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Datadog vs Nagios Core comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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

Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
186
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (9th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
6th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 4.2%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.4%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
Nishith-Vyas - PeerSpot reviewer
Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements
The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature I have found most valuable is when I can reuse existing monitors and alerts for new dashboards."
"The infrastructure monitoring capabilities, especially for our Kubernetes clusters, have helped us optimize resource allocation and reduce costs."
"The ability to send notifications based on metadata from the monitor is helpful."
"The selection of monitors is a big feature I have been working with."
"Profiling has been made easier."
"Log analytics give us a powerful mechanism for error tracking, research, and analysis."
"Real user monitoring gives us invaluable insights into actual user experiences, helping us prioritize improvements where they matter most."
"The full stack of integrations made it easier to monitor the different technologies and platform providers, including Software as a Service providers, that otherwise would need a lot of work and customization to be able to see what is happening."
"Provides timely notifications."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"The most valuable feature depends on the project. It's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7. I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful."
"What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services."
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
"Nagios Core is stable."
 

Cons

"There could be more easily identifiable documentation on how to find different things on the platform."
"One area where I was really looking for improvement was the CSPM product line. I had really wanted to have team-level visibility for findings, since the team managing the resources has much more context and ability to resolve the issue, as the service owner. However, this has been added to the announcement in a recent keynote."
"The dashboard could be improved. It would be helpful to get a view of specific things that we need to monitor for our application."
"The incident management beta looks promising, but it is still missing the ability to automatically create incidents based on certain alerts."
"Additional metrics should be included."
"Their security features could be improved. We looked at their Security Monitoring feature but it was early in its development. Datadog are just getting into the security space so I'm sure this will improve in the future."
"We would really like to see more from the Service Catalog."
"While I like the ease of use, when compared with Tenable Nessus they could still improve their usability."
"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."
"The interface could be improved."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."
"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."
"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
"The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items."
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."
"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."
"Nagios Core is free to use."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
39%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
What do you like most about Nagios Core?
What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?
Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.
What needs improvement with Nagios Core?
The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable a...
 

Comparisons

 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.