Introduction
As businesses move more operations and infrastructure to the cloud, effective network monitoring has become critical to ensure uptime and performance. This blog evaluates the top 15 network monitoring software based on key features, capabilities, pricing and reviews. We analyzed factors like traffic, backlinks, and keyword trends to objectively rank the top solutions that can scale with your business.
Methods of Evaluation
To evaluate and rank the top network monitoring solutions, we considered the following factors: key features and capabilities based on vendor websites and third-party reviews; ease of use and deployment; pricing and scalability; customer support reviews; popularity based on web traffic, backlinks and keyword search trends on Google, Bing and Yahoo. This ensures an unbiased assessment of the top solutions leveraging both qualitative and quantitative parameters.
1. IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus is a leading enterprise-scale network monitoring platform developed by IBM. It offers robust monitoring, visualization and AIOps capabilities to manage even the largest and most complex hybrid IT environments. With Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus, customers can discover, map and monitor all their IT resources across physical, virtual and cloud environments from a single pane of glass.
Pros: Some key advantages of IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus include:
– Enterprise-scale network monitoring platform capable of supporting the largest environments
– Robust monitoring, visualization and AIOps capabilities to manage large hybrid environments
– Discovery and mapping of all resources across physical, virtual and cloud environments from a single console
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that as an enterprise-grade solution, Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus requires significant hardware resources and an experienced team to implement and manage effectively.
Pricing: Pricing for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus is based on the number of managed nodes/devices. It is an expensive solution targeting large enterprise customers with complex monitoring needs.
Some key stats about IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus include:
– Supports monitoring of over 250,000+ managed objects
– Handles over 500,000 events per second
– Has over 30,000+ customers globally
2. Akamai Kona Site Defender
Akamai Kona Site Defender is a web application firewall (WAF) and monitoring solution provided by Akamai, a leading cloud delivery platform. The WAF protects websites and applications from web-based attacks and vulnerabilities while providing real-time traffic insights.
Pros: Key advantages of Akamai Kona Site Defender include:
– Robust web application firewall with over 4,000 rules to detect vulnerabilities and malicious traffic
– Real-time insights into web traffic, attacks, and application performance
– Highly customizable rulesets and policies to control web traffic and block threats
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that it requires custom configuration and rule-building which takes time and expertise to implement properly.
Pricing: Pricing for Akamai Kona Site Defender starts at $2,500 per month and scales based on web traffic and additional advanced features required. Contact Akamai sales for a custom quote.
Some key stats about Akamai Kona Site Defender include:
– Protects over 2 trillion web transactions daily
– Monitors web traffic in over 135 countries
– Blocks an average of 80 billion attacks per month
3. Micro Focus Network Node Manager i
Micro Focus Network Node Manager i is a network monitoring software developed by Micro Focus, formerly known as Micro Focus. It provides enterprise-grade network monitoring for medium to large organizations. NNMi helps IT operations teams gain visibility into their network infrastructure, applications and services.
Pros: Some key advantages of Micro Focus NNMi include:
– Centralized monitoring of network devices, configurations, traffic and applications
– Automatic topology mapping of physical and virtual environments
– Configuration management and device backups
– Integrations with various ITSM and automation tools for streamlined workflows
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the learning curve may be steep for complex environments as it has many configuration options and capabilities. Professional services or training may be required for large deployments.
Pricing: Pricing for Micro Focus NNMi is based on the number of devices and interfaces being monitored. It has multiple editions from essentials to premium. Contact Micro Focus sales team for an exact quote based on your requirements.
Some key stats about Micro Focus NNMi include:
– Monitors over 150,000 nodes in large enterprise networks
– Supported protocols include SNMP, WMI, IPMI, SSH
– Can monitor over 10,000 interfaces and 50,000 components
– Integrates with over 50 other IT tools including ServiceNow, Ansible, and more
4. Splunk
Splunk is an IT operations monitoring and security software platform developed by Splunk Inc. Founded in 2003, Splunk is based in San Francisco and provides solutions that investigate, monitor, and analyze machine data from websites, applications, servers, networks, and other IT infrastructures and security systems. Machine data includes system logs, metrics, network packet captures and other machine-generated data.
Pros: Some of the key advantages of Splunk include:
– Powerful search capabilities to analyze petabytes of machine data in seconds
– Real-time monitoring and alerts for IT infrastructures and security events
– Rich visualizations and dashboards for operational and security data
– Broad coverage of use cases including IT operations, security, business analytics
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the cost – Splunk pricing is based on the volume of data indexed per day so very large deployments can become expensive. The learning curve to configure searches, monitors and dashboards can also be steep for new users.
Pricing: Splunk pricing starts with a free license for up to 500 MB of data per day. Paid subscriptions are based on the maximum terabytes of data indexed per day, with pricing starting at around $0.15 per GB for 500TB or less per day.
Some key stats and facts about Splunk include:
– Used by more than 95,000 customers worldwide across all industries
– Collects and indexes over 2.5 trillion events per day from customers’ IT infrastructures
– Supports over 50 open APIs and 300 add-ons for third-party data, workflows and alerts
– Employs over 7,000 people globally with offices worldwide
5. Grafana
Grafana is an open-source software for analytics and monitoring. It allows you to query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Grafana can source data from many databases, data warehouses and weave them together to offer clear visibility into complex metrics and business transactions.
Pros: Some key advantages of Grafana include:
– Open source metric analytics and visualization – It provides an open platform for monitoring and analytics without vendor lock-in
– Build dashboards from multiple data sources – Grafana allows you to build dashboards using metrics from many different databases and services
– Wide data source support including Prometheus – Has out of the box support for many popular data sources making it easy to get started
Cons: One potential disadvantage of Grafana is that as an open source project, it may lack some enterprise features compared to paid commercial solutions. However, Grafana Labs also offers enterprise subscriptions for customers requiring advanced features and support.
Pricing: Grafana is open source and free to use. Commercial support options and additional enterprise features are available on a subscription basis starting from $3 per user/month.
Some key stats about Grafana include:
– Used by over 10,000 companies worldwide including Uber, PayPal and Dropbox
– Has over 500,000 active installations
– Supports over 50 data sources out of the box including Prometheus, Elasticsearch and Graphite
– Open source with commercial support and enterprise features also available
6. UptimeRobot
UptimeRobot is a free website monitoring service that helps monitor the uptime and availability of websites and other online services. Founded in 2008, UptimeRobot monitors websites by checking their URLs at regular intervals to check for uptime. It then notifies users via email, SMS, push notifications or other integrations when URLs go down or response times become unusually slow.
Pros: Some key advantages of UptimeRobot include:
– Simple and easy to use interface
– Free plan suitable for basic monitoring needs
– Highly customizable checks and alerts
– Advanced paid plans for more features and monitors
– Integrations with various services for notifications
– Robust API for automation and integrations
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the free plan only allows monitoring of 50 URLs/items which may not suffice for some larger businesses or websites.
Pricing: UptimeRobot offers the following pricing plans:
– Free Plan: Allows monitoring of up to 50 URLs/items. Suitable for basic usage.
– Startup Plan: $19/month for up to 500 monitors.
– Professional Plan: $49/month for up to 5,000 monitors.
– Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for large organizations with advanced needs.
Some key stats about UptimeRobot include:
– Over 500,000 active users worldwide
– Can monitor over 50,000 URLs for free
– Offers both free and paid plans
– 14-day trial for paid plans
– Integrates with services like Slack, PagerDuty, OpsGenie
7. Datadog
Datadog is a cloud-based monitoring platform that helps development and operations teams get insights into infrastructure performance, application health and more. Datadog supports both traditional on-premise and cloud infrastructure environments.
Pros: Key advantages of using Datadog include: Simple to monitor all infrastructure using lightweight agent-based instrumentation. Powerful analytics and dashboarding capabilities to visualize metrics and logs. Seamless APM, logging and metrics monitoring in a unified platform.
Cons: The main disadvantage is that the free version only includes basic features and the paid tiers can be more expensive for very large environments.
Pricing: Datadog offers different pricing tiers based on usage: The starter plan is free and includes basic features. The Pro plan starts at $99/month for up to 1000 nodes. The Enterprise plan is custom quoted for 5000+ nodes.
Some key stats about Datadog include: Monitoring over 15,000 companies including Netflix, AWS and Cisco. Supports 200+ technologies out of the box. Processes over 1 trillion metrics per day. Over 1 billion APM traces analyzed daily.
8. Prometheus
Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built at SoundCloud. It is commonly used alongside Grafana for visualization. It follows a ‘pull’ model for collecting metrics from instrumented jobs, services or host systems and exposes API endpoints that other applications can consume to retrieve monitoring metrics.
Pros: Some key advantages of Prometheus include: it is open source meaning it has no licensing costs; it works well for container and microservice environments due to its pull-based collection model; it has a flexible query language called PromQL that allows users to extract and transform time series data in flexible ways;
Cons: One potential disadvantage of Prometheus is that it is focused only on time series data collection and does not provide other application monitoring capabilities like APM out of the box.
Pricing: Prometheus is open source software released under the Apache 2 License, so there are no licensing costs to use it. However, certain commercial Prometheus services and support options are available from CoPilot and other 3rd parties for a fee.
Some key stats about Prometheus include: it is open source and released under the Apache 2 License; it is written in Go and designed for multi-dimensional data exploration and rapid prototyping of alerting rules and dashboards; it is well-suited for environments that contain microservices or containerized applications.
9. Zabbix
Zabbix is an open-source network monitoring solution that allows to monitor networks of any size. Established in 1998, it is now being used by many large enterprises globally to monitor their critical network infrastructures and applications. Some key facts about Zabbix are that it is open-source, cost effective and has a large active community behind its development.
Pros: The key advantages of using Zabbix include:
– Open source and cost effective alternative to paid monitoring tools
– Robust and feature-rich with support for monitoring various network, server and cloud infrastructures
– Large active community and developer base ensuring fast bug fixing and new feature additions
– Highly scalable and can handle monitoring of large and complex networks with millions of metrics
Cons: One of the disadvantages could be that as an open source tool, paid support options are limited compared to proprietary monitoring solutions. Advanced features may sometimes get added to commercial alternatives faster than the open source project.
Pricing: Since Zabbix is open source, the software can be downloaded and used at no cost. However, for commercial support and services, paid subscriptions and support plans are available starting from $5-10 per server per month based on required support level. Training and consulting services are also offered on hourly/daily rates by Zabbix and various system integrators.
Some key stats about Zabbix are: It can monitor over 20,000 metrics per second and handle monitoring of millions of metrics. It supports monitoring of network devices, servers, virtual machines, cloud environments and more. The active community behind Zabbix has contributed to making it available for 25+ operating systems and platforms. It is used by companies across industries like financial services, healthcare, manufacturing etc.
10. ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager is a powerful network monitoring software developed by ManageEngine. ManageEngine is an IT management software company that offers solutions for IT operations, security and service management. Founded in 2004, ManageEngine is headquartered in California and has offices across the globe. OpManager provides comprehensive network monitoring capabilities to keep an eye on the performance and health of network devices, servers, applications and services.
Pros: Some key advantages of ManageEngine OpManager include:
– User-friendly interface that allows intuitive monitoring of networks.
– Comprehensive out-of-the-box monitoring capabilities for servers, networks and applications.
– Affordable pricing for small and medium sized businesses.
– Real-time email/SMS alerts for critical issues and threshold breaches.
– Role-based access control and configurable reports.
Cons: One potential disadvantage could be that the advanced and enterprise editions have slightly higher pricing which may not be suitable for very small businesses with tight budgets.
Pricing: ManageEngine OpManager pricing starts from free version for small networks. There are additional paid Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions starting from $2,500/year for 25 nodes.
Some key stats about ManageEngine OpManager include:
– Monitors over 50,000 metrics across network components, servers and applications.
– Supports monitoring of over 500 different network devices and OS including Cisco, Juniper, HP, Dell, Windows and Linux servers.
– Comes with 1200+ built-in monitors and diagnostic tools for in-depth network monitoring.
11. Nagios
Nagios is one of the oldest and most widely used open source network monitoring solutions. Originally released in 1997, Nagios allows you to monitor servers, switches, applications and services and notify you when things go wrong. Nagios offers a powerful yet flexible monitoring platform with a plugin architecture that allows you to monitor almost anything on your network.
Pros: Some key advantages of Nagios include:
– Widely used open source network monitoring solution with a large community
– Flexible plugin architecture allows monitoring of any system, service or application
– Powerful alerting and notifications via email, SMS or other messaging systems
– Robust reporting and visualization of historical performance data
Cons: The main disadvantage of Nagios is that it has a significant learning curve to setup and configure properly. For large or complex environments, the Nagios configuration can become difficult to manage over time.
Pricing: Nagios is open source and can be downloaded and used for free. Support contracts are available from the Nagios company Nagios Enterprises for enterprise features and support.
Some key stats about Nagios include:
– Used by over 110,000 companies worldwide
– Supports over 15,000 monitoring plugins
– Supports monitoring tens of thousands of services
– Actively maintained with frequent releases
Nagios Open Source | Nagios Open SourceDownload Nagios Core.nagios.org
12. Paessler PRTG
Paessler PRTG is network monitoring software developed by Paessler AG. PRTG allows organizations to monitor their IT infrastructures, servers, websites and applications from a single interface. It provides comprehensive monitoring of networks, systems, technologies and services across on-premise and cloud environments.
Pros: Some key advantages of Paessler PRTG include:
– Easy to use intuitive interface
– Robust monitoring for large and complex networks
– Affordable pricing for SMBs
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the free version only allows monitoring of 100 sensors which may not be sufficient for large networks.
Pricing: Paessler PRTG offers various pricing plans including a free version for up to 100 sensors. Paid plans start from $29 per month for 250 sensors and go up to an Enterprise plan that scales based on the number of monitored devices.
Some key stats about Paessler PRTG include:
– Over 200,000 installations worldwide
– Supports monitoring of over 50 different technologies including Windows, Linux, network devices, applications and websites
– Can monitor over 100,000 devices from a single installation
13. Quest Kace
Quest Kace is a leading RMM and systems management solution developed by Quest Software. As an RMM focused tool, Quest Kace offers strong remote monitoring and management capabilities for both physical and virtual environments. The intuitive agent deployment process makes it easy to quickly deploy agents to managed devices for remote monitoring and control.
Pros: Key advantages of Quest Kace include:
– Intuitive agent-based remote monitoring of devices and systems
– Centralized remote access and remote control of endpoints
– Strong patch management and software distribution module
– Flexible device grouping and customizable monitoring checks and alerts
Cons: One potential disadvantage is the pricing may be higher than some other open source or freemium RMM tools for very small organizations with fewer than 50 endpoints.
Pricing: Pricing for Quest Kace is based on the number of managed devices. Starting pricing is $45 per managed device for essential monitoring and management or $65 per device for the complete suite of features and modules.
Some key stats about Quest Kace include:
– Over 20,000 customers globally across various industries
– Supports over 15 major operating systems including Windows, MacOS, Linux
– Manage over 5 million endpoints worldwide
14. WhatsUp Gold
WhatsUp Gold is a network monitoring solution from IPswitch. As one of the original and most full-featured network monitoring softwares available, WhatsUp Gold has been helping IT teams manage their network infrastructure for over 20 years. It provides centralized monitoring, alerting and reporting for both physical and virtual devices including servers, network devices, applications and services.
Pros: Some key advantages of WhatsUp Gold include:
– Discovery, mapping, monitoring of physical and virtual networked devices from a single platform
– Troubleshooting tools like flow monitoring, packet capture and deep historical metrics analysis
– Configurable alerting and reporting dashboards for a centralized view of network health and issues
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that the full features of WhatsUp Gold require a paid subscription whereas some competing products offer limited functionality for free.
Pricing: WhatsUp Gold pricing starts at $2,995 for a 1-year subscription for 50 devices. It has various subscription tiers based on number of devices monitored like 100 devices for $4,995, 250 devices for $7,495 and so on. Larger deployments can request custom enterprise pricing.
Some key stats about WhatsUp Gold include:
– Over 50,000 customers globally across industries like healthcare, education, manufacturing and more
– Ability to monitor over 35,000 devices from a single console
– Comes pre-configured with over 900 monitors for common network services and applications
15. centreon
Centreon is an open source IT infrastructure monitoring solution developed by Centreon. Founded in France in 2009, Centreon has grown to serve over 27,000 customers worldwide. The software allows businesses to monitor their entire IT infrastructure including servers, network devices, applications and cloud services from a single web-based console.
Pros: Some key advantages of Centreon include:
– Powerful reporting and dashboards to visualize monitoring data
– Over 250 pre-configured monitoring templates for common services and devices
– Open source foundation with commercially supported packages available
– Wide device and technology coverage including physical, virtual, cloud and containers
Cons: One potential disadvantage is that as open source software, it requires in-house resources or support contracts to manage upgrades and customization work.
Pricing: Centreon is available in both open source and commercial licenses. The open source version can be downloaded and installed for free. Commercial support packages start at $2,500 per year for a 25-node license and scale upwards based on your infrastructure size and support needs.
Some key stats about Centreon include:
– Over 27,000 customers globally across all industries
– Supports monitoring of over 250 technologies out of the box
– Has over 1 million lines of code and contributes back to open source
– Available on-premise or as a cloud-hosted SaaS solution
Conclusion
Based on our in-depth analysis of products, reviews and marketing metrics, IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Micro Focus Network Node Manager i, Splunk and Grafana emerged as the top 5 network monitoring software for businesses of all sizes in 2023. They offer robust functionality for enterprise-grade monitoring along with user-friendly interfaces at affordable price points. However, most of the solutions assessed would fulfill monitoring needs for different use cases and budgets. The right choice depends on your specific business and technical requirements.