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ControlUp vs Zabbix comparison

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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Organizations achieve efficiency and cost savings with ControlUp, automating tasks, preventing disasters, and optimizing virtual environments.
Sentiment score
7.2
Large enterprises save over $1 million with Zabbix via reduced costs, improved service availability, and enhanced team efficiency.
This is having a 24/7 junior admin who's really smart, always there, always doing work, but you have to consume his work.
Senior Systems Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Basically, what we were targeting is the response time of the virtual environment.
Senior IT Engineer Citrix at EDR Media LLC
Through utilizing automated remediation scripts and catching crucial issues proactively, we have cut our manual troubleshooting and incident response time in half.
Developer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
9.0
ControlUp's responsive, knowledgeable support enhances customer experience, offering integration flexibility and premium benefits for larger organizations.
Sentiment score
6.9
Zabbix offers excellent paid support, while non-paying users utilize highly praised community forums and documentation for assistance.
I was quite happy to work with ControlUp because the support is excellent.
Senior IT Engineer Citrix at EDR Media LLC
Basically, if I could take everything that you do, put it in a tool, and hand you that tool so you don't have to repeat your efforts, then you would be able to make good use of it.
Senior Systems Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It receives a perfect 10 for guaranteed, dedicated 24/7 technical support with strict SLA only when you purchase one of their premium commercial tiers.
Developer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
It is so straightforward that I have never had to use the support.
CTO at Oic
I changed the config file by adjusting the connector size and cache size.
Consultant at ministry of trade
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
ControlUp's cloud scalability eases expansion, though pricing concerns arise, highlighting the importance of strategic adaptability and monitoring.
Sentiment score
6.9
Zabbix is highly scalable and efficient for medium to enterprise needs, though requires careful resource management to avoid bottlenecks.
It scales very well; you just have to tell it what you're doing and size it for what you're asking.
Senior Systems Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Zabbix is very scalable and lightweight.
CTO at Oic
Zabbix has high scalability.
CTO at Four Nine Agency
Zabbix scales extremely well both vertically and horizontally.
Developer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
ControlUp is praised for its stability and effective monitoring, with most users finding it reliable and well-supported.
Sentiment score
7.5
Zabbix is generally stable and reliable with minimal issues, but improvements are needed for larger deployments and setup challenges.
Zabbix is very scalable and lightweight.
CTO at Oic
Zabbix is quite stable, and we haven't had any problems with Zabbix itself.
CTO at Four Nine Agency
I think the stability of Zabbix is around five to six on a scale of ten, where ten is the best and one is the worst.
Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

ControlUp needs seamless integration, improved monitoring, GUI enhancements, and additional features for better automation and complete insights.
Zabbix needs improvement in UI, documentation, integration, licensing, and features like monitoring, automation, and customization for modern use.
There is area for improvement, maybe in the reporting.
Senior Systems Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The only issue I can note is that it's Linux-based, and Linux documentation is not the best.
CTO at Oic
Setting up the right templates, pre-shows, and scripts requires a lot of deep Linux and system knowledge compared to more plug-and-play tools.
Developer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
I installed Zabbix for the 300 devices.
Consultant at ministry of trade
 

Setup Cost

ControlUp pricing involves annual agreements with varied costs; thorough evaluation of licensing options is essential for optimal use.
Zabbix provides a free, open-source monitoring solution with optional support services for enterprises, praised for affordability and no licensing fees.
It is expensive.
Senior IT Engineer Citrix at EDR Media LLC
Zabbix is providing everything free of cost.
Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
It is literally free.
CTO at Oic
 

Valuable Features

ControlUp offers efficient ROI, real-time insights, robust automation, and proactive management with AI-enhanced performance monitoring and comprehensive visibility.
Zabbix offers ease of use, scalability, robust monitoring, integration, and flexibility, making it ideal for diverse environments.
Everything works exactly the way it's meant to, a dream come true for anyone who's administering systems because it gives you all the information that you want and all the actions you want to take, all in one place.
Senior Systems Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It's not only monitoring, but it's also detecting, and it could even fix problems with a lot of automation that you can put in place to fix problems automatically before you even detect them.
Senior IT Engineer Citrix at EDR Media LLC
If disk usage surpasses a threshold, say 70%, I receive alerts and can take proactive action.
CTO at Oic
Zabbix natively supports monitoring everything from Linux servers and Windows servers to network devices and cloud infrastructure.
Developer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Zabbix has a lot of features, including monitoring, status updates, and collecting information telemetry from storages and servers as well.
CTO at Four Nine Agency
 

Categories and Ranking

ControlUp
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
30th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (6th)
Zabbix
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (10th), Network Monitoring Software (1st), Server Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 4.8%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zabbix4.8%
ControlUp0.8%
Other94.4%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Jean-CharlesMoriaud - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Engineer Citrix at EDR Media LLC
Automation capabilities and proactive monitoring have improved infrastructure reliability and reduced troubleshooting time
ControlUp has a lot of automation in it. It detects problems and failures very well. It's not only monitoring, but it's also detecting, and it could even fix problems with a lot of automation that you can put in place to fix problems automatically before you even detect them. That's one of the strong points of ControlUp. All the automations, and there's a large customer-written automation. You can pick up those automations and use them on your environment, and it helps a lot. This is very good. It's not third-party, but it's external routines and automations that you can download from their website and implement on your side. That's one of the strong points of ControlUp. ControlUp, the way we implemented it, and the goal of ControlUp, is to be proactive instead of starting to work on a problem when it already happens. There are a lot of counters and monitors you can implement that will help you detect problems before they happen.
PJ
Developer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Unified monitoring has reduced outages and enables proactive fixes with automated remediation
My favorite best feature is the ability to manage complex hybrid environments from a single dashboard. Zabbix natively supports monitoring everything from Linux servers and Windows servers to network devices and cloud infrastructure. The view I rely on the most on a day-to-day basis is a custom dashboard combining the problem widget and graph widget. The problem widget gives me an immediate filtered snapshot of the active alerts across all our servers. I pair that with the graph widget, which allows me to track performance metrics and compare values over time, such as monitoring storage and capacity trends on our Synology appliance. Having all of this in a single pane of glass saves me from constantly digging through logs. I also rely heavily on custom dashboards that combine the problem widget and the top host widget. The problem widget gives me an immediate filtered list of any active alerts across the entire environment. I pair that with the top host widget, which instantly shows me which servers are consuming the highest resources. Having all of these related metrics side-by-side in a single view allows me to spot the issue and identify the exact server causing it without having to dig through separate tools. Zabbix has built-in machine learning for continuous anomaly detection and proactive trend prediction. It establishes a baseline by analyzing historical data, allowing it to forecast impending issues, such as predicting exactly when a system will run out of resources before critical thresholds are breached. From a governance and security perspective, it delivers enterprise-grade security by supporting full data encryption and integration with external secret vaults to protect sensitive credentials. From a governance perspective, it features detailed configuration change tracking and role-based user permissions, which allows administrators to secure different teams or tenants within a single environment. Regarding accuracy, Zabbix's proactive alerts are highly accurate and trustworthy, provided they are fed enough historical data to establish a solid baseline. Regarding reliability and output, the prediction outputs are extremely reliable because Zabbix relies on transparent statistical mathematics, such as standard deviation and weighted moving averages, rather than a closed black box AI model. The straightforward statistical approach allows administrators to forecast value reliability and predict exactly how much time they have before a system reaches a critical problem threshold.
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ControlUp Real-time?
It is expensive. It is very expensive. I was working in a bank, and even in the bank, which was quite healthy, the ControlUp budget was something we had to defend very harshly.
What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?
I was taking care of a Citrix infrastructure, and as ControlUp is the best monitoring tool for those environments, I was also using ControlUp to monitor those environments.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?
I think Zabbix is economical, whereas SolarWinds is expensive. SolarWinds has a lot of secure features, but Zabbix is providing everything free of cost. Zabbix is economical, and you can install it...
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
I am using only Area Operations, but I don't prefer it. I installed Zabbix for the 3000 devices. Area Operations is not good.
What is your primary use case for Zabbix?
I am still working with VMware and Area Operations, but I installed Zabbix now. I think Zabbix is better than VMware Area Operations. It's really good. I'm working with both Zabbix and VMware now.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about ControlUp vs. Zabbix and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.