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Network monitoring for small shops: Auvik vs. free tools like Zabbix, LibreNMS, and Checkmk

Auvik gives you maps and alerts in an afternoon for a monthly fee. The free tools cost nothing to license, but you pay in setup, upkeep, and your own time. Here's how they compare.

Sooner or later, every small-shop admin wants to know about a problem before the phone rings. That means network monitoring, and the choice usually comes down to two paths: a paid, cloud-managed platform like Auvik, or a free, self-hosted tool.

Both can do the job. The real question is where you’d rather spend: money, or your own time.

Tool What it’s for Business use Official site
Auvik Cloud-managed network discovery, mapping, and monitoring Paid, priced per billable device (quote) auvik.com/pricing
Zabbix Self-hosted monitoring for networks, servers, and services Free and open source (AGPLv3) zabbix.com
LibreNMS Self-hosted, SNMP-based network monitoring with auto-discovery Free and open source (GPLv3) docs.librenms.org
Checkmk Community Self-hosted infrastructure monitoring (the free Checkmk edition) Free and open source (GPLv2) checkmk.com
PRTG (free version) Windows-based monitoring, free up to 100 sensors Free tier, paid beyond it paessler.com

Auvik: the paid option for maximum control with minimum effort

What it does: Auvik is a cloud-based platform. You install a lightweight collector on the network, and it discovers devices, draws a live topology map, monitors performance, alerts on problems, and backs up the configurations of supported network gear. It includes multi-tenant views, which is a big reason MSPs like it for watching many client networks from one screen.

How pricing works: Auvik charges per billable device, and billable devices are generally the core infrastructure: things like firewalls, switches, and routers. According to Auvik’s support documentation, many other discovered devices, such as printers, endpoints, and access points, can still be monitored without raising the bill, so a small office may only have a handful of billable devices. Pricing is quote-based, so contact Auvik for your numbers.

The tradeoffs:

  • It’s a recurring cost, and per-device pricing adds up on large or dense networks. For MSPs, that means building it into the price of the service tiers that include it.
  • It’s cloud-only, so monitoring data leaves your network. For CJIS or banking environments, review what the collector sends out and get it approved before deploying.

The free options

Every tool in this section is free to license. Read the caveats of going free below before you pick one, because they apply to all of them.

Zabbix: the do-everything option

What it does: Zabbix is a mature open-source monitoring platform. It can watch network gear over SNMP, servers through its agent, websites and services, and just about anything else you can write a check for, with dashboards, maps, and escalating alerts.

Licensing: Starting with version 7.0, Zabbix is released under the GNU AGPLv3. It’s free for commercial and non-commercial use, and the source-sharing obligations only come into play if you modify Zabbix and make that modified version available to others. Zabbix asks commercial users to consider buying a support plan to fund development.

Best fit: shops that want one tool for network gear, servers, and services, and are willing to invest the most setup time of any option here.

LibreNMS: the network-gear specialist

What it does: LibreNMS is a community-built, auto-discovering network monitoring system based on SNMP. It supports a wide range of network hardware and operating systems, including Cisco, Juniper, HP, and Linux. Give it your subnets and SNMP credentials, and it can find devices on its own, including neighbors it learns about through CDP and LLDP.

Licensing: Free and open source under the GNU GPLv3.

Best fit: shops whose main worry is switches, routers, firewalls, and circuits. It’s quicker to get useful network visibility from than a general-purpose tool. The project also offers a VM image, so you can try it without building a server from scratch.

Watch for: it’s SNMP-centric. Servers and applications need SNMP set up on them, or extra configuration, to get the same depth you’d get from an agent-based tool.

Checkmk Community: the structured middle ground

What it does: Checkmk is an infrastructure monitoring platform with both agent-based and agentless monitoring, a web interface, and hundreds of official and community plugins. Checkmk Community is its free, fully open-source edition.

Licensing: Free and open source under the GNU GPLv2.

Checkmk renamed its free edition from “Checkmk Raw” to “Checkmk Community” starting with version 2.5. It’s the same free edition, so older guides that say “Raw” still apply.

Best fit: shops that like a more guided setup than Zabbix. The paid editions add features, professional support, and a multi-tenant edition for service providers, so an MSP can start free and grow into it.

Watch for: some features, like advanced automation and dashboards, are reserved for the paid editions.

PRTG’s free version: easy start, easy to outgrow

What it is: Paessler’s PRTG is commercial monitoring software, not open source. After a 30-day trial of the unlimited version, Paessler says you can keep using a free version with 100 sensors. It installs on a Windows server, and its auto-discovery adds devices and sensors for you.

The catch: in PRTG, each individual check is a sensor, and Paessler’s own guidance is about 5 to 10 sensors per device. That makes 100 sensors roughly 10 to 20 devices, which fits a very small office but fills up fast. Past that, it’s a paid subscription.

Best fit: a single small site that wants the quickest point-and-click start and understands the limit going in.

The caveats of going free

“Free” means free to license, not free to run. Plan for these honestly, whichever free tool you pick:

  • You’re the vendor. You build and maintain the server, the database, and the operating system underneath. When something breaks, there’s no support line unless you buy one.
  • Setup takes real time. Discovery, templates, SNMP credentials, and alert rules don’t configure themselves. Expect to invest days, not hours, to get it right.
  • Alert tuning never ends. Out of the box, you’ll get either too many alerts or not enough. Getting it to page you only for real problems takes ongoing adjustment.
  • It becomes a high-value target. A monitoring server stores credentials and has access to everything it watches. It has to be patched, locked down, and backed up like any other critical system.
  • Someone has to watch the watcher. If the monitoring server goes down quietly, you lose visibility without knowing it. Set up a simple outside check that alerts you if it stops responding.
  • Use SNMPv3 where your gear supports it. Older SNMP versions send their community strings in clear text across the network.

Which one fits

  • Auvik if you’re an MSP watching several client networks, you need maps and alerts working this week, or your time costs more than the subscription.
  • LibreNMS if network gear is your main concern and you want useful visibility quickly for free.
  • Zabbix if you want one free tool for everything and can set aside real time to build it out.
  • Checkmk Community if you want a more structured free option with a clear path to paid features later.
  • PRTG’s free version if you’re a single small site that wants the easiest start and will stay under 100 sensors.

Whatever you choose, start with what matters most: internet circuits, firewalls, core switches, and the servers that would cause a phone call if they went down. Expand from there.

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