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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
40th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
47th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (16th), Cloud Monitoring Software (31st)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
12th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
12th
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 July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.2%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.5%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.5%
Icinga1.2%
Other97.3%
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."
"The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first."
"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."
"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"If you have a small infrastructure or a small number of devices that you want to monitor, then I think it's a good solution."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"We have the ability right now to see and create reports to tell whether or not we're meeting our SLAs on our production servers, through it."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"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."
"This is a fit for purpose product which means that if you have a definite list of requirements and are not willing, or unable, to spend money on big enterprise tools, then Nagios is a tool to go to."
"Nagios Core is a great tool for monitoring the infrastructure including MSM queues, and when we use the agent, we can add other things as well."
"It sends alerts to the right people which ensures there is no delay in the correct person or team looking into issues, and it has helped to reduce downtime in the production environment to almost zero so we now spend less time on network or server administration."
"We are using Nagios Core on a VM and it's working very well, even though the specs of the VM are very low because it doesn't require much storage."
"Nagios allows IT staff and end-users to see the status of critical services on the network and can alert and notify selected users if critical services fail, reducing the mean time to recover."
 

Cons

"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"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."
"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."
"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."
"The user interface should be improved."
"The connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"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 initial setup was complex, mainly because it was in Linux and had many packages that we're not used to."
"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."
"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."
"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."
"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
"I would like to see more training videos."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction 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: June 2026.
905,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.