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Centreon vs Nagios Core comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
25th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
22nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (18th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
8th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Centreon is 2.5%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Caulson Chua - PeerSpot reviewer
With fewer staff resources, we can identify and address issues before the system goes down
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime. The dashboard is user-friendly, and the solution provides good reporting and visibility. The layout is straightforward. You can click on the drop-down list to select the server you want. The anomaly detection feature helped us reduce our average resolution time by 30 minutes to an hour.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"We have a single GUI where we can view the status of all our infrastructure."
"We are alerted on service impacts and not when something is down. We have saved a lot of time on non-business-hours intervention."
"Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to build an abstraction of service visualization. You can add services to an entity called Business Activities and you can see the state of these activities."
"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."
"For servers and for applications, it was very, very efficient."
"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."
"It is fairly easy to set up, and we can monitor pretty much everything we want to."
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."
"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."
"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
 

Cons

"It is necessary to improve service monitoring of database services in the free version."
"The most important issue is the capability to interconnect with other systems. It already exists for some of them. For example, the Stream Connector is something we use to populate data in another system. This kind of facility for connecting should exist for all products that it makes sense to have connected to a monitoring solution."
"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."
"There are improvements that they need to make to their API. When we're using different systems and we want to disable monitoring for a specific server, we still can't do that through the API. That's something that's lacking."
"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."
"Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"Centreon technical support is only available during Central European business hours. When it comes to critical business solutions, there should be a 24/7 hotline that customers can rely on."
"It is a bit slow due to latency."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's quite expensive when you use the Enterprise version, but if you compare it to other providers, it's more like a middle-of-the-line product. It's always good to have a price that is lower, but I would say the price is okay because we get very good support and if we have any other issues we can always contact them. There has never been a time when I didn't get help from them."
"Centreon is always available to develop new plugins when needed. The most important thing is that their maintenance account yearly subscription fee includes the fact that they will maintain the new plugins that you requested them to deliver."
"The solution has a free part and after that threshold, you will need to pay. For example, if you believe you can create an interesting map, most of the time, you will have to pay 10,000 Euros per year for having access to these components."
"The solution is very effective, despite the low price."
"The pricing is acceptable."
"Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."
"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 tool is cheaply priced."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server."
"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"It's free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Centreon?
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and av...
What needs improvement with Centreon?
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 Telegr...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

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.
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.