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Datadog vs Nagios XI vs SolarWinds NPM 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
7.1
Organizations experienced diverse returns with Datadog, reporting time savings, reduced blindspots, enhanced visibility, integration benefits, and efficiency improvements.
Sentiment score
6.6
Nagios XI enhances efficiency and time management but concerns about increased costs affect ROI perception across organizations.
Sentiment score
7.2
SolarWinds NPM quickly proves cost-effective by enhancing network visibility, reducing support costs, and optimizing resource use for profitability.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Datadog customer service is responsive and professional, offering proactive support despite occasional delays in their ticket system.
Sentiment score
6.5
Nagios XI support is mixed; praised for responsiveness but criticized for high cost, complex licensing, and delayed responses.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM's service is knowledgeable but response times vary, with some customers finding direct support unsatisfactory.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog scales efficiently with diverse technologies, though rising costs and limited API capabilities remain concerns for some users.
Sentiment score
7.1
Nagios XI is scalable for small to medium environments but faces challenges in large infrastructures and cloud adaptability.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM is scalable, integrates globally, but managing resources and licensing is essential for effective performance and expansion.
If the user interface isn’t presenting data well, it becomes difficult to manage when scaling.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog offers reliable performance with minimal downtime, resolving integration issues promptly and maintaining consistent uptime even during peak traffic.
Sentiment score
7.3
Nagios XI is stable, but large deployments may experience performance issues, database problems, and minor network dependencies.
Sentiment score
7.5
Proper configuration and adherence to documentation ensure SolarWinds NPM's stability, though upgrades occasionally cause issues requiring support.
It is very stable.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
 

Room For Improvement

Datadog struggles with performance, usability, and cost issues, requiring improvements in integration, documentation, and user interface.
Nagios XI's interface is outdated, lacks scalability, needs better cloud integration, APIs, automation, and improved documentation.
SolarWinds NPM needs UI enhancements, better integration, responsive support, and more flexibility for improved efficiency and customer satisfaction.
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.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Features such as taking backup of the devices or configurations of the devices can be included in further versions of SolarWinds NPM.
 

Setup Cost

Datadog's pricing model is flexible yet can be costly, requiring careful planning to optimize its comprehensive features and avoid surprises.
Nagios XI provides cost-efficient enterprise-level monitoring with reasonable pricing, appreciated for its features and open-source options.
SolarWinds NPM offers scalable, valuable monitoring solutions with flexible pricing, starting from $2,000, based on deployment size and modules.
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.
PRTG's package offers all features in one bundle, which is cost-effective.
The solution is considered expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Datadog excels in integration, monitoring, and data visualization, enhancing system reliability and efficiency with seamless AWS synchronization.
Nagios XI provides customizable, flexible, and scalable IT infrastructure monitoring with real-time alerts and extensive plugin support.
SolarWinds NPM provides comprehensive network management with customization, scalability, and real-time monitoring to enhance performance and integration.
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.
Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
The alerting system is very effective.
It provides a detailed overview of the network, which is valuable.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 3.3%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios XI is 3.2%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
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.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.
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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
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 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.
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

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
Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: July 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.