ControlUp vs Icinga comparison

ControlUp and Icinga are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. ControlUp is ranked #33 with an average rating of 8.0, while Icinga is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.3. ControlUp holds a 1.0% mindshare in IM, compared to Icinga’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ControlUp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Icinga users who would recommend it.

ControlUp

Read 12 ControlUp reviews

1,270 Views
394 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Icinga

Read 17 Icinga reviews

3,289 Views
385 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

ControlUp

Icinga

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Icinga and ControlUp are competing products in the IT monitoring and management space. ControlUp seems to have the upper hand in environments requiring deep insights due to its comprehensive monitoring and troubleshooting features.

Features: Icinga offers customizable alerting and compatibility with various plugins, adapting to different IT environments. It provides modularity in monitoring architecture. ControlUp has real-time performance monitoring, advanced analytics, and supports in-depth insight into virtual environments.

Room for Improvement: Icinga could enhance its real-time monitoring capabilities and streamline its initial setup process. It may also benefit from expanding its analytics features. ControlUp might improve its customization options and expand plugin support. Additionally, simplifying its configuration for complex environments could be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Icinga's modular approach requires configuration, potentially leading to more initial setup effort. ControlUp offers a streamlined setup process with central management tools, and it is noted for its customer service providing efficient guidance during deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Icinga's open-source framework leads to lower initial setup costs, offering better ROI for those with technical expertise. ControlUp demands higher upfront costs due to its extensive capabilities but offers significant ROI through enhanced operational efficiency and reduced downtime.

To learn more, read our detailed ControlUp vs. Icinga Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. Icinga

June 2025

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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

ControlUp

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

33rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)

Icinga

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

25th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (17th), Server Monitoring (12th), Cloud Monitoring Software (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 4.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Richasvi Tripathi

Solutions Developer at HCL Technologies

Used to monitor several devices, but most reports do not give information of all the devices

We have approximately 10 to 20 feature requests pending on the vendor side. Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices. In our case, we are monitoring 200000 devices. So, we need details for all those devices, but that is limited to 100, which they have improved to an extent in some reports. I'm thinking of one feature request for ISPs because the dashboard does not provide a detailed list of ISPs, and it provides the wrong list. I feel some firewall issues are blocking that, and the team cannot send that detail. That may be the case. One feature request pending on the vendor side is the data format change. Once you see a detail in the report, it is mentioned in some other format, which is hard to analyze sometimes.

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Harrison Bulley

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the granularity of visibility into the resources that are in use by our applications."

"Integration with Netscaler and Scoutbees can provide a proper end-to-end analysis of the user's experience and give us a real ROI."

"It has a great career time monitoring tool."

"The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities."

"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."

"ControlUp has an easy installation process."

"The visual look of the interface is very easy to understand what is happening and somewhat why it's happening."

"ControlUp has some good functionalities, such as remotely pushing scripts in the device through the tool."

More ControlUp pros

"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."

"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."

"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."

"We have found the solution to be stable."

"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."

"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."

"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."

More Icinga pros

Cons

"This solution be improved by including load throttling tools. For example, I can identify a service where we spend a lot of CPU but I cannot restrict the service from ControlUp. I have to use another tool like AppSense."

"It can be improved by including script-based scheduling."

"Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices."

"Solve is a quick and intuitive tool for quickly mapping data together, however, once you have the view of the data that you like, it is difficult to share this with colleagues."

"Something I would love to see from a partner perspective would be maybe a way to do this in a surface hosting provider."

"We'd like to see the mobile app working again so that we can get alerts 24/7. This is especially useful for the person on call."

"There was some lag earlier, and reports pulled from the dashboard would sometimes be half an hour old. But now, the information provides real-time status, which is greatly appreciated. Overall, I've seen improvement in the product."

"The graphical user interface needs to be improved from version to version."

More ControlUp cons

"The installation and configuration are very complex."

"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."

"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 user interface should be improved."

"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."

"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."

"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."

More Icinga cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."

"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."

"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."

"The solution is cheap."

"It's an open-source solution."

"The solution is free to use."

"This is an open-source solution with paid support."

"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."

"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."

"We're using the free version of Icinga."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Healthcare Company

12%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ControlUp Real-time?

Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive. It is a cheap tool because it is deployed to many devices where I work.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ControlUp Real-time?

There is area for improvement, maybe in the reporting. It could use some work in reporting.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?

My use cases include everything, and I don't mean that facetiously. I mean everything. We manage the servers, manage user sessions, manage everything. We monitor monitoring and take actual actions,...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Nexthink vs ControlUp

Compared 26% of the time

Citrix uberAgent Monitoring vs ControlUp

Compared 23% of the time

eG Enterprise vs ControlUp

Compared 7% of the time

SysTrack vs ControlUp

Compared 7% of the time

Liquidware Stratusphere UX vs ControlUp

Compared 6% of the time

More ControlUp Competitors

Zabbix vs Icinga

Compared 43% of the time

Nagios Core vs Icinga

Compared 22% of the time

Checkmk vs Icinga

Compared 11% of the time

Nagios XI vs Icinga

Compared 4% of the time

Centreon vs Icinga

Compared 3% of the time

More Icinga Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp

June 2025

Download ControlUp product report

Buyer's Guide

Icinga

June 2025

Download Icinga product report

Also Known As

No data available

Icinga Cloud Monitoring

Overview

ControlUp is a digital experience monitoring management platform that makes it possible for IT teams to deliver a work-from-anywhere experience for employees. The solution makes fixing and preventing issues easy, enabling IT teams to make smarter decisions. It also provides monitoring performance, availability, and useful productivity metrics.

The ControlUp platform supports:

Any digital workstyle
Physical endpoints
Virtual desktops
Apps
SaaS
Web apps
Unified communications tools

ControlUp Features

ControlUp has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Out-of-the-box device and performance metrics
Custom metric and device data collection
Non-intrusive, secure agents with offline mode
Custom reporting
Easy-to-use dashboards
Scalable SaaS infrastructure
Built-in troubleshooting & remediation actions
Remote assist
Custom script actions
Multiple scripting languages
Automation and alerting

ControlUp Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing ControlUp. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Wide range of platform options: ControlUp offers multiple platform options including Windows, macOS, Linux, and IGE, independent of device location.

Powerful analytics: With ControlUp, you can analyze across your entire infrastructure or you can collect detailed individual device performance.

Optimizes performance: The solution enables you to remediate issues and optimize performance with its support of both manual and automated actions.

Minimize user downtime: ControlUp helps you catch common issues that lead to workflow interruptions. Self-correcting capabilities and comprehensive early-warning systems address issues before they impact employee productivity.

Resolve issues faster: The solution enables you to spend less time on support calls and more time driving value via its real-time troubleshooting and remediation solutions.

Increased visibility of remote environments: Gain real-time visibility across your entire network and find new ways to deliver the best end-user experience possible.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the ControlUp solution.

A Chair, IEEE Consumer Technology Society - Dallas,Texas, USA at a non-profit says, “In terms of the public cloud, ControlUp's features make us feel very secure. Security, uptime, and reduced capital expenditures are the main reasons we use ControlUp. So basically, the money that we consume is based on the amount of time we are using a service. ControlUp offers a return-on-investment type of approach that helps us.”

A VP Virtualisation and Citrix Engineer at BlackRock mentions, “Solve is quickly becoming one of the most-used features. Its interface allows us to connect to all 54,000 monitored endpoints in real-time. The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities. Combined with the triggers, we have been growing their usage to fix things before they become an issue. Lastly, the controller view allows us to compare the configurations of settings side-by-side which is extremely helpful when tracking down the RCA of an issue.”

A Senior Citrix Remote Access Engineer at Rabobank comments, “The high-level view of the estate coupled with powerful administration tools has been great. We can see real-time performance and trends and can create triggers for common issues with associated scripts that can automate a lot of the previous manual remediation steps.”

ControlUp

Icinga monitors systems, network devices, infrastructure, and services, helping manage and analyze server resources. It automates ticket incidents and alerting, providing oversight of client Windows and Linux systems.

Icinga offers comprehensive monitoring of servers including CPU utilization and RAM space, facilitating automated incident management and alerting. Frequently deployed on-premises, this monitoring tool is key for managed services providers and organizations to oversee and ensure optimal performance of various environments, including applications like databases and web servers. It provides extensive features for creating custom plugins, stabilization, scalability, and high customization capabilities suitable for different infrastructure needs.

What are the key features of Icinga?

Event Handler: Facilitates automatic self-healing of systems.
Extensive Plugin Library: Offers a wide range of plugins for monitoring.
Ease of Use: Simplifies user experience with an intuitive interface and Icinga Director for easy configurations.
Open-Source Nature: Free to use, modify, and distribute.
Automation Capabilities: Integrates with APIs and Ansible Collections for automation.
Custom Plugins: Users can create and integrate their own plugins.
Stability and Scalability: Provides reliable performance across different scale infrastructures.

What are the benefits or ROI to look for when evaluating Icinga?

Critical Issue Highlighting: Effectively identifies and notifies about critical problems.
High Customization: Offers flexibility for diverse monitoring needs.
Automated Alerting: Reduces manual effort and improves response times.
Extensive Integration: Works seamlessly with other tools and platforms.

Icinga implementations span multiple industries, providing essential monitoring for IT infrastructure in healthcare, finance, and education. Managed services providers utilize Icinga to maintain and monitor client systems across various environments while ensuring optimal performance and compliance. It is highly valued in these sectors for its ability to customize monitoring, improving operational efficiency and reducing downtime.

Icinga

Sample Customers

B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. Icinga

June 2025

Free Report: ControlUp vs. Icinga

Find out what your peers are saying about ControlUp vs. Icinga and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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