How it compares
How Groundskeeper compares
Most monitoring tools were built for businesses: a project to set up, and priced per device or per sensor. Groundskeeper was built for schools and the trusts that run them. It installs from a wizard on a server you already have, it costs the same however many machines you watch, and a trust can see every school from one hub. Below: what each does, how long each takes to get going, and what each costs to watch a whole school estate.
Every price below is a list price that the vendor publishes, or that is publicly reported, before any education or volume discount, checked on 26 September 2026. Each links to where we found it. Your own quote may be lower; ask the vendor. If a figure here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
At a glance
| Groundskeeper | PRTG | SolarWinds | Zabbix | LibreNMS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Made for schools | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Cyber Essentials readiness view | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| DfE filtering and monitoring readiness check | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| MIS (Arbor) and school services status | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| A plain-English view for senior leaders | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Microsoft 365, Meraki, Veeam and Action1 in one feed, ready to go | ✓ | ◐ separate sensors, no Action1 | ◐ set up per service | ◐ templates to set up | ◐ partly, via add-ons |
| AI summaries that run on your own server | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Set up with a wizard; no database or Linux to build | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Many schools on one hub, each school's data kept at that school | ✓ | ◐ one central server | ◐ extra product | ◐ one central server | ◐ one central server |
| Runs on Windows Server | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Locally hosted: your data stays on your own server | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Same price however many devices | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ free | ✓ free |
| Free edition | ✓ | ◐ 100 sensors | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
✓ built in. ◐ partly, or only with extra setup. ✗ not built in as of 26 September 2026; it may be possible with custom configuration. The sections below link to where each figure comes from.
Getting started: about an hour, not a project
Most monitoring tools are a project: a server to build, a database to install, sensors to count and dashboards to design before you see anything useful. Groundskeeper is an installer and a short wizard: about an hour.
Groundskeeper, from download to your first results
In our own installs, about an hour from download to installed, the first connectors reporting and the first agents deployed.
- Run the Windows installer on a server you already have. It sets up HTTPS for you.
- Create your admin account in the browser.
- Follow a five-screen setup wizard. Choose an AI option (the free local one downloads from inside the wizard), tick the systems you use, and paste in their keys. Two connectors, Domain Security and Internet Health, need no passwords at all and show results within minutes.
- Put the agent on your machines with one script, a Group Policy, or straight from the console to computers it finds in Active Directory.
- Anything missing on the server, such as the Active Directory tools, installs from one button on the About screen.
No Linux, no database to build, no dashboards to design, no sensors to count. Read the getting-started guide.
What the others need before your first useful result
| Product | What setting up involves | Source |
|---|---|---|
| PRTG | A Windows install; auto-discovery then suggests sensors for each device, which you tune within your sensor allowance. | Paessler |
| SolarWinds (self-hosted) | A Windows server with a Microsoft SQL Server database, then devices discovered and each added as a licensed node. | SolarWinds |
| Zabbix | A Linux server, database and web server to build; templates and dashboards set up by hand. Reviewers commonly report tens of hours to get it right. | Reported setup effort |
| LibreNMS | A Linux server with PHP, a database and a web server, then SNMP set up on each device. | LibreNMS install guide |
What it costs to watch the whole estate
Two example schools, counting every device you would want to watch: servers, switches, every desktop and laptop, printers and copiers. The first year and three years are both shown.
A primary school, about 150 devices
| Product | How it is priced | First year | Three years | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Groundskeeper Pro | Per school per year, any number of devices | £100 | £300 | Our pricing |
| Groundskeeper Community | Free, five connectors, any number of devices | £0 | £0 | Our pricing |
| PRTG | Yearly subscription by sensor count. Paessler suggests 5–10 sensors per device: about 750–1,500 sensors for 150 devices (the 1,000 or 2,500 tier) | US$4,296–8,904 | US$12,888–26,712 | Paessler pricing, tier prices reported |
| SolarWinds (self-hosted) | Per node, from about US$6–7.42 per node per month on an annual contract; about 150 nodes | US$10,800–13,356 | US$32,400–40,068 | SolarWinds pricing, prices reported |
| Zabbix | Free software; optional support contracts, reported from about US$325 a month | £0 licence | £0 licence | Zabbix subscriptions |
| LibreNMS | Free, open-source software | £0 licence | £0 licence | LibreNMS docs |
A secondary school, about 900 devices
| Product | How it is priced | First year | Three years | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Groundskeeper Pro | Per school per year, any number of devices | £250 | £750 | Our pricing |
| Groundskeeper Community | Free, five connectors, any number of devices | £0 | £0 | Our pricing |
| PRTG | Yearly subscription by sensor count. Paessler suggests 5–10 sensors per device: about 4,500–9,000 sensors for 900 devices (the 5,000 or 10,000 tier) | US$15,600–19,704 | US$46,800–59,112 | Paessler pricing, tier prices reported |
| SolarWinds (self-hosted) | Per node, from about US$6–7.42 per node per month on an annual contract; about 900 nodes | US$64,800–80,136 | US$194,400–240,408 | SolarWinds pricing, prices reported |
| Zabbix | Free software; optional support contracts, reported from about US$325 a month | £0 licence | £0 licence | Zabbix subscriptions |
| LibreNMS | Free, open-source software | £0 licence | £0 licence | LibreNMS docs |
Groundskeeper runs on a Windows server you already have. Zabbix and LibreNMS need a Linux server, and the free tools cost staff time instead of money: see "Getting started" above. US-dollar prices are shown as published; we have not converted them, because the rate changes.
For trusts and groups
Groundskeeper Central gives a trust, local authority, diocese or federation one view of every school, while each school keeps its own Groundskeeper and its own data on its own server. The hub gathers the picture; the detail stays where it belongs.
Example: a trust of four primaries and two secondaries
Each school on Pro, priced by its phase, plus one Central hub. No bands and no jumps: a seventh school adds its own line and nothing else.
| 4 primary schools on Pro | £400 |
| 2 secondary schools on Pro | £500 |
| 1 Central hub | £100 |
| Total per year | £1,000 |
|---|
Every device in all six schools is included. See pricing.
Built for schools
The others are network monitors; Groundskeeper watches the whole of a school's IT, and speaks to the people who ask how IT is doing.
The services schools use
Microsoft 365, Cisco Meraki, Veeam, Action1, WatchGuard, your MIS and school services, alongside servers, switches, UPSes and printers.
Readiness, not just alerts
A Cyber Essentials readiness view and a DfE filtering and monitoring readiness check, from the data it already collects.
A view for leadership
An SLT page in plain English, and summaries from a local AI that runs on your own server.
Your data stays at school
Everything is kept on your own server, and device passwords are encrypted by Windows on that machine. Nothing leaves the school unless you choose a cloud AI provider, and then identifying details are scrubbed first. Cloud-hosted monitoring services, by contrast, send what they find, often including device passwords, to the vendor's own cloud.
Where another product is the better fit, we would rather you knew: if you need deep performance graphing across a large network and have the budget or the staff to build it, PRTG, SolarWinds and Zabbix are powerful tools.
See Groundskeeper's pricing