PRTG Hosted Monitor vs Circonus Comparison: Everything You Need to Know Before Choosing

PRTG Hosted Monitor is the software-as-a-service edition of Paessler's well-known PRTG network and infrastructure monitoring product. Traditionally, PRTG has been installed on a Windows server within the customer's own environment, which requires organisations to provision hardware, maintain the monitoring server, apply updates and ensure its availability. For smaller IT teams and managed service providers, that operational overhead can be a barrier. PRTG Hosted Monitor addresses this by running the PRTG core server in the cloud, operated and maintained by Paessler, while retaining the flexibility and sensor-based model that have made the on-premise version popular. Organisations can monitor servers, networks, applications and cloud services without running their own monitoring infrastructure, and remote probes installed at customer sites collect data from internal systems and relay it securely to the hosted instance. The approach emphasises customisation, so that monitoring can be shaped to the particular characteristics of each network. PRTG's monitoring is organised around sensors, each of which tracks a specific metric such as bandwidth, CPU load, disk space, ping response, HTTP availability or database performance. Hundreds of pre-configured sensor types cover protocols including SNMP, WMI, NetFlow, sFlow, packet sniffing, REST APIs and SSH, and custom sensors can be created for specialised needs. Users can build dashboards and maps, set thresholds, and configure notifications through email, SMS, push messages and integrations with collaboration and ticketing tools. Automatic network discovery, dependency configuration and reporting features help administrators keep track of their environment and demonstrate service levels. Because the service is hosted, updates and backups are managed by Paessler, and access is available through web browsers and mobile apps. The product is aimed at small and mid-sized businesses, distributed organisations and managed service providers that want comprehensive monitoring without the burden of maintaining a server. Pricing starts from around EUR 129 with a free trial available; there is no permanently free version of the hosted edition.