Checklist: What to Look for in a Free IT Infrastructure Monitoring Trial Version

The time has come to evolve your IT infrastructure monitoring capabilities, or you need to replace aging solutions. Your Google search leads you to a few free trial offers from some popular commercial editions. It’s hard enough selecting the best IT infrastructure monitoring platform, but you first have to decide which one you will invest your time and energy to try. This post will help you determine if the forever free Centreon IT Edition trial is for you, along with its unrestricted access to 400+ connectors, ready to monitor templates and auto discovery capabilities.

What will you be trying exactly?

Centreon IT Edition is one of the two commercial editions based on the Centreon open source core. It is widely used to monitor IT Infrastructure from cloud to edge for a clear and comprehensive view of IT performance.

A few use cases for trying the free Centreon IT edition

Accelerate the replacement of older solutions that are more expensive and do not allow modern, holistic IT monitoring.
Help IT teams to reduce the number of specialized IT Monitoring tools, by adopting one platform able to monitor from cloud to edge.
Enable enterprise-grade IT monitoring in smaller ITOps that were too expensive to monitor.
Add value and build revenue streams for clients that could benefit from cloud-to-edge monitoring but that either need to be educated on ROI or have smaller perimeters (system integrators).
Live test holistic IT monitoring before deployment on a larger scale.
Permanently monitor small operations—for free, forever, for up to 100 IT assets.

“A free IT monitoring trial version should be more than a demo, you should be able to test in a real-life environment with real-life issues.”

What to look for in a trial version

Not all IT infrastructure monitoring trials are the same. If you’re on the lookout for a more potent IT infrastructure monitoring platform, it’s easy to guess that you are already dealing with enough complexity. Aside from “free”, which is not hard to find, your first criteria to select a trial should be “uncomplicated”. However, don’t stop there: a few other features should be crossed off your list when deciding which commercial IT infrastructure monitoring solution you’re going to try first.

Free trial checklist ✅

Privacy-friendly request form: Dealing with an onslaught of calls and emails the minute you press send is an often overlooked time waster.
Unlimited time: are 15 or 30 days really enough to test something as extensive and complicated as monitoring your hybrid IT ecosystem, while you also have to tend to your regular activities? Make sure you have enough time—the best option is a tryout that never expires.
Extensive possibilities for testing from cloud to on-premise to legacy. In other words, your trial should be more than a demo, it should allow you to actually monitor assets that are in production in a business-as-usual setting and with the full capabilities the solution has to offer.
Easy download: it goes without saying that the tryout should be readily available to download and installed in minutes.
Realistic prerequisites: if you have to acquire expensive equipment or computing power to level up to the tryout solution standards, well, it’s counterproductive.
Fast onboarding: look for support capabilities provided by humans and readily available documentation. Again here, you have no time to waste and you should expect a decent customer and user experience, even if it’s free.
Instant implementation: what kind of time to monitoring will the tryout version offer? Ensure the platform you’re trying allows you to find and integrate assets automatically—so you don’t waste time and effort before the trial version clearly demonstrates it is worthy of your attention.
Actual results against standard KPIs: how are you going to benchmark the results against your current solution or another one you’ll be selecting for trial? Look for an improved MTTR and user experience – comfort counts in monitoring.
Scalable. What will happen when the trial expires? Will you lose the data you’ve collected, will you need to start from scratch to build another IT monitoring perimeter? Will you cry all the way to the bank? Will you just be back to square one? Make sure the transition from the free to the paying version is smooth and affordable, ideally with a tiered subscription model that lets you grow your IT monitoring budget at the same rate as the number of devices you need to monitor.

Takeaway: Getting from trial to results, effectively.

If you’re looking to minimize your time and money commitment trying and selecting an IT monitoring solution, start your benchmarking with a free version that will never expire and that will not limit you in using the full possibilities touted by the solution’s marketing brochure. See what users like you love about Centreon.

Your 1st trial candidate: The Centreon IT Edition in 5 facts

Centreon IT Edition is permanently free when you monitor 100 hosts or less.
The free trial limits only the number of hosts you can monitor, not the access to the solution’s capabilities: instantly finding and monitoring hosts, 400+connectors for the most used IT domains and ready to monitor templates, mobile and optimized event management, and custom dashboarding—are all available without restrictions, forever.
Downloads in minutes: just fill a short form and you’re own your way.
Shorter time to monitoring: instant integrations and prepackaged template means you don’t have anything to do other than monitor all your devices and domains, from cloud to edge.
Stays free or is scalable to a greater number of hosts to monitor. You never lose your 100-host perimeter or have to start from scratch.