Belive it or not… Finding a simple ping software to monitor some of your devices and your Internet is actually hard. There is a lot of software out there for it. Most of them works, but they are mostly crap and a lot of them cost money.
Free Ping Tool
License: Free
Download: https://www.manageengine.com/free-ping-tool/free-ping-tool-index.html
Simple and clean interface. Default view is table, with simple preview of successful packages and simple indicator for status. You can click on each hostname to show chart.
Ping response is default to 5 minutes and web response to 10 sec. Not sure why… Should be the opposite in my opinion. The lowest value you can set on the ping is 1 minute, that is useless when I want to test my home network in pretty much real time. You also can’t run web response and look at the ping at the same time.
My personal score: 3 / 6
Spiceworks Network monitor
License: Free
Download: https://www.spiceworks.com/free-network-monitoring-management-software/
This runs a web-server, so you manage it in the browser. It took a long time to start up after install and my Chrome browser stopped responding for a minute. Looks like you are forced to create a Spicework-user and log in on first startup.
You can monitor servers, network devices or just plain simple ping. You can also set device name on your ping-devices, so you don’t need to remember all the IP-addresses. My opinion is that this software looks great, but the interface is a bit slow and to advanced for what I was looking for.
The ping chart also restarts for every time you open it. So if you have a lag on the network, you can’t see the history. The chart also have to high resolution.
One great thing is that you can access this across the network.
My personal score: 4 / 6
PingPlotter Pro / Free
License: Free and paid
Download: https://www.pingplotter.com/products/professional.html
The free version only has 10 minutes of history, standard has unlimited history and the pro has things like multi-target monitoring, web-interface, etc…
The software is tab-based, which I don’t like as you have to click a lot. You have a summary view that’s not that bad, but I’m missing features like setting device names.
My personal score: 3 / 6
MultiPing
License: Paid
Download: https://www.multiping.com/
Simple to add new hosts. Looks like some of the GUI was copied from PingPlotter, but MultiPing has history on the front page.
You can create alerts with sound, notifications, mail, etc…
My personal score: 4 / 6
Quick Ping Monitor
License: Paid
Download: http://www.tallsoft.com/pingmonitor.htm
Some wierd error messages when I tried to launch the application. Got it to work when I started as administrator. It’s not licensed by Microsoft, so it gives you an extra warning and I’m a bit skeptical when running a non-signed software as administrator.
The GUI looks like it’s 10-15 years old, but it’s simple and works. The ping on the other hand, does not work. It’s just reports all my peer-devices as down.
It has alerts and device-names, so it could have been a great program. Not sure why anyone would pay for this though.
My personal score: 1 / 6
MetaPing
License: Free
Download: http://www.hammer-software.com/metaping.shtml
This software focuses on the charts – and I like it. You can set friendly names to devices. It has a lot of small icons, with no tooltip when you hover the mouse above them – so not sure what they all do.
It has some group settings for your ping-targets, export/import and more – but it’s hard to understand/use and the configuration button is grayed out for some reason. I’m missing the possibility to set an alarm/notification.
My personal score: 4 / 6
Ping Monitor (by niliand)
License: Paid
Download: http://www.niliand.com/ping-monitor.php
Simple clean interface. Has alerts. Show charts as default. Maybe a bit to simple to be a paid program.
My personal score: 4 / 6
EMCO Ping Monitor Free
License: Paid (Free for up to 5 hosts)
Download: https://emcosoftware.com/ping-monitor
Wizard on startup. This software has a lot of features, which means a lot of things to click on – but it looks like it’s focusing on ping only. You can hide the ribbon and some stuff to make the GUI a bit cleaner.
This program has everything and it’s free. Maybe a bit advanced, but it works.
My personal score: 6 / 6