Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

FortiMonitor vs Zabbix 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

FortiMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
24th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
23rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (9th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (4th)
Zabbix
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
1st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (9th), Server Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of FortiMonitor is 0.7%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 12.2%, up from 11.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

LinhNguyen7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Can be deployed with great ease by users
I work on your website, so I don't use FortiMonitor. However, I may start using the product again in the future since my company might have customers who demand it. I think its useful feature is its alarms because if some hacker hacks into our system, then users can get an SMS to their mobile phones. Users will come to know of issues immediately, and they will proceed with the security part.
ASM Naushad Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes
We have not yet purchased the commercial version so have a lack of technical ability. We do not yet fully know the key points or key features of the solution. We just use what we use along with WhatsUp Gold. Based on our use only, stability is rated a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is the overall ability to monitor the health of the environment."
"FortiMonitor is really easy to use for monitoring the logs on FortiGate...It is a stable product."
"FortiMonitor has a very intuitive dashboard, which makes it particularly helpful for analyzing traffic, alerts, and other information."
"FortiMonitor is 100% stable."
"FortiMonitor offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, allowing me to track network traffic in and out effectively."
"It provides the best firewall features."
"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is user monitoring. We are able to see if the user is following the policy or not from their system. Additionally, the solution integrates well with Fortinet FortiGate and has centralized management."
"FortiMonitor's dashboard is very informative and user-friendly."
"Every new asset placed in the environment can be automatically detected, predicting human failures."
"Health and communication links availability."
"We are able to do problem determination on runaway processes."
"The solution allows for good integration with other products."
"I have found that the reporting feature in Zabbix is most valuable. Additionally, the solution has given us bandwidth options, we are able to see where problems are. For example, we noticed a problem that occurred because of a bad interface going in the wireless VLAN."
"We are able to monitor our virtual infrastructure, virtual machines, windows servers, databases, and the network using a simple network management protocol. We are able to pull almost all the metrics that we want, receive notifications, and have them integrate with telegrams for certain devices that are critical, such as UPSs."
"We use Zabbix to monitor our organization's IT infrastructure and workstations. We don't use Microsoft Intune since it's expensive. The tool's real-time alerting system has proved crucial for us, particularly when a new device joins a network that is not one of our own devices. It notifies us about the presence of this new device, allowing us to investigate further. Additionally, it alerts us about disk usage, memory usage, and the software installed on the machine."
"The initial setup was not complex."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the FortiMonitor report. It is not ideal for showcasing to tech customers or managers, especially when trying to display high CPU usage from logins within a specific range of months or the most recent month."
"FortiMonitor could be improved by making it more convenient for smaller workloads, such as when configuring a few branches."
"FortiMonitor's monitoring could be much better. It should be like, in Palo Alto."
"FortiMonitor could be improved by making it more convenient for smaller workloads, such as when configuring a few branches."
"The tool's price in Vietnam is high, making it an area of concern where improvements can be made."
"Sometimes, during high CPU usage, we cannot access FortiMonitor and must refresh it."
"I think the current features are really good for me, nothing else comes to mind right now. Maybe some small improvements could be made in the customization and configuration part of the UI to make it easier or more intuitive. Customizable UI options, like we saw in the demo, could be helpful for everyone. But in our operational environment, having clear health status and system details is crucial for us system engineers. One feature I'd really like to see is a credential management system. It would help us keep track of who's logged in and how many times, which is important due to user restrictions. Sometimes, we need to manage logins more efficiently, like logging off other users to free up credentials. So having a feature like that would be really helpful."
"FortiMonitor needs to improve its alert system."
"Improvement is needed as per customer requirements."
"They should open an SSH session from the web interface."
"To improve Zabbix, adding more features to support the monitoring of modern workloads like containers would be beneficial."
"Its UI needs to be improved a little bit more so that an end-user is also able to handle it. I can handle it, but others should also be able to handle it in a better way. It becomes complex when we are growing and need to add proxies. We need more scalability features and documentation for different use cases. A lot of articles are available, but they need to be in proper documentation. For example, when you have thousands of servers that have to be monitored in different regions of the world, there should be some kind of documentation to describe how you can create proxies and add them. Sometimes, when you are using the database, it can get overloaded. When the network is growing, the number of transactions becomes very high, and the database gets overloaded. There should be information about how to reduce the load on the MySQL database, which is what Zabbix is using. The market is growing a lot, and it should be enhanced for a lot more things. We are currently bringing enhancements at our end for different use cases. For example, when dockerization is going on, how can we check the logs inside the Dockers. We should also be able to monitor and check the number of logins and add features such as SSO login and two-factor authentication as a protocol. These are the security features and concerns that we have to deal with. Currently, we are developing modules to add features to Zabbix, but they should also work on these features."
"Zabbix is not easy to configure, and upgrading is also an issue."
"It would be helpful if they translated the documentation to Cyrillic languages."
"Its UI should be improved. They did some improvements in version 5, but it could benefit from some more work. Its integrations should also be improved. They've been active for one year, and they seem to have noticed that. It has new integrations, but it could benefit from more integrations. As far as I know, there is no model to push statistics, metrics, or events towards Zabbix. This type of API isn't yet there, whereas some other tools provide an API for this."
"​I would like to better be able to monitor Oracle processes.​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of licensing, while it may not be the most expensive option on the market, it's relatively cost-effective. You can obtain licenses at a lower cost, with the calculation being straightforward. For example, if you onboard around 5,000 devices, you'll need approximately 5,000 licenses, as each device typically counts as one license."
"There are additional costs needed for certain functionality, such as scalability."
"On a scale from one to ten, I rate the pricing a nine since it is a good solution that is available at a cheap price."
"The tool's pricing model in Vietnam is a bit high. I rate the product price as an eight out of ten."
"We have a large customer base for Fortinet, and the additional buying power got us really great discounts."
"FortiMonitor's price is very high."
"The price of FortiMonitor is approximately $200 annually for 225 users. The price is competitive."
"Compared to other solutions, FortiMonitor is a very expensive solution."
"It’s free of cost."
"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"The product is an open source and free solution."
"It is open source. If you want to have a subscription or official support, you can pay for it. They have different plans, which are not that expensive. The plans are based on per monitoring server, not per monitored equipment. So, it is not at all expensive, and you can also live without the support if you want a cheaper option."
"We use the open-source version of Zabbix."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"For pricing, it's free. We don't pay anything for it. They open-source the code, and people pay for support."
"It is worth every cent to pay or even study to do your own installation."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Computer Software Company
27%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
6%
Educational Organization
39%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have a clear bias because I work for Panopta. We aren't a fit for everyone, but I can confirm that Panopta is a lot less work to stand up and maintain. It's also a lot easier to use and onboard n...
What do you like most about FortiMonitor?
In FortiMonitor, we're linked up with our Netgear, CactusServer, and NOC. It's really valuable because everything's migrating to one dashboard for us system engineers. We can keep an eye on traffic...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiMonitor?
The pricing is high, and it requires a one-time installment fee followed by a license payment, which is manageable annually or every three years.
What do you like most about Zabbix?
The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
For me, Zabbix is very straightforward. I cannot think of any improvements needed. It's a very mature product. The only issue I can note is that it's Linux-based, and Linux documentation is not the...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Panopta
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SONY, GoDaddy, HCL, ING, ARMOR, billboard
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiMonitor vs. Zabbix and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.