12 BEST System Monitoring Software Tools (2024) (2024)

A System Monitoring tool is a software that tracks the resources and performance of any system. The main reason for using a system monitoring tool is to detect the system issues, identify the root cause, and get them resolved quickly. It helps you to visualize your network by using real-time heatmaps with live status information.

Following is a handpicked list of Top System Monitoring tools, with their popular features and website links. The list contains both open source (free) and commercial (paid) software.

Best System Monitoring Software & Tools

1) ManageEngine OpManager

ManageEngine OpManager is a unified network systems monitoring and management solution for efficient and seamless IT Operations Management. This tool is suitable for enterprises, distributed networks, SMBs, etc.

Features:

• Dashboards, heat maps, business views, network device grouping, for better network overview.
• Unified network performance monitoring, server and VM monitoring, switch monitoring, router monitoring, WLC monitoring, hardware monitoring.
• With the ManageEngine Applications Manager plug-in for OpManager, you can monitor critical performance metrics of your business applications both on premise & cloud.
• Seamlessly integrates with ServiceNow, Zendesk, Jira, and Freshservice
• Supports compliance standard such as Cisco IOS, SOX, HIPAA, and PCI
• Provides ICMP, TCP and SNMP Protocol
• Supports multiple languages like English, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, Chinese, Turkish, and Portuguese
• Offers Multi level thresholds, Customize dashboards, Workflow automation, Router monitoring, Switch monitoring, Voip monitoring, Root cause analysis, and High availibility
• Provides instant alert via Email, and SMS
• Offers Customizable Reporting, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Chat, Phone, and Email
• Supported platforms: Windows, Android, and iOS
• Price: Plans start at $39 a month. 10% Discount on Yearly Payment.
• Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial

Visit OpManager >>

30 Days Free Trial

2) Site24x7

With Site24x7’s all-in-one monitoring platform, eliminate server outages and performance issues by constantly tracking key performance indicators of application servers, mail servers, web servers, virtual servers, database servers, and more.

Features:

• Avoid incidents with AI and ML-based metric forecasts and auto-remediate issues.
• Monitor diverse client endpoints, networks, and servers from a single platform.
• Receive real-time alerts via email, SMS, voice calls, and push notifications, as well as through other third-party ITSM and collaboration tools like Slack, Zoho Cliq, Microsoft Teams, and more.
• Collect logs and troubleshoot issues with ease for servers, applications, and network devices.
• View performance metrics and trends using customized dashboards and reports to obtain deeper visibility into your server health.
• Automate repetitive tasks and solve critical issues quickly with IT automation, before they impact your business.
• Seamlessly integrates with Nagios, MySQL, Redis, Slack, Jira, and Zoom
• Supports compliance standard such as SOC
• Provides HTTP, FTP, SIP, SMTP, NNTP and XMPP Protocol
• Offers Device, Global and Email templates
• Supports multiple languages like French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, and English
• Offers Server monitor with more than 60 performance metrics, Service and process monitoring, Monitor your server’s resources, Virtualization and Network Monitoring, Monitoring for MSPs, Windows Monitoring and Linux Monitoring
• Provides instant alert via Email and SMS
• Offers Customizable Reporting, Multiple user Interfaces, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Phone, Email, Chat and Contact Form
• Supported platforms: Windows, Android and iOS
• Price: Plans start at $9 a month.
• Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial

Visit Site24x7 >>

30 Days Free Trial

3) Server & Application Monitor

Server & Application Monitor is a unified monitoring tool for your servers, applications, and stacks in multi-cloud environments. This monitoring solution gives you everything you need in one place for better and faster troubleshooting, with anomaly detection, alerting, and correlation across all components, clusters, and containers.

Features:

• Metric correlation between application performance and database traces and log analytics
• Super simple GUI-based metric and log aggregation setup
• Support for anomaly detection and alerts
• Seamlessly integrates with Podman, Spark, Slack, Webhook, and Azure
• Supports compliance standard such as GDPR
• Provides Syslog Protocol
• Offers Index templates
• Supports multiple languages like English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, German, and French
• Offers Elasticsearch Maintenance, Auto scaled, Optimize logs, Tracing, Synthetic monitoring, Tracing, Anomaly Detection, Inventory Monitoring, and High Availability
• Provides instant alert via Email and Push
• Offers Multiple user Interfaces, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Chat, Phone and Email
• Supported platforms: Windows, Android and iOS
• Price: Request a Quote from Sales
• Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial

Visit Solarwinds >>

30 Days Free Trial

4) Better Stack

Better Stack offers a radically better observability platform. It combines monitoring, log management, observability dashboards, incident management, and status pages into a single integrated product.

Features:

• Ping, HTTPS, SSL & TLD expiration, DNS, Cron jobs checks
• Log management and observability dashboards
• Unlimited sms and phone alerts on all paid plans
• Incident management and on-call scheduling
• Custom domain status pages built in
• Slack, Teams, Heroku, AWS, and 100+ other integrations
• Great documentation and community guides
• It provides customer support via Email, Phone, Contact Form and Chat
• Price: Free plan available
• Free Trial: Yes

Visit Better Stack >>

60 Days Free Trial

5) PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG Network Monitor is a system monitoring tool that helps you check all the devices, systems, traffic, and applications in your I.T. infrastructure. It is a suitable business solution for organizations of all sizes.

Features:

• PRTG can scan network segments by pinging specific I.P. ranges.
• It allows you to create web pages with up-to-date monitoring data in your desired design.
• You can visualize your networks using real-time maps with live status and historical data information.
• This server monitoring software helps you to visualize your network by using real-time heatmaps with live status information.
• Allows failover tolerant monitoring, including sending of notifications.
• PRTG alerts you when it finds problems or unusual metrics.
• Alerts you when it sees warnings or unusual metrics in your network.
• Seamlessly integrates with GitLab, MIDAS, Unimus, Ekara, and Freshservice
• Supports compliance standard such as GDPR
• Provides NetFlow, sFlow, jFlow and IPFIX Protocol
• Offers Sensor and Device templates
• Supports multiple languages like English, German, French, and Spanish
• Offers SLA reporting, Failover cluster, Distributed monitoring, Intelligent network discovery, and Automatic network discovery
• Provides instant alert via Email and Push
• Offers Customizable Reporting, Multiple user Interfaces, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Phone, Contact form and Email
• Supported platforms: Windows, Linux and Mac
• Price: Plans start at $1,799 a month.
• Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial

Visit PRTG >>

30 Days Free Trial

6) Network Bandwidth Analyzer

Network Bandwidth Analyzer is a tool that enables you to monitor the performance of the network. It helps you to track response time, availability, switches, and more.

Features:

• You can find which network application uses the most bandwidth.
• Provides visual analysis for a device with a delivery path
• This application can monitor the fault of your network
• You can see changes along the path and fin service provider issue
• The tool allows you to drag and drop performance metrics on a timeline
• Monitor the logical component of the SDN (Software Defined Networking) environment.
• Seamlessly integrates with Jira, Zendesk and Jira
• Supports compliance standard such as GDPR and PCI
• Provides SNMP and WMI Protocol
• Offers Network monitor templates
• Supports multiple languages like English
• Offers Automatically discover network devices, Simple SNMP monitoring deployment and Monitor device fault, availibility and performance
• Provides instant alert via Email
• Offers Customizable Reporting, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Chat, Phone and Email
• Supported platforms: Android, Windows and Linux
• Price: Plans start at $0.10 a month. 18% Discount on Yearly Payment.
• Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial

Visit Network Band.

30 Days Free Trial

7) Nagios

Nagios network is a network monitoring tool that allows your company to identify and resolve I.T. infrastructure problems. It helps you to determine the issues before they affect critical business processes.

Features:

• This free system monitoring software offers a comprehensive dashboard.
• Allows you to keep track of specific subsets of network flow information.
• Allows you to select multiple devices you want to ping.
• This server monitoring software provides results in ribbon, bar, column, step, or area charts.
• Offers network diagnostics with Engineer’s toolset.
• Provides complete insights on network traffic, bandwidth, and overall network health.
• It sends alerts when any abnormal user’s activity takes place.
• It has advanced users feature that allows I.T. teams to work together efficiently.
• Seamlessly integrates with AKCP, fedora, vmware, SUSE, CentOS, debian, and servicenow
• Supports compliance standard such as HIPAA and SOX
• Provides HTTP and FTP Protocol
• Offers Contact, Host and Service templates
• Supports multiple languages like Chinese, Croatian, Czech, French, Hungarian, and Italian
• Offers Comprehensive Monitoring, Visibility & Awareness, Problem Remediation, Proactive planning, Reporting, Extendable Architecture, Stable, Reliable, and Multi Tenant Capabilities
• Provides instant alert via Email
• Offers Customizable Reporting, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Phone, Contact form and Email
• Supported platforms: Windows and Ubuntu
• Price: Plans start at $1.99 a month.
• Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial

Link: https://www.nagios.org/

8) LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor is an automated SaaS network testing tool. It is one of the best network monitoring tools that offer customizable dashboards, alerts, and reports. This tool can identify incoming issues by providing predictive alerts and trend analysis.

Features:

• It is one of the best network testing tools that help you discover all network devices and interfaces.
• Monitors CPU, memory, temperature, and other hardware.
• Monitoring via SNMP, jFlow, NetFlow, sFlow, WMI, NBAR2, etc.
• Support for SD-WAN and cloud-based networks.
• Wireless access-point monitoring.
• Seamlessly integrates with LM Exchange, Azure, Kubernetes, Zoom, vmware, and nimble
• Supports compliance standard such as GDPR and PCI
• Provides HTTP Protocol
• Offers Alert and Dashboard templates
• Supports multiple languages like English
• Offers Data retention, Forecasting, Netflow, Anomaly detection, Log Analysis & Intelligence, Configuration Management, and Dynamic Services monitoring
• Provides instant alert via Email and SMS
• Offers Customizable Reporting, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Phone, Contact form and Email
• Supported platforms: Windows and Mac
• Price: Request a Quote from Sales
• Free Trial: 14 Days Free Trial

Link: https://www.logicmonitor.com/

9) Spiceworks Network Monitor

Network Monitor from Spiceworks is one of the best free network testing tools, which offers real-time status and alerts for your critical devices. It is simple to install and has an easy to set up network monitoring system.

Features:

• You can adjust alert thresholds for in-app notifications or emails.
• Provides real-time up/down status and alerts about critical web applications and services.
• It starts monitoring in minutes.
• Enables you to get alerts whenever you need
• Offers distributed HTTP check
• It offers full integration with the Spiceworks IT management cloud tools suite.
• Provides support online as well as on the phone or chat.
• Seamlessly integrates with Teamviewer
• Supports compliance standard such as GDPR
• Provides TCP and UDP Protocol
• Supports multiple languages like English
• Offers Distributed HTTP check, Dynamic dashboard, Multiple data model compatibility, Global data distribution, scalability and availability
• Provides instant alert via Email
• Offers Customizable Reporting, Multiple user Interfaces, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Email and Contact Form
• Supported platforms: Windows, Linux and Mac
• Price: Plans start at $4 a month.
• Free Trial: 14 Days Free Trial

Link: https://www.spiceworks.com/free-network-monitoring-management-software/

10) Zabbix

Zabbix is a network monitoring tool that offers I.T. infrastructure, services, applications, and resources. This tool offers a network server, cloud, application, and service monitoring.

Features:

• It helps you to collect metrics from any device, system, and application using multi-metric collection methods.
• Allows visualization with widget-based dashboards, maps, graphs, etc.
• Effortless deployment by saving your time and using out-of-the-box templates.
• Highly automated metric collection.
• Advanced problem detection.
• It offers flexible escalation scenarios.
• Provides agents for most platforms.
• Seamlessly integrates with APC, ARISTA, Aranet, JIRA, Jenkins, and GitLab
• Supports compliance standard such as GDPR
• Provides TCP and UDP Protocol
• Offers Nested templates
• Supports multiple languages like Japanese, Russian and Latvian
• Offers High Availability, Security & authentication, Unlimited scalability, Optimized for high performance, Remediation, Task automation, Event correlation, and Customized escalation scenarios
• Provides instant alert via Email and SMS
• Offers Customizable Reporting, Multiple user Interfaces, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Phone, Contact form and Email
• Supported platforms: Windows, Linux and Mac
• Price: Plans start at $0.25 a month.
• Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial

Link: https://www.zabbix.com/network_monitoring

11) LibreNMS

LibreNMS is an open-source, powerful, and feature-rich auto-discovering PHP-based network monitoring system that uses the SNMP protocol. It allows you to load a range of operating systems.

Features:

• It is a highly flexible alerting system that notifies via email, IRC, Slack, and more.
• It has a mobile-friendly web U.I. with customizable dashboards.
• Updates automatically with bug fixes, new features, and more.
• Full API support to manage, graph, and retrieve data from your system.
• Offers horizontal scaling, which grows with your network.
• Seamlessly integrates with NfSen, collectd, SmokePIng, RANCID, Graylog, Oxidized, PeeringDB, and Smokeping
• Provides STP, OSPF and BGP Protocol
• Offers Base and Default templates
• Supports multiple languages like English
• Offers Automatic discovery, Customisable alerting, API access, Billing system, Automatic Updates, and Distributed Polling
• Provides instant alert via Email, irc and Slack
• Offers Multiple user Interfaces, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Email and Phone
• Supported platforms: Windows, Android, LInux and iOS
• Price: Plans start at $7.50 a month.
• Free Trial: 14 Days Free Trial

Link: https://www.librenms.org/

12) Pandorafms

Pandora FMS is an enterprise-ready employee monitoring software. It provides greater flexibility to address both immediate and unanticipated operational issues that include infrastructure and I.T. processes.

Features:

• Offers network and WMI monitoring
• SLA and KPI metrics on reporting
• Offers WYSIWYG Visual console screens and Dashboards
• Offers multi-tenant and several layers of access control
• GIS tracking and viewing
• Remote network monitoring
• Allows you to analyze networks with real time tracking
• Seamlessly integrates with Zimba, MarkLogic, WebLogic, SAP, and Azure
• Supports compliance standard such as ISO and HIPAA
• Provides TCP and UDP Protocol
• Offers Alert templates
• Supports multiple languages like Japanese and English
• Offers High scalability, Distributed environments, Security monitoring, Real time graphics, Advanced availibility, High performance, and Configuration Management
• Provides instant alert via Email
• Offers Customizable Reporting, Multiple user Interfaces, and Maps & Dashboards
• It provides customer support via Phone and Chat
• Supported platforms: Windows and Linux
• Price: Plans start at $3 a month. 15% Discount on Yearly Payment.
• Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial

Link: https://pandorafms.com/network-monitoring/

What is System Monitoring Software?

A System Monitoring Software is a tool that tracks the resources and performance of any system. The main reason for using system monitoring software is to detect the system issues, identify the root cause, and get them resolved quickly. It helps you to visualize your network by using real-time heatmaps with live status information.

What are the key features of a System Monitoring Software?

Here are some important features of System Monitoring Software:

• Monitoring multiple servers: Your system monitoring software should be able to handle servers from different vendors running various operating systems. It should also be able to monitor from various servers at multiple sites and in cloud environments.
• Monitoring range of server metrics: It should offer various metrics like CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, upload/download rates, Monitoring CPU temperature, etc.
• Monitoring applications: It should provide common monitoring applications using a deep knowledge that helps you to monitor key server processes, including web servers, database servers, and application stacks.
• Automatic alerting: The most important and vital feature of any system monitoring tool is to provide automatic alerts when servers or network devices are down or overloaded.
• Triggering actions in response to alerts: It should help to handle specific classes of network problems automatically.
• Collection of historical data: Should be able to collect historical data about the server and device health and behavior.
• Reports: It should allow generating useful predefined reports that help with tasks like optimizing resource usage and forecasting capacity.
• Customizable reporting. It should help you to create customized reports.
• Easy configurability: A System monitoring software should be easy to configure and install on complex network infrastructures.
• Scalability: It should be able to grow with your business requirements, from a small or medium business (SMB) to a large enterprise.

What are the types of system monitoring software?

There are Seven types of system monitoring software:

• Performance monitors: Processors of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) status messages.
• Performance testers: These type of software issue commands, such as ping and traceroute, to gather statistics.
• Wireless sniffers: Are the packet sniffers or packet analyzers for wireless networks.
• Firewalls: Read packets traveling through the network boundary.
• Intrusion detection systems: Help you to identify standard and anomalous traffic patterns.
• SIEM tools: This type of system monitoring tools examine log files for security breaches.

What are the best practices for System monitoring?

When using network infrastructure monitoring tools, you need to keep in mind the following best practices. By implementing these, you can boost the success of your network infrastructure monitoring strategy.

• Prioritize: Before establishing notification or threshold settings, you need to determine which components are most important.
• Create alert resolution processes: You should always try to achieve the fastest and most efficient resolution for each type of alert you set up. This should be tied in with prioritization and should consider escalation.
• Practice redundancy: If you have several data centers, make sure you are monitoring each of them from multiple locations.
• Combine monitoring tools: You will get on-premises and cloud-based tools. Use both if it is necessary.
• Keep tabs on the monitor: Never assume that just because you are not getting alert messages, nothing is wrong in your system. There could be an issue with the monitoring tool itself or in the system settings.
• Review metrics on a regular basis: The thresholds you establish can be too high or too low. However, if you are receiving plenty of alerts or you aren’t notified when a problem in your system occurs, so you should change your threshold settings.
• Conduct tests: You need to find out whether your alert system is effective when a critical issue arises. You need to do it only once when you implement a monitoring and alert system. It needs some fine-tuning. For that, you need to conduct regular tests so the robustness and effectiveness of the system remain efficient before a specific issue occurs.

What are the Network Monitoring Techniques?

Network monitoring uses a variety of techniques to test the availability and functionality of the network. Some more common techniques used to collect data for monitoring software are:

• Ping: Ping monitoring tools send signals and record data, like the signal was received or not and how long it took the host to receive that signal.
• SNMP: SNMP monitors individual devices in a network through monitoring software.
• Syslog: Syslog is an automated messaging system that sends messages when a specific event affects a network device.
• Scripts: In networks, scripts are used to substitute for any lack of functionality in network monitoring software.

FAQs

Best System Monitoring Software