper if you want to monitor several metrics on a single device, and we never charge you to access advanced functionality — all features are included on every tier. The first 100 sensors are free, forever, so you can get started at no cost.

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.