--- title: "IT Monitoring Survey 2026: Your Feedback Is Shaping PRTG" description: Over 1,000 IT teams told us where monitoring needs to go next. See how your feedback shapes PRTG UVexplorer, AI features, and the PRTG roadmap. --- [Paessler Blog - All about IT, Monitoring, and PRTG](https://blog.paessler.com) # [IT Monitoring Survey 2026: Your Feedback Is Shaping PRTG](https://blog.paessler.com/it-monitoring-survey-2026-feedback-prtg) Written by [Michael Becker](https://blog.paessler.com/author/michael-becker) | Oct 16, 2026 Earlier this year, more than 1,000 of you across nearly 90 countries sat down and told us, in your own words, what monitoring looks like from where you work. We shared the big picture in our first article on [what 1,088 IT teams told us about monitoring in 2026](https://blog.paessler.com/what-1088-it-teams-told-us-about-monitoring-in-2026). This one is more personal: here's what you told us hurts, and what we're doing about it. Reading through your responses, three pressures came up again and again. Networks keep getting more complex, uptime expectations leave zero room for error, and your team stays the same size while both of those grow. Sound familiar? Then the next few sections should feel very close to home. ## Networks Are Only Getting More Complex [Hybrid infrastructure](https://www.paessler.com/organizations/it-monitoring-mid-market), [multiple sites](https://www.paessler.com/prtg/features/distributed-monitoring), [IT and OT converging](https://www.paessler.com/industry/industrial-it-monitoring), cloud spreading into every corner. Your environments keep growing. And yet, for a lot of you, keeping an accurate picture of what's actually connected is still a manual, recurring chore. The numbers tell that story clearly. 55% of you don't use a dedicated tool for network configuration backup, change tracking, or compliance auditing today. Most handle it by hand. At the same time, 65% said automated topology mapping would help, and 64% said the same about asset inventory visibility. And honestly, your open comments said it better than any statistic could: > "Layer 2/3 Network mapping would be great." > > "I would most certainly love to see config backup/changes for networks in PRTG, this would be a game changer for us." > > "Being able to backup my switches config with PRTG would be a game changer." We heard you. PRTG is built to scale with this complexity, whether that's one site or fifty, and we're extending that with [Paessler PRTG UVexplorer](https://www.paessler.com/prtg/prtg-uvexplorer). Now live: [automated network topology mapping](https://www.paessler.com/monitoring/network/network-mapping-tool) plus configuration backup and comparison. Your maps stay current through scheduled discoveries, and nothing gets lost between changes. Want to see what's actually connected to your network and what changed since last week? Start with a free PRTG trial and add Paessler PRTG UVexplorer for automated Layer 2/3 maps and config backup. ## Downtime Isn't an Option Many of you work in [healthcare](https://www.paessler.com/industry/healthcare-it-monitoring), [manufacturing](https://www.paessler.com/industry/industrial-it-monitoring), [energy](https://www.paessler.com/industry/energy-monitoring), and [other essential services](https://www.paessler.com/industry). There, uptime means patients get treated, production lines keep running, and public services stay available. We don't take it lightly that you trust PRTG with that responsibility. A third of you (33%) chose PRTG because it catches problems before they become outages. Nearly a quarter (23%) picked it specifically for its proven reliability in mission-critical environments. One respondent put it in a way that made our day: > "We set up the main server in Azure and 20 of our clients have a remote probe installed in their environment, and since we have PRTG we have a lot less surprising downtimes." Fewer surprises is what we're after, too. Proactive detection is already core to why you pick PRTG, and the extra visibility from [PRTG UVexplorer](https://www.paessler.com/prtg/prtg-uvexplorer) builds directly on it. Now live: dependency visualization, so you can see the full blast radius of a failure in one click, plus network change tracking and alerting, so unexpected changes are flagged before they cause an incident. ## Doing More, With the Same Size Team If one finding defined this survey, it's this: 71% of you have just 2 to 5 people responsible for monitoring. 12% are doing it alone. We see you, and we know what that means on a rough Monday morning. It's no wonder lean teams are looking to AI to help close the gap. 87% said AI in PRTG would help them, and your priorities were clear: - Anomaly detection: 58% - Root cause analysis: 50% - Alert noise reduction: 40% > "Better root cause analysis and smarter alert correlation to reduce alert noise and speed up troubleshooting." > > "A situation where instead of drowning in a hundred symptom alerts, AI is integrated to support in finding the actual root cause so you only get one notification that matters." Some of you are already dreaming a step further, and we love that: > "Today, PRTG is excellent at telling me what is happening. The next step is for it to decide what should be done, and execute it." Here's where we are: [root cause analysis is coming soon to PRTG](https://helpdesk.paessler.com/en/support/solutions/articles/76000089257), and your feedback is shaping how we build more AI assistance into PRTG from here. The goal is simple: give stretched teams the support you’re asking for. Running monitoring with a team of two to five? PRTG covers your network, servers, and applications from one installation, so you don't need a second tool to get the full picture. Start your free trial today. ## Different Teams, Different Priorities One thing we appreciated about your responses: they reminded us there's no such thing as a typical IT team. Depending on your organization, the pressures land differently. ### Smaller and midsize organizations Teams in smaller and midsize organizations are more likely to still track network changes manually. Just over half of you have no dedicated config management tool today, and the network engineers and systems engineers who own that task feel it most: 69% want built-in network config management. That's exactly the gap the built-in config backup in PRTG UVexplorer closes for lean teams, without a separate tool budget. These same teams also run the leanest of any segment. 76% have just 2 to 5 people handling monitoring. With that headcount, consolidation is simply a resourcing necessity. It shows in why you chose PRTG in the first place: 60% picked it because it's one tool that covers everything, and most of you aren't looking to add anything else. As your environment grows, you need monitoring that grows with it, without needing a bigger team or another tool in the stack. That's a promise we'll keep building on. ### Multi-site organizations Multi-site organizations run larger, more distributed environments, and that scale shows up directly in your AI appetite. Demand was higher here for every capability we tested, from anomaly detection to alert noise reduction, and all of them scored above every other segment. The more spread out the environment, the more you want AI handling the coordination. That's the direction the [PRTG roadmap](https://uservoice.paessler.com/discovery/roadmap/20630) is headed. ## Thank You, and Keep It Coming To everyone who took the time to respond: thank you! Surveys like this only work if you're honest with us, and you were. Some of your answers made us smile, some stung a little, and all of them helped. You told us where it hurts, and the proof that we listened is already shipping: topology mapping, config backup, dependency visualization, change tracking, and AI features on the way, shaped by your votes. The conversation doesn't stop here. If there's something you want to see in PRTG next, tell us on [Paessler User Voice](https://uservoice.paessler.com/). You've seen what happens when you do, so keep it coming. 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