The Best Network Monitoring Tools

The absolute majority of modern businesses rely on networks, either on-site or remote. To ensure top-notch safety and avoid any breaches or issues, it would be best to monitor your network regularly. Network monitoring tools are crucial to ensure the optimal performance of your business operations, getting insights, generating alerts, and troubleshooting issues. The realm of network monitoring software is quite impressive, and choosing the right tool for your business may be pretty overwhelming. Many IT professionals need such software for their line of work, but the average joe can also use it if they want complete control and oversight of their home network. We know scanning through all the available options on the market can get confusing and time-consuming, but don’t worry; we did all the work for you. We’ve created a guide to the best network monitoring tools on the market. Many of these programs offer a free trial period, but you’ll eventually have to pay for a premium subscription if you want to access their full features. Think of a network monitoring program as a worthwhile investment since it will bring you countless benefits in the long run. Read below to find one that fits your company’s needs.

SolarWinds is an all-in-one network monitoring and management solution with a vast functionality range. It provides in-depth insights into your network and device performance, easily spots and fixes issues, and automates the workflow. The link analysis tool lets you view the connections between your applications and devices on a map, even those located outside your local network.

The software automatically discovers routers and display connections. You can group routers by category and create intelligent network alerts. A network performance monitor continuously tracks all your applications’ faults, availability, and performance. These metrics are then used to optimize your network’s bandwidth, latency, and uptime.

SolarWinds is undoubtedly among the best solutions on the market when it comes to device monitoring tools. It provides you access to specific node information such as average response time, packet loss, and other critical metrics. Apart from real-time performance insights, historical data is stored. The tool also helps you correlate network performance with hardware statuses. All devices within your IP range are discovered automatically. SolarWinds isn’t the cheapest option in our selection because their rates start at $1,638. To get the exact pricing, you have to request a quote. However, a 30-day fully functional free trial is available.

Pros

• Visually representative link analysis tool
• In-depth insights of device performance
• 30-day free trial

Cons

• More expensive than competitors
• Need to reach out to them to get an official quote

Datadog Net is a tool trusted by companies like The Washington Post, Samsung, and 21^st Century Fox. The software simplifies the network monitoring process with the help of a user-friendly interface. A customizable dashboard allows you to filter traffic by source and destination and group data as you wish.

The software detects and troubleshoots any logs and reduces MTTD and MTTR. You can optimize network costs and performance by tracking inefficient and expensive traffic patterns. Bandwidth data is presented in a map format to make the information more understandable. Over 450 integrations, including Amazon ECS, Helm, and AWS, are supported. Datadog Net tool provides you complete visibility into applications, tracking app performance and alerting error rates or latency percentiles. Logs from all your devices and platforms are automatically collected and analyzed in context.

With Datadog, you can seamlessly navigate between logs, metrics, and request traces. To ensure the best end-user experience, the tool visualizes load times, frontend errors, and resources for every session. You can get alerts via email, Slack, PagerDuty, or other channels to instantly fix issues. For the most tech-savvy users, Datadog Net provides full API access. Datadog Net offers a wide range of pricing plans tailored to different users and their needs.

You can purchase tools for network, security, user, or synthetic monitoring separately. Other available functions include incident, infrastructure, log management, and APM profiler. This pricing model is handy for users only looking for specific functionality rather than the whole package. A 14-day free trial is available.

Pros

• Trusted by famous companies
• Full API access
• Customizable dashboards and user-friendly interface
• Wide functionality range

Cons

• May be overwhelming for beginners
• Need to pay for a subscription after the free trial

The Paessler PRTG Network Monitor was developed to track systems, traffic, and applications within your IT infrastructure. Paessler provides you flexibility in choosing which monitoring solutions suit your needs. In other words, you can get specific monitors to solely track the metrics you need rather than purchasing an all-in-one software. For instance, the network monitoring tool determines how much bandwidth particular devices and applications consume and identifies the bottleneck sources.

A server monitoring tool measures the performance of your web, database, mail, and file servers and issues instant alerts if something is off. The cloud management service helps you access your devices from anywhere. You can also track the performance of your operating systems, be it Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X. Historical data is stored and can be accessed at any moment. To reduce the workload, you can choose a hosted monitoring solution.

The Paessler team will take care of your day-to-day operations, such as backups and updates. Your data is presented in a convenient dashboard that’s fully customizable. For monitoring on the go, a mobile app is available. The pricing depends solely on the license you need. The licensing options are based on the number of required sensors rather than devices. A sensor is a tool monitoring a specific metric, and one device may require as many as ten sensors. If you only have to monitor 50 devices max, you can opt for their PRTG 500 plan worth $1,799. They offer more premium plans to accommodate even more devices, but you should be ready to pay a hefty price. A 30-day free trial is available regardless of the required sensor number.

Pros

• Flexibility of pricing
• Mobile app
• Detailed insights
• 30-day Free Trial

Cons

• Quite expensive license for a high sensor number

ManageEngine OpManager is a network monitoring and management solution ideal for online businesses or personal use. It’s developed to monitor such devices as routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, servers, wireless LAN controllers, printers, and many more-simply put, any network device with an IP address.

OpManager features over 2,000 built-in network performance monitors to track health and critical metrics, including speed, latency, errors, and packet loss. The software pings all connected devices at specific time intervals and automatically notifies you when something goes wrong. You can set multi-level thresholds for every critical performance monitor.

As for server monitoring, OpManager helps you detect and troubleshoot CPU and server bottlenecks before the end-user notices any issues. The software lets you monitor the memory and disk utilization of Linux and Windows servers and the performance of Hosts and VMs of Xen, VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix virtualization platforms.

Despite its advanced functionality, OpManager features a user-friendly interface with customizable dashboards. Over 200 performance widgets are available to tailor the dashboard to your personal needs. No training is required to use the software. As long as you know the terminology and basics of networking, you can easily navigate it without the help of a professional. For maximum convenience and monitoring on the go, a mobile app is also available.

Manage Engine OpManager comes in three packages suitable for different types of users: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. The Standard package includes network device and physical server monitoring, alarms and notifications, custom dashboards, and business views. With the Professional package, you can additionally monitor hardware and virtual servers and automate workflow. Finally, the Enterprise package allows you to monitor distributed networks and manage failovers. You’ll have to reach out to them for a price quote, and you can take advantage of a free trial.

Pros

• User-friendly interface
• Customizable dashboards
• Wide functionality range
• Affordable

Cons

• Purchasing only specific tools isn’t possible; you get all-in-one package
• Can get pretty pricey

Progress WhatsUp Gold network monitoring tool helps you track all the necessary metrics and fix issues before they impact the end-user. The software enables you to ensure the bandwidth is optimized to withstand critical apps and services. The hardware monitoring tool checks the physical condition of your network equipment, such as server room temperature, fan status, or battery capacity. Keeping track of printer ink levels has never been easier.

A powerful REST API was developed to automate your workload. It extracts status information for use by another system, puts devices into maintenance mode before making changes, and more to save you time. All your data is presented in a unified, actionable dashboard. By providing you with in-depth insights, you get to understand the interconnections of your network and predict issues even before they arise. WhatsUp Gold tool automatically discovers all devices within your network or IP range, thus simplifying the setup process. Turn messy wiring closets into visually representative network maps, and enable device dependency for easier troubleshooting.

You can prioritize alerts and automatically send them to the right people. To find out the pricing, you have to request a quote. The Premium package includes wireless and cloud storage monitoring. The Plus package supports network traffic analysis, application, virtualization monitoring, configuration management, and more features. Customer support is optional. You can choose the required license type and number of monitored devices to fit your business needs. A free trial is also available.

Pros

• Great interface
• Automates your workload
• Sends alerts straight to the right people
• Wide functionality range

Cons

• Need to request a pricing quote
• Pricier than most competitors

Obkio offers a highly convenient network monitoring solution for any type of business. You can track and configure everything from the same mobile app, which is available for Android and iPhone. The software uses artificial intelligence powered by the cloud to simplify complicated processes.

Four monitoring agents are available – software (Windows and Linux), hardware, public, and virtual appliance. The software measures your network performance from the end-user perspective to ensure no issues are left unnoticed. The agents require minimal system resources, such as 1GB of RAM and 8GB of disk space. A single command is needed to install the agents and connect all of your network devices.

Obkio helps you monitor firewalls, routers, switches, WiFi APs, and other SNMP-enabled devices. The feature captures and analyzes CPU and interface metrics to provide you with insights into device performance. A 30-second polling frequency provides 10x more detailed metrics than 5-minute industry-standard polling. In case something goes offline, you get instant notifications and troubleshooting assistance.

A network performance tracker measures vital metrics and collects historical data every 500ms or twice a second. Thus, the Obkio tool monitors your network performance continuously instead of most competitor tools that do checks in certain intervals. A decentralized monitoring solution distributes agents at strategic locations to measure performance metrics between any two points of your network.

A 14-day free trial lets you test all the features before purchasing. For the smallest businesses, a free plan is available, and it supports monitoring of one customer device, standard 5-minute polling, two agents, and 7-day data history. Your next choices are the Basic, Premium, and Enterprise packages, which aren’t too pricey but still a sizeable investment. They only differ in the number of allowed users, monitoring sessions, and historical records.

Pros

• Convenient mobile app
• Uses little system resources
• 30-second polling frequency
• 14-day free trial

Cons

• Paid plans don’t offer additional functionality