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Nagios Core vs Nagios XI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
8.8
Nagios Core reduces downtime and costs with quick alerts, providing full ROI and eliminating expensive monitoring tools.
Sentiment score
6.6
Nagios XI enhances efficiency and time management but concerns about increased costs affect ROI perception across organizations.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.1
Nagios Core relies on community support, praised for stability and resources, but lacks official help compared to Nagios XI.
Sentiment score
6.5
Nagios XI support is mixed; praised for responsiveness but criticized for high cost, complex licensing, and delayed responses.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Nagios Core shows scalability for large networks but may need customizations and integrations for distributed environments.
Sentiment score
7.1
Nagios XI is scalable for small to medium environments but faces challenges in large infrastructures and cloud adaptability.
The solution is scalable.
If the user interface isn’t presenting data well, it becomes difficult to manage when scaling.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Nagios Core is highly stable and reliable with minimal footprint, supporting extensive monitoring without network burden.
Sentiment score
7.3
Nagios XI is stable, but large deployments may experience performance issues, database problems, and minor network dependencies.
I tried many other solutions at work, however, in terms of Nagios, I haven't seen any disruption or downtime.
It is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Nagios Core needs a more intuitive interface, better scalability, and features like enhanced reporting and integration with modern tools.
Nagios XI's interface is outdated, lacks scalability, needs better cloud integration, APIs, automation, and improved documentation.
Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
The GUI could be improved. It's a bit too basic.
 

Setup Cost

Nagios Core is a free, cost-effective open-source tool, but requires Linux expertise and incurs hosting and maintenance costs.
Nagios XI provides cost-efficient enterprise-level monitoring with reasonable pricing, appreciated for its features and open-source options.
We are using the free, open-source version.
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Nagios Core provides flexible, low-resource monitoring with customization, automation, efficient alerts, and integration support for reliable IT performance visibility.
Nagios XI provides customizable, flexible, and scalable IT infrastructure monitoring with real-time alerts and extensive plugin support.
It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.
Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
The alerting system is very effective.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
6th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nagios XI
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
16th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.7%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios XI is 3.6%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 26, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Amir  Said - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective alerting enhances network monitoring experience with an easy setup
We love Nagios XI due to the fact that JPS Web is very useful. JPS monitors the modem and performs switching, monitoring the computer, and performing switching. We implement some applications and traffic monitoring. The alerting system is very effective. For instance, if we have an alarm on some RAM storage if the traffic is cut or dropped.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
842,296 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…
 

Answers from the Community

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 26, 2019
Aug 26, 2019
I installed it in my AWS and Google cloud computing environments. Following the documentation explicitly, logs all indicated successful results yet neither environment was able to open up the GUI to confirm it was functional. I opened a support case which I've done with almost every product I have ever installed and was informed that I needed to have a licensed product before support could answ...
See 2 answers
it_user1142991 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 13, 2019
Ultimately NagiosXI is the better solution than Core but shortlisting NagiosXI also definitely depends on the infra landscape, technology, network devices, and other scopes of activities in monitoring. The biggest difference I see between Nagios Core and XI is the user interface, reporting, and onboarding any element for monitoring, and that onboarding is much easier in NagiosXI than Core. Nagios Core is little complicated where you have to use console called Nconf or editing conf files in Linux needs more technical knowledge than using NagiosXI.
WL
Aug 26, 2019
I installed it in my AWS and Google cloud computing environments. Following the documentation explicitly, logs all indicated successful results yet neither environment was able to open up the GUI to confirm it was functional. I opened a support case which I've done with almost every product I have ever installed and was informed that I needed to have a licensed product before support could answer my questions. I just finished a project where I installed crushftp and I had a similar problem and I hadn't purchased the product. They asked me for logs and supplied a solution in short order. I couldn't suggest the product with support like that as I've spent years apologizing for HP support that was almost nonexistent.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
60%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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 do you like most about Nagios XI?
It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Core vs. Nagios XI and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.