Paessler PRTG – The agile alternative to Observium

Choosing between Paessler PRTG and Observium 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.

Observium might be your choice:

• If you’re comfortable monitoring your network through a simple web-based interface
• If you don’t need cloud-based or hybrid deployment options
• If you don’t need to conduct synthetic web transaction monitoring
• If you’re happy to pay for advanced features as and when you need them

PRTG is the better network monitoring platform for large, complex, or growing enterprise networks, and it’s not even close.

“Of course you’d say that,” we hear you say. But it’s not that we’re biased. It’s that PRTG genuinely is more powerful, scalable, and flexible, and here’s why:

• You can deploy PRTG’s network monitoring software on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid environment. By contrast, Observium doesn’t have native cloud support 
• It has limitless customization capabilities — bespoke dashboards, graphs, and other visualizations, preconfigured and custom sensors for an unlimited network devices, tailored performance thresholds and alerts… you name it
• You get the same functionality on every plan, whether it’s the free version or the paid version. Which means you don’t have to pay more just to access a specific feature. Oh, and the learning curve is minimal.

Both PRTG and Observium have free versions and paid versions, but they’re structured differently.

With Observium, the features you have access to depend on which plan you’re on. The most advanced functionality is only available on the most expensive plan, while the free version has limited features, fewer updates, and only community-based support.

By contrast, PRTG uses sensor-based pricing. This means you can access PRTG’s full suite of features and the same level of service, including expert customer support, regardless of which plan you’re on. Intead, you pay for the metrics you want to monitor. The free plan includes 100 sensors, and you pay for access to additional sensors. You can also reduce the number of sensors you use at any time, no questions asked.

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.