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Elastic Observability vs Nagios Core comparison

Elastic and Nagios are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Elastic is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.5, while Nagios is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3. Elastic holds a 2.9% mindshare in IM, compared to Nagios’s 3.1% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Nagios users who would recommend it.
Elastic Observability
Read 29 Elastic Observability reviews
  • 8,986 Views
  • 3,684 Comparison Views
88% willing to recommend
Nagios Core
Read 51 Nagios Core reviews
  • 3,994 Views
  • 3,435 Comparison Views
80% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Nagios Core and Elastic Observability compete in the IT monitoring category. Elastic Observability seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced centralized logging and integration capabilities.

Features: Nagios Core provides flexibility and customization options, an open-source platform with extensive plugins, and detailed alerting capabilities. Elastic Observability is noted for centralized logging, seamless integration with tools like Kibana, and end-to-end solutions for various data sources.

Room for Improvement: Nagios Core requires complex setups and advanced technical skills for effective use, sophisticated UI and reporting enhancements, and requires effort to improve infrastructure monitoring. Elastic Observability lacks predictive analytics, features a complex initial setup, and requires better visualization and additional monitoring features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nagios Core demands robust on-premises setups, relies mainly on community forums for support, and lacks official customer service. Elastic Observability supports hybrid and cloud deployment models, though it similarly depends on community-based assistance due to a lack of direct customer service for its open-source version.

Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core is cost-effective with no licensing fees, appealing to budget-conscious users, and offers high ROI by reducing downtime. Elastic Observability involves complex licensing based on data and infrastructure, may be costly for small businesses, but remains valuable for larger enterprises seeking comprehensive monitoring and insights.

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To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. Nagios Core Report (Updated: September 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Elastic Observability vs. Nagios Core
September 2025
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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
6.5
Elastic Observability enhances cost-effectiveness by reducing incidents, automating fixes, and visualizing cloud operations, saving time and resources.
Sentiment score
8.8
Nagios Core reduces downtime and costs with quick alerts, providing full ROI and eliminating expensive monitoring tools.
Elastic Observability has saved us time as it's much easier to find relevant pieces across the system in one screen compared to our own software, and it has saved resources too since the same resources can use less time.
For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Elastic Observability customers appreciate their helpful support, quick responses, and valuable documentation, despite some challenges in complex issue resolution.
Sentiment score
5.1
Nagios Core relies on community support, praised for stability and resources, but lacks official help compared to Nagios XI.
Elastic support really struggles in complex situations to resolve issues.
Their excellent documentation typically helps me solve any issues I encounter.
For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Elastic Observability is praised for scalability and ease of deployment, despite potential complexities and internal process limitations.
Sentiment score
6.7
Nagios Core shows scalability for large networks but may need customizations and integrations for distributed environments.
I rate the scalability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we have never seen issues even with a lot of data coming in from more customers, provided we have the appropriate configuration.
Elastic Observability seems to have a good scale-out capability.
Elastic Observability is easy in deployment in general for small scale, but when you deploy it at a really large scale, the complexity comes with the customizations.
For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report
The solution is scalable.
For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report
Stefan Decuypere - PeerSpot reviewer
SU
MA
HY
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Elastic Observability is stable and reliable, with high user ratings, efficiently handling large data volumes with proper configuration.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nagios Core is highly stable and reliable with minimal footprint, supporting extensive monitoring without network burden.
There are some bugs that come with each release, but they are keen always to build major versions and minor versions on time, including the CVE vulnerabilities to fix it.
It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it.
I would rate the stability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we don't experience any issues.
For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report
I tried many other solutions at work, however, in terms of Nagios, I haven't seen any disruption or downtime.
For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report
MA
Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewerStefan Decuypere - PeerSpot reviewer
HY
 

Room For Improvement

Elastic Observability needs automation, AI, and customization improvements, addressing complex deployment, market presence, metrics, licensing, and usability issues.
Nagios Core needs a more intuitive interface, better scalability, and features like enhanced reporting and integration with modern tools.
For instance, if you have many error logs and want to create a rule with a custom query, such as triggering an alert for five errors in the last hour, all you need to do is open the AI bot, type this question, and it generates an Elastic query for you to use in your alert rules.
It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side.
Some areas such as AI Ops still require data scientists to understand machine learning and AI, and it doesn't have a quick win with no-brainer use cases.
For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report
LB
reviewer708360 - PeerSpot reviewer
MA
 

Setup Cost

Elastic Observability provides competitive pricing, benefiting large enterprises with comprehensive licensing, but may be costly for smaller users.
Nagios Core is a free, cost-effective open-source tool, but requires Linux expertise and incurs hosting and maintenance costs.
The license is reasonably priced, however, the VMs where we host the solution are extremely expensive, making the overall cost in the public cloud high.
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing.
Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not indexing huge blobs of text and trying to parse those.
For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report
No quotes available
For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report
Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
SU
LB
 

Valuable Features

Elastic Observability excels with flexible integration, powerful search, scalability, real-time insights, affordability, and robust support, enhancing efficiency.
Nagios Core provides flexible, low-resource monitoring with customization, automation, efficient alerts, and integration support for reliable IT performance visibility.
The most valuable feature is the integrated platform that allows customers to start from observability and expand into other areas like security, EDR solutions, etc.
the most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities.
All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important.
For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report
You can monitor anything.
For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report
SU
reviewer708360 - PeerSpot reviewerAdelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
HY
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 2.9%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.1%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Observability2.9%
Nagios Core3.1%
Other94.0%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Stefan Decuypere - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time dashboards and visual insights have streamlined issue analysis and monitoring
After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system, I know what it costs but am not directly involved in cost-benefit evaluations or maintenance, which is handled by another team. I develop the visual representation of the data and frankly, I don't see major gaps in my application or anything I would really miss; I appreciate the fast pace of the developments that have occurred in the last couple of years. Regarding room for improvement in Elastic Observability, I would have preferred built-in tools to manage the indexes on deployment for better visual representation, as the initial feedback regarding system performance and data storage was fairly primitive and lacking.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

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...
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...
See all answers
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Out-of-the-box use cases have room for improvement in Elastic Observability. They don't invest a lot in building out-of-the-box observable use cases, and they are more focusing on giving a very fle...
See all answers
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.
See all answers
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.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Nagios Core?
The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.
See all answers
 

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Compared 8% of the time
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Compared 7% of the time
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Compared 20% of the time
Nagios XI vs Nagios Core Logo
Nagios XI vs Nagios Core
Compared 14% of the time
Zabbix vs Nagios Core Logo
Zabbix vs Nagios Core
Compared 12% of the time
Centreon vs Nagios Core Logo
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Compared 7% of the time
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Compared 6% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Elastic Observability
October 2025
Elastic Observability reportDownload Elastic Observability product report
Buyer's Guide
Nagios Core
October 2025
Nagios Core reportDownload Nagios Core product report
 

Overview

Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.

Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.

What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?
  • Centralized Logging: Streamlines the collection, analysis, and storage of log data.
  • Powerful Search: Provides robust search capabilities for quick access to relevant information.
  • Scalability: Supports growing data needs across diverse environments.
  • Real-time Telemetry: Ensures up-to-date insights and monitoring.
  • Platform Integration: Seamlessly connects with services like Teams and Slack.
  • Data Visualization: Enhances visibility with Elastic APM and Kibana.
What benefits and ROI should users explore in reviews?
  • Cost-effectiveness: Offers significant savings through efficient data management.
  • Rapid Incident Response: Minimizes downtime with quick troubleshooting tools.
  • Comprehensive Insights: Supports better business decisions with detailed data analysis.
  • Performance Tracking: Enables assessment of system effectiveness and improvements.

Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.

Elastic

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios
 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Buyer's Guide
Elastic Observability vs. Nagios Core
September 2025
Free Report: Elastic Observability vs. Nagios Core
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We monitor all IT Infrastructure Monitoring 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.