Here are a few thoughts about review portals, and two reasons why you should submit a review of PRTG to Gartner Peer Insights.
Review portals on the Internet are not everyone's cup of tea. On the one hand, they are seen as superficial and often very thin in terms of content, but on the other hand they can be quite helpful. At the very least, it is usually not possible to ignore the conspicuously good or bad reviews of a rated product.
The belief in review portals
I believe in review portals. However, this is not blind, unconditional faith, as is my belief in the Easter bunny or the flying spaghetti monster, for example. Rather, it is a somewhat distanced faith, which I regularly question and thoroughly examine. What I mean by this is that when I use a rating portal, I don't just check the number of stars and then make a decision. Rather, I read as many reviews as possible of the product I'm interested in — or of the products I'm comparing — with regard to individual aspects that are particularly important to me. I deliberately ignore reviews with one star out of five. An example: a one star review a hotel because the WiFi at the hotel pool sometimes has short dropouts — I want to swim in the pool and not surf.
Important aspects of a product
Let's say I want to find out more about monitoring tools. I pay special attention to certain aspects that are particularly important for a professional monitoring solution and that can be reasonably presented within the limited scope of such a review. Support by the manufacturer would be one such aspect: If I see several reviews that rate the manufacturer support as substandard, perhaps even explicitly mentioning the weaknesses, I can assume that support is rather a critical point for this vendor.
This becomes more difficult when it comes to aspects such as user-friendliness or product features. What experience does the reviewer have with monitoring tools and what requirements do they have in place for the functional scope of a monitoring solution? I have to find a lot of clear statements here and I would read them very carefully to be able to draw as many conclusions as possible about the author's technical background.
The trustworthiness of review portals
In the end, a review portal should (and usually will) never be the sole basis for a purchase decision. But such a portal can be a valuable help for a first-selection. However, there are differences between the portals. In terms of seriousness, (request for reviews, control by the operator, etc.), Gartner has established one of the better evaluation portals with Peer Insights in the last five years, which, if used correctly, can offer valuable help with the first steps of a product evaluation.
However, rating portals only work if there is also an adequate number of ratings. For us as manufacturer of PRTG it is essential to have as many ratings as possible (and of course, positive ratings are better 😉). Specifically, the Gartner Peer Insights for Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics currently focuses on our Customers' Choice Status. Every review counts.
Gartner gives away VISA gift cards worth $25 to the first 50 accepted reviews entered using this link: https://gtnr.it/2uVfCyi (or click on the graphic below).
So: click the link or graphic, register with Gartner, write a review, collect $25 (if your reveiw is selected and is in the first 50 reviews) and make sure that you keep our faces here at Paessler smiling...
