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Datadog vs Nagios Core vs Nagios XI 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Datadog enhances visibility, reduces downtime, saves costs, and optimizes workflows by integrating features and improving operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
8.8
Nagios Core reduces downtime and costs with quick alerts, providing full ROI and eliminating expensive monitoring tools.
Sentiment score
6.6
Nagios XI enhances efficiency and time management but concerns about increased costs affect ROI perception across organizations.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Datadog's customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, though some users report delays with complex queries and phone support.
Sentiment score
5.1
Nagios Core relies on community support, praised for stability and resources, but lacks official help compared to Nagios XI.
Sentiment score
6.5
Nagios XI support is mixed; praised for responsiveness but criticized for high cost, complex licensing, and delayed responses.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog efficiently scales with cloud services, offering seamless expansion, though users highlight the importance of monitoring pricing.
Sentiment score
6.7
Nagios Core shows scalability for large networks but may need customizations and integrations for distributed environments.
Sentiment score
7.1
Nagios XI is scalable for small to medium environments but faces challenges in large infrastructures and cloud adaptability.
The solution is scalable.
If the user interface isn’t presenting data well, it becomes difficult to manage when scaling.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog offers reliable and stable performance with minimal downtime, impressive uptime, and efficient monitoring, even during peak periods.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nagios Core is highly stable and reliable with minimal footprint, supporting extensive monitoring without network burden.
Sentiment score
7.3
Nagios XI is stable, but large deployments may experience performance issues, database problems, and minor network dependencies.
I tried many other solutions at work, however, in terms of Nagios, I haven't seen any disruption or downtime.
It is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Datadog needs improved performance, interface simplification, clearer billing, better integration, customization, analytics, documentation, security, and mobile app integration.
Nagios Core needs a more intuitive interface, better scalability, and features like enhanced reporting and integration with modern tools.
Nagios XI's interface is outdated, lacks scalability, needs better cloud integration, APIs, automation, and improved documentation.
In future updates, I would like to see AI features included in Datadog for monitoring AI spend and usage to make the product more versatile and appealing for the customer.
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
There should be a clearer view of the expenses.
Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
The GUI could be improved. It's a bit too basic.
 

Setup Cost

Datadog offers flexible pricing based on usage and organization size, with potential for high costs if not monitored closely.
Nagios Core is a free, cost-effective open-source tool, but requires Linux expertise and incurs hosting and maintenance costs.
Nagios XI provides cost-efficient enterprise-level monitoring with reasonable pricing, appreciated for its features and open-source options.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
We are using the free, open-source version.
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Datadog offers intuitive, comprehensive monitoring and integrations, enhancing infrastructure and application management with real-time insights and efficient operations.
Nagios Core provides flexible, low-resource monitoring with customization, automation, efficient alerts, and integration support for reliable IT performance visibility.
Nagios XI provides customizable, flexible, and scalable IT infrastructure monitoring with real-time alerts and extensive plugin support.
Our architecture is written in several languages, and one area where Datadog particularly shines is in providing first-class support for a multitude of programming languages.
The technology itself is generally very useful.
It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.
Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
The alerting system is very effective.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Datadog is 5.2%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios XI is 3.5%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog5.2%
Nagios Core3.2%
Nagios XI3.5%
Other88.1%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer820579 - PeerSpot reviewer
Single pane of glass, easy to share dashboards, and good for monitoring
We've had some issues where we had Datadog automatically turned on in AWS regions that we weren't using, which incurred a small but steady cost that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars spent over a few weeks. I wish there was a global setting that lets an admin restrict which regions DD is turned on in as a default setup step. Sometimes, the APM service dashboard link isn't sharable. I click something in the service catalog, and on that service's APM default view, I try to share a link to that with a teammate, and they reach a blank or error screen. I wish there was more organization and detail in the suggestions when I use the query editor. I'm never quite sure when the autofill dropdown shows up if I'm seeing some custom tag or some default property, so I have to know exactly what I'm looking for in order to build a chart. It's hard to navigate and explore using the query autofill suggestions without knowing exactly what tag to look for. It's been a bit hard to understand how data gets sampled or how many data points a particular dashboard value is using. We've had questions over the RUM metrics that we see and we had to ask for help with how values are calculated, bin sizes, etc to get confidence in our data.
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.
Amir  Said - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective alerting enhances network monitoring experience with an easy setup
We love Nagios XI due to the fact that JPS Web is very useful. JPS monitors the modem and performs switching, monitoring the computer, and performing switching. We implement some applications and traffic monitoring. The alerting system is very effective. For instance, if we have an alarm on some RAM storage if the traffic is cut or dropped.
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise82
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems,...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several time...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was t...
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 hos...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about Nagios XI?
It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in IT Infrastructure Monitoring. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.