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Centreon vs Icinga 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

Centreon
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
16th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
22nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
20th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
28th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
22nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Centreon is 2.3%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 3.1%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Centreon2.3%
Icinga3.1%
Other94.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Simon KONAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Plug-ins are free but it has limitations in sending out information to users
The issue my company has with the tool stems from the fact that it didn't give an on-time response to us. The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram. The solution can be used if you want to get email notifications, which is not good for our company because if someone is not in front of their desktop, you can't receive information about an equipment or LAN that is down.
Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Centreon's real-time monitoring, despite having some manual aspects, supports us in managing our operations effectively."
"I can't point to one valuable feature. All of Centreon is good."
"Predetermined templates allow for simple and fast service monitoring configuration."
"E-mail alert notifications are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of servers and networks, because we have a lot of them and need to maintain control."
"The customizable reports and dashboards are really flexible. We started this partnership with Centreon, when we were looking for a solution, because of the flexibility of the reporting. That's what we found to be most attractive in the solution. You can display the data as you want."
"The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."
"What we like about it is that, whereas with Nagios, by design, if you have five or six data centers, you have to open five or six web pages to see what's going on, In Centreon, this is all included in one page, a single site, one dashboard. You don't have to jump from one specific dashboard to the other."
"Icinga has multiple automation and integration features. There is an API for everything and a web UI for configurations. The APIs enable you to automate tasks in Icinga. We can also use plugins to talk to the API. The Icinga Director talks to a database in the background, and you can import settings from the CMDB to all systems in Icinga."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"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."
"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."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, Centreon does not show the status of services as updated, which should be addressed."
"Currently, we have to go through all of the different templates and take a look at how the template is configured, and how specific parameters may change across different templates with different precedents, megatons, etc. It's a lot of work and involves trial and error. I wish they could simplify the process."
"I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful."
"Opening a ticket on the website of Centreon can be difficult for my colleague, but not for me because my English is good. However, my colleague doesn't speak English well, as our company is in Quebec and our first language is French."
"The problem with the reporting is you have to configure the report, and after that, you will have the same report every month, every week, every day. You have to sync it in order to have a great report."
"The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram."
"Centreon is actually missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD."
"Response times can be slow, often leaving us to resolve basic issues in-house."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
"It needs Trap SNMP. I saw the documentation for Zabbix, that it has its own built-in product which handles SNMP traps, and there's nothing similar in Icinga or Nagios. I think this feature is most important for me."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is perfect and very cheap if you are a little company or startup. After that, it is quite expensive for a big company."
"The tool is cheaply priced."
"In terms of licensing, you have to think through if the components that need licensing are really needed. For example, the Map module: If you don't need a map to be shown, I don't see a point in paying for those licenses, if you just use it a couple of times a month or a couple of times a week... You can use the Centreon free version and get the main features. The licensing part is, I would say, only for bigger customers who have the option to pay more and who really need those kinds of modules, fancy reports, etc."
"For more complex tasks, we use prepaid support days and ask Centreon to come onsite."
"The pricing works out well for us, given our environment and where we are."
"The price is not too high. Licensing is driven by how many hosts you monitor, but because you can run the agentless version, you don't have to declare every host to Centreon, one at a time. That means you can drive your infrastructure supervision with a very low number of declared hosts."
"Their licensing model is really easy. You have one license and you have access to all the features, compared to other tools where you have to purchase add-ons."
"I would like to see improvement in the licensing model. You can purchase X number of licenses, up to 1,000 devices or 1,000 instances. Your next batch is 2,000. But what if you only need, say, 1,200? The model could be changed a little bit."
"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."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is free to use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Centreon?
Centreon's pricing is not very expensive. Initially, I rated it seven, but corrected to five out of ten.
What needs improvement with Centreon?
I have certain concerns with Centreon, such as being unable to set downtime for multiple devices at once due to the limitation of adding only 50 devices in a single go. Increasing this limit would ...
What is your primary use case for Centreon?
We are using Centreon for monitoring devices, both LAN and WAN devices. There are subsidiaries for my company, so if any devices go down or there are any service alerts, we receive alerts through C...
What do you like most about Icinga?
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.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Icinga Cloud Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.
Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. Icinga and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,985 professionals have used our research since 2012.