We compared Centreon and Nagios Core across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Centreon features a user-friendly interface with useful options for customization and manual configuration. Users like the solution’s flexible dashboards and the ability to create plugins. Nagios Core is an adaptable solution praised for its integration, customizability, and ability to effectively monitor server availability and network connectivity.
Room for Improvement: Some Centreon users requested better documentation and more flexibility to customize reporting. Other areas for improvement include auto-scanning efficiency and integration. Nagios Core users have requested better documentation, improved scalability, and a more user-friendly configuration process.
Service and Support: Centreon is highly regarded for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service that offers support in multiple languages. However, some customers feel that the lower levels of support are inadequate. Nagios Core lacks direct customer service, but users can generally find help from a supportive open-source community and large knowledge base.
Ease of Deployment: Centreon's initial setup is described as time-consuming and complex. The deployment varies in duration depending on the IT infrastructure. Nagios Core's setup is generally seen as well-documented and straightforward.
Pricing: Centreon's cost depends on the company's size. It is affordable and suitable for small companies, but it can be costly to scale up. Nagios Core is free, but users may incur costs for installation and configuration.
ROI: Centreon delivers value by helping users identify and resolve critical issues fasters, which could yield large savings. Nagios Core users say they have saved money by replacing paid monitoring tools with this open-source solution.
Comparison Results: Centreon is a flexible solution offering a range of customization options. The solution has earned high marks for support and affordability. At the same time, users say the setup can be complicated and time-consuming. Others said that auto-scanning and integration have room for improvement. Nagios Core is a flexible open-source solution that is highly customizable and offers robust functionality commonly found in paid enterprise solutions. However, some users have said that Nagios Core becomes unwieldy when used at a large scale and that the documentation could be more thorough.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"We have the business activity monitoring, the map, and the MBI modules and they are all very good."
"In addition, the flexibility, customizability, and analytics of Centreon's dashboards are all very good. The dashboards help us see the whole network map, and that is quite valuable for us. In addition, the dashboards have helped to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time... The flexibility has given us the ability to add in our own monitoring metrics and that has been quite interesting and very useful for us."
"E-mail alert notifications are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to build an abstraction of service visualization. You can add services to an entity called Business Activities and you can see the state of these activities."
"I find the product's scalability to be one of the most valuable features since it allows us to add unlimited devices for monitoring and to set up additional polling servers without additional license cost or downtime in our monitoring."
"It supports active monitoring so we don't have to use traps. From time to time traps are not very useful because we never know if they are actually working or not. The reporting part is also valuable as are the event logs. Using them we can check right away if something has had a hiccup."
"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."
"I really like the filtering capabilities of it. You can easily tell what's critical next to what's okay, the state of the services. It's very easy to get the whole picture quickly."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."
"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."
"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."
"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
"Nagios Core is stable."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"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."
"Centreon technical support is only available during Central European business hours. When it comes to critical business solutions, there should be a 24/7 hotline that customers can rely on."
"Centreon is actually missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD."
"There is room for improvement in the area of artificial intelligence. The product gives us a lot of information, but it's only information. We want the product to do more auto-remediation."
"Currently, we have to go through all of the different templates and take a look at how the template is configured, and how specific parameters may change across different templates with different precedents, megatons, etc. It's a lot of work and involves trial and error. I wish they could simplify the process."
"Improvements I would like to see include a discovery solution, better reports, and end-to-end monitoring."
"Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."
"The mapping is a little hard."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"I would like to see more training videos."
Centreon is ranked 11th in Network Monitoring Software with 27 reviews while Nagios Core is ranked 7th in Network Monitoring Software with 46 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while Nagios Core is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Nagios Core writes "An Open Source Fully Featured Data Centre Monitoring Tool". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Icinga, Nagios XI and Datadog, whereas Nagios Core is most compared with Zabbix, Nagios XI, Icinga, OP5 Monitor and LogicMonitor. See our Centreon vs. Nagios Core report.
See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors and best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors.
We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.