System Monitoring Software

System Monitoring Software Overview

Systems Monitoring Software is an umbrella term that includes individual system monitoring tools. These tools are designed to manage a company’s IT system in a centralized fashion and can be operated remotely. System monitoring software is a core offering of many managed server providers (MSP).


These tools perform a variety of more granular functions that fall under network and application monitoring. System monitoring tools also monitor a range of devices including servers, storage devices, desktop computers, printers, and mobile devices. All of these monitoring activities provide notifications for technicians when there is a network failure or system malfunction. They also are able to generate reports which analyze the system’s performance data.


Additionally, system monitoring software is used for:

  • Taking hardware and software inventory

  • Configuration management

  • Patch management

  • Security management (such as virus and spam filters)

  • Backup and restore capabilities

As such, this category of software includes many discrete sub-categories, each of which has its own lists of products. Products in this category may also overlap with other software categories such as IT Infrastructure Monitoring, Configuration Management, and SQL Server Performance Monitoring Tools. Products listed in the system monitoring software category are generally portfolio products that perform a range of functions.

Top Rated System Monitoring Products

TrustRadius Top Rated for 2021

These products won a Top Rated award for having excellent customer satisfaction ratings. The list is based purely on reviews; there is no paid placement, and analyst opinions do not influence the rankings. Read more about the Top Rated criteria.

System Monitoring Software TrustMap

TrustMaps are two-dimensional charts that compare products based on trScore and research frequency by prospective buyers. Products must have 10 or more ratings to appear on this TrustMap.

System Monitoring Products

(1-25 of 65) Sorted by Most Reviews

The list of products below is based purely on reviews (sorted from most to least). There is no paid placement and analyst opinions do not influence their rankings. Here is our Promise to Buyers to ensure information on our site is reliable, useful, and worthy of your trust.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities. SAM allows for self-service for easy setup, 1200+ monitoring templates, and customization options, as well as integrate with other SolarWinds products.

Key Features

  • Server availability and performance monitoring (253)
    89%
    8.9
  • Application monitoring (251)
    86%
    8.6
  • Threshold alerts (254)
    82%
    8.2
ScienceLogic SL1

ScienceLogic SL1

Customer Verified
Top Rated

ScienceLogic is a system and application monitoring and performance management platform. ScienceLogic collects and aggregates data across and IT ecosystems and contextualizes it for actionable insights with the SL1 product offering.

LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor

Customer Verified
Top Rated
TRUE

LogicMonitor provides an agentless SaaS-based monitoring platform. LogicMonitor provides prebuilt integrations and an open API, and is designed to provide monitoring across networks, servers, applications, websites, and containers, including insights and reporting capabilities.

New Relic

New Relic

Customer Verified
Top Rated

New Relic is a SaaS-based web and mobile application performance management provider for the cloud and the datacenter. They provide code-level diagnostics for dedicated infrastructures, the cloud, or hybrid environments and real time monitoring.

ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech)

ConnectWise Automate, formerly LabTech, is a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. It provides powerful automation to discover and manage devices, monitor for problems, and scripts repetitive action.

Key Features

  • Automated alerts and notifications (16)
    82%
    8.2
  • Multiple Server Monitoring (16)
    81%
    8.1
  • Remote monitoring (16)
    79%
    7.9
PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG Network Monitor is the flagship offering from German software company Paessler, for monitoring local and wide area networks (LANs & WANs), servers, websites, apps, and more.

Key Features

  • Alerts (51)
    94%
    9.4
  • Network monitoring (50)
    92%
    9.2
  • Hardware health monitoring (48)
    79%
    7.9
Atera

Atera

Customer Verified
Top Rated
TRUE

Atera offers a comprehensive solution for MSPs and IT Professionals. The platform provides in one integrated solution: full remote monitoring and management (RMM), PSA, remote access, patch management, billing, and reports. Atera’s pricing model also helps managed IT service providers…

Key Features

  • Multiple Server Monitoring (47)
    87%
    8.7
  • Remote monitoring (47)
    82%
    8.2
  • Automated alerts and notifications (48)
    82%
    8.2
Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune + SCCM)

Microsoft Endpoint Manager, combining the capabilities of the former Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, SCCM or ConfigMgr with the mobile device management application Microsoft Intune, is presented as a unified endpoint management option. The former Microsoft Intune…

Nagios Core

Nagios provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components. Multiple APIs and community-build add-ons enable integration and monitoring with in-house and third-party applications for optimized scaling.

Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch is a native AWS monitoring tool for AWS programs. It provides data collection and resource monitoring capabilities.

N-able RMM

SolarWinds Remote Monitoring & Management (RMM) is a cloud-based system monitoring offering for Managed Service Providers. It provides a full monitoring and management suite, including automation and threat detection capabilities, and can integrate with other SolarWinds products.

SolarWinds ipMonitor

SolarWinds ipMonitor is a lightweight performance monitoring tool. It enables monitoring from a single console and out-of-the-box visibility, with some automation available.

Key Features

  • Network monitoring (22)
    92%
    9.2
  • Alerts (22)
    88%
    8.8
  • Customizable reports (22)
    76%
    7.6
SolarWinds Pingdom

SolarWinds Pingdom is a website uptime monitoring and alert tool, with additional reporting and Real User Monitoring capabilities. Pingdom is part of SolarWinds’s DevOps package, enabling full-stack monitoring as a service.

Oracle Enterprise Manager

Oracle’s Enterprise Manager is an on-premises monitoring and management tool. The console is designed primarily to manage other Oracle products, it but can integrate to manage non-Oracle components as well.

Key Features

  • Multiple Server Monitoring (13)
    95%
    9.5
  • Automated alerts and notifications (13)
    89%
    8.9
  • Performance data reports (13)
    88%
    8.8
N-able N-central

MSPs and IT professionals use N-ableâ„¢ N-central® to monitor and manage devices and complex networks remotely. N-central provides visibility and efficiency as the user's needs scale. N-central can help users: 1. Proactively monitor everything on a customer network—not just servers…

ThousandEyes

ThousandEyes offers Digital Experience Monitoring that integrates application performance monitoring within a broader network monitoring platform. It primarily focuses on connectivity monitoring and supports SaaS and hybrid systems monitoring.

Key Features

  • Alerts (15)
    96%
    9.6
  • Network monitoring (15)
    89%
    8.9
  • Baseline threshold calculation (14)
    87%
    8.7
Pulseway

Pulseway is an IT monitoring and management solution that enables users to monitor, manage and control all systems and servers from a smartphone, tablet or browser. For system administrators, Pulseway sends a notification, so they can see an issue and sort it in seconds. Pulseway…

Site24x7 All-in-One Monitoring

Site24x7 from ManageEngine is a full-stack application, website, server, cloud and network monitoring tool. Site24x7 offers code-level diagnostics and customizable error thresholds, end-to-end monitoring with topology visualization tools, and mobile accessibility.

Key Features

  • Remote monitoring (11)
    92%
    9.2
  • Multiple Server Monitoring (10)
    89%
    8.9
  • Automated alerts and notifications (11)
    84%
    8.4
NinjaOne (formerly NinjaRMM)

NinjaOne (formerly NinjaRMM) is a security-oriented remote monitoring and management platform. It allows for manual customization as well as scripting and automation.

Icinga

Icinga is an open source network monitoring platform. It includes automation, modularized integration packages, and prebuilt alerts and reporting capabilities.

Broadcom Unified Infrastructure Management, formerly from CA

Broadcom Unified Infrastructure Manager, formerly from CA Technologies, is a unified tool for systems monitoring and analytics. It offers multiple deployment options for IT teams and MSPs .

Redgate SQL Monitor

Redgate’s SQL Monitor helps teams looking after SQL servers be more proactive. SQL Monitor enables monitoring environments custom to the user’s SQL server to recognize issues before they impact users. It supports monitoring on-premises and cloud-based servers from a single interface.…

TeamViewer Web Monitoring (Monitis)

TeamViewer Web Monitoring (formerly Monitis) is a cloud-based website performance monitoring platform. It utilizes Real User Monitoring to measure a variety of metrics for website performance and health and send alerts when performance thresholds are crossed. The solution also provides…

SolarWinds Web Performance Monitor (WPM)

SolarWinds Web Performance Monitoring (WPM) is a website and SaaS application performance monitoring tool. It utilizes synthetic and real user monitoring for proactive issue detection and performance reporting. WPM is designed to be scalable with business needs.

AlertSite

AlertSite, from SmartBear Software, is a website monitoring and application performance management application offering real time alerting with root-cause analytics and robust reporting.

Learn More About System Monitoring Software

What is System Monitoring Software?

Systems Monitoring Software is an umbrella term that includes individual system monitoring tools. These tools are designed to manage a company’s IT system in a centralized fashion and can be operated remotely. System monitoring software is a core offering of many managed server providers (MSP).


These tools perform a variety of more granular functions that fall under network and application monitoring. System monitoring tools also monitor a range of devices including servers, storage devices, desktop computers, printers, and mobile devices. All of these monitoring activities provide notifications for technicians when there is a network failure or system malfunction. They also are able to generate reports which analyze the system’s performance data.


Additionally, system monitoring software is used for:

  • Taking hardware and software inventory

  • Configuration management

  • Patch management

  • Security management (such as virus and spam filters)

  • Backup and restore capabilities

As such, this category of software includes many discrete sub-categories, each of which has its own lists of products. Products in this category may also overlap with other software categories such as IT Infrastructure Monitoring, Configuration Management, and SQL Server Performance Monitoring Tools. Products listed in the system monitoring software category are generally portfolio products that perform a range of functions.

System Monitoring Software Features & Capabilities

Although individual products may have a different range of capabilities, these are some common system monitoring software features:

Monitoring

  • Remote monitoring

  • Network device monitoring

  • Multiple server monitoring

  • Multi-device monitoring

  • Automated alerts and notifications

Management Tasks

  • Patch Management

  • Service configuration management

  • Software and hardware inventory

  • Policy-based automation

Reporting

  • Performance data reports

  • Customizable reporting

  • Data visualization

  • Risk analysis

Security

  • Data backup and recovery

  • Antivirus and malware management

  • Administrative access control

System Monitoring Software Comparison

When considering different system monitoring tools, consider the following aspects of each product offering.
  1. Specific Features: System monitoring tools include features that cover a wide variety of tasks, including network monitoring and application monitoring. If your organization has specific needs in one of those two areas, closely consider how robust each system monitoring tool is in those areas. For some businesses, it may be ideal to use a fully-featured application monitoring tool or application monitoring tool.

  2. Deployment: System monitoring tools and RMM software can be deployed on-premise, on the cloud, or in a hybrid fashion. RMM software is usually cloud-based, while system monitoring tools can be deployed on-premise. When comparing system monitoring tools, consider what deployment is ideal for your business and what tools can provide that deployment.

  3. Security: System monitoring tools often come with security features like data backup and antivirus management. Not all system monitoring tools offer the same degree of protection. If your IT system contains sensitive data, consider system monitoring options with stronger security features.

Pricing Information

System monitoring, or RMM, software is typically priced on a monthly or annual subscription model, per device being monitored. Plans can start as low as $10 per device per month, and increase to $50 per device per month for enterprise level solutions.


Although most vendors do not disclose prices on their website, quotes are available upon request. Many vendors also offer free trial versions of their products.