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Icinga vs Nagios Core 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

Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
26th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
30th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (14th), Cloud Monitoring Software (24th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
10th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
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 March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.5%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.9%
Icinga1.5%
Other96.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Net Consulting
A stable, scalable and cost-effective solution that helps with inbuilt scripts for easy modification
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.
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

"We have found the solution to be stable."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
 

Cons

"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"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."
"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"The user interface should be improved."
"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"The mapping is a little hard."
"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."
"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
"It is a bit slow due to latency."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"The solution is free to use."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is cheap."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"It's free."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?
It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...
What needs improvement with Icinga?
There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...
What is your primary use case for Icinga?
We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...
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: March 2026.
883,896 professionals have used our research since 2012.