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Amazon CloudWatch vs Nagios XI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon CloudWatch reduces monitoring costs, boosts operational efficiency, is vital for oversight, but not direct revenue, especially for small projects.
Sentiment score
6.6
Nagios XI enhances efficiency and time management but concerns about increased costs affect ROI perception across organizations.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon CloudWatch support is reliable, with varying response times and expertise based on support level, premium ensures faster help.
Sentiment score
6.5
Nagios XI support is mixed; praised for responsiveness but criticized for high cost, complex licensing, and delayed responses.
While using their cloud and cloud resources, if you have an issue with CloudWatch, you must pay additional monthly fees to get time from dedicated tech support.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon CloudWatch excels in scalability and performance, efficiently managing data and adapts quickly to diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
7.1
Nagios XI is scalable for small to medium environments but faces challenges in large infrastructures and cloud adaptability.
It is already there as a managed service from AWS.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
If the user interface isn’t presenting data well, it becomes difficult to manage when scaling.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon CloudWatch is praised for its reliability and performance, though some note occasional data delays and slowness in low-capacity environments.
Sentiment score
7.3
Nagios XI is stable, but large deployments may experience performance issues, database problems, and minor network dependencies.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
It is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better customization, visualization, and integration in CloudWatch, citing high costs, steep learning curve, and scalability challenges.
Nagios XI's interface is outdated, lacks scalability, needs better cloud integration, APIs, automation, and improved documentation.
When using third-party dashboards such as Kibana or Grafana and other visualization tools, there should be a way to feed CloudWatch's data and logging capabilities into these visualization tools.
Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
The GUI could be improved. It's a bit too basic.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch pricing is variable, with costs ranging from $25 to $350, depending on usage and AWS service integration.
Nagios XI provides cost-efficient enterprise-level monitoring with reasonable pricing, appreciated for its features and open-source options.
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
We are using the free, open-source version.
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time data, AWS integration, efficient monitoring, user-friendly interface, and versatile dashboards for enhanced system performance.
Nagios XI provides customizable, flexible, and scalable IT infrastructure monitoring with real-time alerts and extensive plugin support.
The basic feature and main use of Amazon CloudWatch is for monitoring.
Being an inbuilt solution from AWS, it saves time on installation, setup, and maintenance.
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
The alerting system is very effective.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Log Management (16th)
Nagios XI
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (25th), Server Monitoring (13th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios XI is 3.6%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon CloudWatch2.3%
Nagios XI3.6%
Other94.1%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Has provided reliable monitoring and alerting through extensive metric tracking and dashboard configuration
Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch. We are also integrating Grafana with the application itself to get the application data and logs. Alternatively, there is AWS Kinesis and Glue where you can scrape the logs and have visualization, but a more easy option is Grafana. If you want to get a proper visual representation to see what is happening, then you need to integrate a third-party tool. Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.
Amir  Said - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective alerting enhances network monitoring experience with an easy setup
We love Nagios XI due to the fact that JPS Web is very useful. JPS monitors the modem and performs switching, monitoring the computer, and performing switching. We implement some applications and traffic monitoring. The alerting system is very effective. For instance, if we have an alarm on some RAM storage if the traffic is cut or dropped.
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
5%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Apart from traceability of network resources, Amazon CloudWatch needs to be more interoperable with other tools because many companies are starting to use AI-based dashboards. When using third-part...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Nagios XI and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,358 professionals have used our research since 2012.