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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
16th
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
26th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
30th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
24th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Centreon is 1.5%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.5%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Centreon1.5%
Icinga1.5%
Other97.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Sulesh PK - PeerSpot reviewer
Monitoring and Operations Pilot at Egis S.A.
Experience enhanced monitoring with real-time alerts and efficient support
I would like to see automation in the poller features, as currently, the poller is not automated. If we could automate the addition or removal of hosts in the poller, it would improve efficiency. Sometimes, Centreon does not show the status of services as updated, which should be addressed. Additionally, enhancements are needed in identifying configuration issues, providing real-time alerts in case of issues, and improving the HTTP configuration tasks, as Centreon does not currently display issues with HTTP links, requiring manual investigation.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the product's scalability to be one of the most valuable features since it allows us to add unlimited devices for monitoring and to set up additional polling servers without additional license cost or downtime in our monitoring."
"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."
"Valuable features include the ability to schedule downtime, intensity or depth of monitoring which it does, different plugin packs, Centreon MAP, Centreon BI."
"I really like the filtering capabilities of it. You can easily tell what's critical next to what's okay, the state of the services. It's very easy to get the whole picture quickly."
"In addition, the flexibility, customizability, and analytics of Centreon's dashboards are all very good. The dashboards help us see the whole network map, and that is quite valuable for us. In addition, the dashboards have helped to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time... The flexibility has given us the ability to add in our own monitoring metrics and that has been quite interesting and very useful for us."
"Another feature we use is Business Activity, which provides us with an end-user perspective when a service is down or isn't working correctly. This is helpful when monitoring the KPIs. When we see a device or server that isn't working, we find the root cause."
"We have the business activity monitoring, the map, and the MBI modules and they are all very good."
"We are alerted on service impacts and not when something is down. We have saved a lot of time on non-business-hours intervention."
"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."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"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."
"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."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, when the GUI and some of the search fields are being reset, and I return to the page, then I have to set them again. Therefore, some improvement on the UI and the filtering is needed."
"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."
"I went through a few things with them to do with Centreon MAP, to do with active polygons, being able to draw an area and make that active. The functionality was in the older version of Centreon MAP and in the new version, which was a complete rewrite, they dropped it."
"Sometimes, Centreon does not show the status of services as updated, which should be addressed."
"The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram."
"I would like to see a better UI, one which is more responsive."
"The reporting has room for improvement."
"Centreon is very bad with auto-scanning. It's very monolithic software. It doesn't have microservices and it only has basic clustering. You cannot, for example, have six or seven nodes for Centreon's cloud processes."
"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 tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"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."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"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."
"The user interface should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."
"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."
"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."
"They only sell four hour slots for support, so if you have just one question, then you need to pay for four hours. Or, you need to wait until you have enough questions to fill those four hours. They are not flexible in this."
"The pricing works out well for us, given our environment and where we are."
"Centreon is better than Nagios XI in regards to cost and support response times, when you have a problem. If you have a problem, it costs money to contact the Nagios XI support."
"The pricing is acceptable."
"The solution is very effective, despite the low price."
"It's an open-source solution."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"The solution is free to use."
"The solution is cheap."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 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...
 

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: March 2026.
884,266 professionals have used our research since 2012.