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Cisco Crosswork Network Insights vs Nagios Core comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cisco Crosswork Network Ins...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
58th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Crosswork Network Insights is 0.1%. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.9%
Cisco Crosswork Network Insights0.1%
Other98.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

James  Scot - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Specialist at FedEx
Automation has transformed endpoint deployment and streamlines multi-vendor network operations
The best features that Cisco Crosswork Network Insights offers include a single pane of glass, multi-vendor comparison, and the ability to reduce engineer workload. The single pane of glass and multi-vendor comparison features help my team day-to-day because with the single pane of glass, we are able to manage everything at a single place, hence saving a lot of time, and the administration becomes very easy. Additionally, there is real-time network monitoring and analytics, multi-vendor and multi-domain support, scalable AI-driven insights to make data-driven decisions easy, and a modular application ecosystem with open APIs. Cisco Crosswork Network Insights has empowered our team to deploy network devices at customer locations more efficiently than ever before, and it also delivers critical network telemetry, streamlining troubleshooting and reducing reliance on manual processes. Cisco Crosswork Network Insights has positively impacted my organization by enhancing automation for endpoint deployment, hence saving a lot of time, and network usage statistics delivery to the end user's environment has been quicker.
HY
Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group
Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure
The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything. Everything in the IT domain, you can monitor anything. You can even monitor printers, the ports of printers, Core workstations, and storage. You can monitor the workflow Core and the utilization of computes. If you want to grasp everything of your IT equipment on a single interface, you can use Nagios. It's the best one. It provides dashboards, and you can also configure your emails and alerts with it. If something is critical, you can configure it to notify via emails. It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Crosswork Network Insights has impacted my organization positively as it has saved a lot of time, reduced management overhead, and simplified operations through a single pane of glass."
"Cisco Crosswork Network Insights has been very fundamental and robust and helpful in my organization, empowering our team to deploy network devices at customer locations more efficiently than ever, and it also delivers critical network telemetry, streamlining troubleshooting and reducing reliance on manual processes."
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"I would rate the overall solution ten points out of ten."
"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable, and we primarily use it for user experience monitoring and determining which layer the problem happened to resolve it."
"Monitoring with Nagios Core is helpful because it provides immediate alerts if something goes down, such as a server, or wireless router, or if there's a cable break. This allows us to respond promptly to any issues."
"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."
"This product covers all of our infrastructure health checks, and has triggers for us to alert us to any unusual behaviour of the monitored systems."
"Nagios doesn't get the respect it deserves; most likely due to the fact that it doesn't have a licensing cost."
"The most valuable feature depends on the project. It's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7. I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful."
 

Cons

"Cisco Crosswork Network Insights is not an easy-to-use product and thus requires some training to ensure that it can be used to the best of its capabilities."
"I have not seen a return on investment yet; we are still working on it."
"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."
"We use the free version of Nagios, which needs some administrative skills in order to configure correctly."
"Some of the reporting functionality is a bit basic and configuration is a chore although by the use of NagiosQL this can be made a lot easier."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"I would like to see more training videos."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
"Don't use it. If you're starting from scratch, there are products that scale better and perform better, and they use the same plugin syntax as they were initially Nagios forks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The product is cheaply priced."
"Most the plugin features are free."
"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."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"Nagios Core is free to use."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
"We are using the free version."
"It's free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
53%
Healthcare Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Transportation Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cisco Crosswork Network Insights?
Cisco Crosswork Network Insights is really good, but we just need to get updates.
What is your primary use case for Cisco Crosswork Network Insights?
My main use case for Cisco Crosswork Network Insights involves Cisco products.A specific example of how I use Cisco Crosswork Network Insights includes Cisco UCS blade servers, Cisco UI, and Cisco ...
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 is your primary use case for Nagios Core?
I was a senior system administrator. I've been using Nagios Core for more than ten years now. It can be used to monitor hosts, such as machines, and monitor services of any kind. I'm using it to mo...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.