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Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

Nagios XI
Ranking in Server Monitoring
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (14th), Cloud Monitoring Software (16th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (18th), Active Directory Management (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 6.3%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a monitoring agent. It's designed to do one thing. Its most valuable feature is its monitoring."
"The solution is pretty stable."
"Nagios allows us to configure any device so that we can send pager alerts when people don't have access to emails. It also allows us to schedule downtime and maintenance."
"The features I've found the most useful are the plug-ins, the fact that you can connect almost everything to it. That's very useful."
"It's great for monitoring IT services infrastructure."
"Nagios XI helped me to draw the network and check for system failures."
"The technical support is good."
"I can monitor a software made in-house to software of bigger companies."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used for monitoring."
"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."
"Management Console - Managing service to each server enrolled in the Solarwinds is much easier. Using a web base console, you can control your service much convenient way. There is no need to login remotely. It save a lot of time and effort."
 

Cons

"I would like to see support for notification via SMS."
"The product does not have SAP monitoring."
"The product could be optimized to improve the administrative user experience via the Nagios Core Configuration (NCC) GUI module."
"The reporting structure could be more streamlined."
"From an alerting point of view, some graphics and metrics don't work properly with Nagios XI as they do with Checkmk."
"I would like to be able to extend it to all of our data centers, whether they are in the cloud or not. It would be helpful if I could connect everywhere."
"The PNP4Nagios plugin not working easily with XI is an issue for me, because some open source monitoring plugins do not work out of the box. But in the end, you learn to live with it."
"The tool's AI model needs to be fixed."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the cost of the commercial product and support, and taking into account the open source characteristics of it, I believe it is difficult to a better value."
"We are using the free version of this solution."
"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"For our country in North Africa, it's expensive and we could purchase another solution for that price. But it's a reasonable price if we're speaking in international terms."
"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"As it is not an agentless tool, I think it is expensive."
"The pricing is really cost efficient. The licensing is perpetual and can be renewed very easily."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
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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
Educational Organization
60%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Educational Organization
45%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
Application-based monitoring, such as monitoring within servers like Apache and IIS, has room for improvement. Monitoring these services is more complex compared to others.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios XI vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,466 professionals have used our research since 2012.