Frequently asked questions

Support for all common standards (ICMP, HTTP, REST, SNMP, WMI, SSH, OPC UA, etc.)

We offer over 250 sensors out of the box and many customizable options like preconfigured custom sensors and using your own scripts. Phew, there is a lot to monitor, right? Get an overview of all PRTG features here.

With PRTG Hosted Monitor, you can instantly start to monitor all servers, services, or devices that are publicly available via the internet. If you'd like to monitor targets in your LAN that aren't available over the internet, you can install a remote probe in your network. The remote probe collects the monitoring data from your internal network and connects back to your PRTG Hosted Monitor instance in the cloud, where all monitoring data is available in one place. The remote probe monitors all devices from your network using the sensors you have configured. You can connect as many remote probes as you'd like to make multiple LANs available that may be separated by firewalls, or to use packet sniffing on computers in your LAN. For more details on remote probes and an easy installation guide, please refer to the PRTG Manual.

PRTG Hosted Monitor is offered as a service by Paessler and runs in the cloud. You don't need a PRTG core server installation inside your network because we take over the hosting for you.

With PRTG Network Monitor, you integrate the PRTG core server directly into your network. Please see the following table from our PRTG Manual for the most important differences:

Licensing, Payment, Infrastructure

‘Hosted by Paessler’ means that we take over the hosting for you and provide you with an SaaS monitoring solution that is hosted on reliable AWS servers in the region of your choice. You do not need a PRTG server installation inside your network or any dedicated server hardware – PRTG Hosted Monitor is agentless and you can immediately start monitoring from your browser.

We also take care of making regular backups of your configuration and data, and we automatically update your hosted instance to the latest PRTG version, so no action is required from your side. In addition, we make sure that your hosted instance is not only secure but also highly available – we monitor your instance for potentially suspicious actions and automatically restart it if there is an issue.

PRTG stores everything from monitoring configurations, data, and logs to tickets and reports in the PRTG data directory on the probe system. Data is also found in the PRTG program directory. These directories are not accessible for users of Paessler PRTG Hosted Monitor. Stored data is retained according to historic data purging limits. These limits cannot be changed by users of Paessler PRTG Hosted Monitor.

Once these limits are reached, the system purges historic data, completely deleting them from the directories. Deleting unnecessary data helps free up disk space, which encourages improved system performance.

By default, the PRTG Hosted Monitor user interface is only accessible via a secured HTTPS connection. On an operating system level, Amazon's AWS firewalls will ensure the security of your network and, of course, all passwords are secured using individual encryption.

The remote probe continues its monitoring and stores the results. Once the internet connection is re-established, cached data is sent to PRTG Hosted Monitor and written to the database. For details, see the PRTG manual on remote probes. Of course, without an internet connection, you will not be able to reach the user interface of PRTG Hosted Monitor.

PRTG Hosted Monitor will instantly alert you as configured. Available notification methods are push notifications or email, for example. In order to receive these notifications, please make sure your receiving device is connected to the internet.

You can connect remote probes from different locations to PRTG Hosted Monitor: the limit is your total number of sensors.

There's no need for redundant monitoring with PRTG Hosted Monitor. We have built our service so that it frequently saves backups of the configuration file. Should an instance crash, we simply restart your instance for you and automatically roll out the latest backup. The latest backup will not be older than one hour.

PRTG Hosted Monitor uses SendGrid for sending email notifications. These settings are preconfigured and cannot be changed to some other SMTP server. Emails sent by PRTG Hosted Monitor can originate from the following IPs:

• 167.89.112.157
• 167.89.112.127
• 167.89.111.43

By default, the sender email for the notifications is set to an address that is based on the instance’s DNS name. For example, if your instance’s DNS name is ourcompany.my-prtg.com, the sender email will be set to [email protected]. This can be changed under Setup | System Administration | Notification Delivery. However, please note that when setting an address with your own company’s domain name, emails might be blocked on your end due to suspected spoofing.

We monitor the email reputation of each instance and take measures to prevent emails being sent from instances with a poor reputation, which usually indicates that the instance is being abused for sending SPAM.

Just reach out via e-mail to [email protected]. Please note that such a migration is not always the perfect fit and that some things need to be checked beforehand. Our Customer Service Team will be happy to help you!

On the PRTG Hosted Monitor status page, you can get updates on how our services and features are doing. If there are any interruptions to our service, we will post a note to keep you informed.

Yes, you can purchase PRTG Hosted Monitor as an annual subscription. You can also start with the monthly subscription and switch to an annual subscription as soon as you are ready for it.

The monthly subscriptions can only be paid via credit card. For our yearly subscriptions, you have the choice between credit card payment and payment via bank transfer. For the latter, you will need to request "Purchase on Account" as payment option. We will help you get the purchase done from that point on.

You have the choice. If flexibility is key for you, then we recommend our monthly subscriptions.

This is why PRTG Hosted Monitor is pre-billed monthly based on the pricing plan that you choose. If you subscribe to a plan, your credit card is charged up front with the monthly costs and you can use PRTG Hosted Monitor for one month. You can switch plans at any time. The balance on your account will be credited towards the new price. For example, if you select a new plan that costs half as much as the one you originally chose, you can use PRTG Hosted Monitor for a second month without being billed. If you switch plans during a month, you will be billed in part.

If you would like to plan ahead, our annual subscriptions are the way to go for you. You pay upfront for a whole year and besides credit card as payment method, you can also request Purchase on Account.

In comparison to a perpetual license, a PRTG Hosted Monitor subscription will always give you access to the latest updates, which include new features, numerous improvements, and bug fixes. Every PRTG update we roll out to PRTG Hosted Monitor is thoroughly checked and is usually automatically rolled out 2 weeks after the roll out for perpetual on-premise licenses.

The main email address of your account can be changed. This can be done on request via an email to [email protected]. Beforehand, you need to create a user with your new email address.

The move involves approximately a 15-minute downtime for your instance.

So, if you are about to start a new subscription, we recommend that you register with a generic email address from your team. For example admin@ or it@.

As PRTG Hosted Monitor is hosted in the cloud, you can simply access it via your web browser on any device and you don't need any additional hardware or software.

To gather monitoring data from inside your network, you need to install a remote probe in your environment. This requires a simple PC or server that runs Windows 7 or later in your network.

For detailed hardware requirements for remote probes, please refer to our system requirements page.

The actual monitoring of your network will be performed by the remote probe that you need to install in your network. The remote probe initiates the connection from your local network to the cloud, so you might not need to configure anything (depending on existing network configurations). In general, a remote probe must be allowed to initiate an outgoing connection on port 23560 to your PRTG Hosted Monitor instance. If you need the external IP address for the PRTG core server and/or hosted probe, ping the DNS name of your instance.

For details, please see the PRTG manual on remote probes.

We offer up to 10,000 sensors on PRTG Hosted Monitor instances.

If you need more than one instance, you can create an additional one at any time.

During the quick start process of your new instance, PRTG Hosted Monitor selects the location nearest to you from our available regions list:

• USA (East and West)
• Montreal
• Dublin
• London
• Paris
• Frankfurt 
• Stockholm
• Singapore
• Sydney

If you need to change that later, contact us at [email protected]. As this includes a switch of your instance and configuration, your instance will not be reachable for the time being.

All PRTG Hosted Monitor instances are provided with the support of AWS services and solutions.