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Centreon vs Elastic Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Centreon
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
22nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (25th)
Elastic Observability
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
7th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), Log Management (15th), Container Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Centreon is 2.9%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Observability is 4.0%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Caulson Chua - PeerSpot reviewer
With fewer staff resources, we can identify and address issues before the system goes down
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime. The dashboard is user-friendly, and the solution provides good reporting and visibility. The layout is straightforward. You can click on the drop-down list to select the server you want. The anomaly detection feature helped us reduce our average resolution time by 30 minutes to an hour.
Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have all our tickets inside Centreon in real-time and can monitor a lot of ELP and CLN in real-time for application purposes."
"The most important feature is that it permits us to receive alarms if there is an incident within the infrastructure. The feature I love the most is the reporting feature, the MBI (Monitoring Business Intelligence) which permits us to send advanced reports to our customers in PDF format or in Doc format. We also deploy Centreon Map which gives our customers intuitive views of their information system."
"You can concentrate and orchestrate several other solutions from other vendors. You can consolidate those solutions all in one place, then maintain and monitor from that single point. This creates ease of use. It is a very powerful solution from this point of view."
"Predetermined templates allow for simple and fast service monitoring configuration."
"What I like most about Centreon is that it is very flexible and customizable, based on the user and/or business needs. Centreon is very flexible when it comes to monitoring parameters. We can use scripts found on the internet or scripts created by our infra/apps team. Also, the data visualization features are very simple and straightforward, yet very informative."
"For servers and for applications, it was very, very efficient."
"The downtimes feature is helpful. If the ISP is doing some maintenance on its network, we have the option to put downtime on the devices or the services, so we won't get any false alarms."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of servers and networks, because we have a lot of them and need to maintain control."
"Elastic APM has plenty of features, such as the Elastic server for Kibana and many additional plugins. It's a comprehensive tool when used as a logging platform."
"Its diverse set of features available on the cloud is of significant importance."
"It has always been a stable solution."
"It is a powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."
"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."
"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"The product has connectors to many services."
 

Cons

"During the initial setup we faced some issues. Part of it was because we had to become more knowledgeable in the solution. There are some gray areas and if you don't know the product well you may have issues. Another part of it was some bugs that we came across, although that's part of every software solution in IT nowadays. But the initial setup could be easier."
"Centreon introduced network discovery in the most recent update. However, it doesn't work well. Our previous monitoring tool could discover networking equipment on the network and identify the relationships between the devices."
"Sometimes, when the GUI and some of the search fields are being reset, and I return to the page, then I have to set them again. Therefore, some improvement on the UI and the filtering is needed."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"This solution lacks service monitoring in the cloud."
"I would like to see a better UI, one which is more responsive."
"I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful."
"Improvements are needed in the area of cloud monitoring, as that's a newer feature."
"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"There could be more low-code features included in the product."
"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."
"There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities."
"More web features could be added to the product."
"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."
"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing starts at around 5000 euro. However, this depends on: Your environment, the size of your host, how many hosts you have, how many remote pollers you have, and if you want to use the Monitoring Business Intelligence or Centreon MAP functionalities."
"They only sell four hour slots for support, so if you have just one question, then you need to pay for four hours. Or, you need to wait until you have enough questions to fill those four hours. They are not flexible in this."
"For more complex tasks, we use prepaid support days and ask Centreon to come onsite."
"Open-source solutions like this can be very cost effective for an organization looking for a product that they can quickly implement, as there is no initial cost and there are no license renewal fees. However, it is important to take into consideration some of the related costs that may come along as needed, such as training, support, and product enhancements."
"It's quite expensive when you use the Enterprise version, but if you compare it to other providers, it's more like a middle-of-the-line product. It's always good to have a price that is lower, but I would say the price is okay because we get very good support and if we have any other issues we can always contact them. There has never been a time when I didn't get help from them."
"The price is not too high. Licensing is driven by how many hosts you monitor, but because you can run the agentless version, you don't have to declare every host to Centreon, one at a time. That means you can drive your infrastructure supervision with a very low number of declared hosts."
"You purchase a package. You have a support contract (there is also a platinum support contract) and it is per module. That means you have to pay, e.g., for the MBI module or the BAM module. Or, if you want to save a lot of money, you can pay for IMP, which is the complete package."
"It is perfect and very cheap if you are a little company or startup. After that, it is quite expensive for a big company."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Centreon?
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and av...
What needs improvement with Centreon?
The issue my company has with the tool stems from the fact that it didn't give an on-time response to us. The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegr...
What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.
PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. Elastic Observability and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.