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Icinga vs Nagios Core comparison

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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

Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
44th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
50th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (17th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
19th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.1%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.3%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.3%
Icinga1.1%
Other97.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2292201 - PeerSpot reviewer
Innovation Service Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have but average multi-tenancy aspect
It's supported by the community. We use Icinga, which is not part of the Open-Source platform but is wrapped into a commercial solution from another provider, a local provider in Italy. Icinga is an open-source platform, so it is supported by the community. It's quite easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have. So it's not expensive, and it's quite a general purpose. We can easily monitor any kind of infrastructure we encounter. The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated. The alerting is the same as any other monitoring platform. It's not a "wow" feature that has changed our lives, but it's perfectly adequate.
HY
Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group
Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure
The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything. Everything in the IT domain, you can monitor anything. You can even monitor printers, the ports of printers, Core workstations, and storage. You can monitor the workflow Core and the utilization of computes. If you want to grasp everything of your IT equipment on a single interface, you can use Nagios. It's the best one. It provides dashboards, and you can also configure your emails and alerts with it. If something is critical, you can configure it to notify via emails. It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"People should know that it is simple and advanced."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"We monitor all, starting from UPS to international mail chains."
"I would recommend Icinga; it's an open-source solution, it's quite easy and simple to use, and checks can be run with Python code and Shell Script code."
"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
"Monitoring with Nagios Core is helpful because it provides immediate alerts if something goes down, such as a server, or wireless router, or if there's a cable break. This allows us to respond promptly to any issues."
"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."
"Nagios Core integrates with tools like Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace. It is usually used as a feed to provide more technical information about devices or hosts to another system."
"Open source and very flexible, with a large ecosystem of tools and custom monitors built up around Nagios."
"The solution is quite efficient."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"The connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built."
"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."
"A better UI for graphing would make it better. The present graphs are not very friendly and good to see."
"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
"I like to have the option to configure Nagios using the web interface."
"Nagios Core is not easy to use, so I don't recommend it for everyone."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"The solution is free to use."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"The solution is cheap."
"It's an open-source solution."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"It's free."
"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."
"We are using the free version."
"Nagios Core is free to use."
"The product is cheaply priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 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.
What is your primary use case for Nagios Core?
I was a senior system administrator. I've been using Nagios Core for more than ten years now. It can be used to monitor hosts, such as machines, and monitor services of any kind. I'm using it to mo...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.