Elastic Observability vs Icinga comparison

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Elastic Observability

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Icinga and Elastic Observability compete in the realm of monitoring and observability tools. Elastic Observability holds a superior position due to its extensive features and comprehensive solutions, which often justify its cost.

Features: Icinga is known for robust monitoring capabilities, scalability across various environments, and flexible integration options. It allows customizable alerting and supports numerous integrations. Elastic Observability stands out with advanced analytical capabilities, smooth integration with the Elastic stack, and efficient processing of large datasets. Its enhanced visualization tools provide an edge in data analysis and comprehension.

Room for Improvement: Icinga could improve by simplifying its deployment process to reduce the learning curve. Enhancing its user interface and expanding integration options would also be beneficial. Expanding community support resources could strengthen Icinga's appeal. Elastic Observability might focus on offering more budget-friendly options, refining its customer support experience, and enhancing its adaptability for smaller organizations. Expanding its integration versatility would be a beneficial enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Icinga's deployment process can be challenging, requiring detailed configuration and presenting a learning curve. It offers favorable customer support to aid technically skilled teams. Elastic Observability offers a streamlined deployment with options for both cloud and on-premise setups, supported by comprehensive documentation and strong support resources, catering well to diverse organizational needs.

Pricing and ROI: Icinga presents a more cost-effective entry point, appealing to budget-conscious organizations seeking effective monitoring without large investments, promising an attractive ROI for essential monitoring tasks. While Elastic Observability may involve higher initial expenses, it offers a stronger ROI through improved monitoring and analytic capabilities, often proving worth the investment for comprehensive observability needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. Icinga Report (Updated: December 2025).

Elastic Observability vs. Icinga

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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

Elastic Observability

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

9th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (6th), Log Management (12th), Container Monitoring (4th)

Icinga

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

28th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

21st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (23rd), Server Monitoring (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 2.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 2.8%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Elastic Observability	2.3%
Icinga	2.8%
Other	94.9%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities

In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."

"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."

"It is a powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."

"All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important."

"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."

"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."

"The most valuable feature of Elastic Observability is the text search."

"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."

More Elastic Observability pros

"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."

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

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

"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."

"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."

"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."

"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."

"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."

More Icinga pros

Cons

"I am familiar with Azure Monitor, which I find more user-friendly compared to Elastic, which is a very technical tool."

"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."

"If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."

"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."

"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."

"Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage."

"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."

"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."

More Elastic Observability cons

"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."

"The installation and configuration are very complex."

"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."

"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."

"Icinga’s automation could be improved."

"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."

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

"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."

More Icinga cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have been using the open-source version."

"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."

"The product is not that cheap."

"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."

"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."

"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."

"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution is free to use."

"It's an open-source solution."

"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."

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

"The solution is cheap."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

13%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...

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...

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...

What is your primary use case for Icinga?

We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...

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Product Reports

Elastic Observability

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Also Known As

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Icinga Cloud Monitoring

Overview

Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.

Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.

What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?

Centralized Logging: Streamlines the collection, analysis, and storage of log data.
Powerful Search: Provides robust search capabilities for quick access to relevant information.
Scalability: Supports growing data needs across diverse environments.
Real-time Telemetry: Ensures up-to-date insights and monitoring.
Platform Integration: Seamlessly connects with services like Teams and Slack.
Data Visualization: Enhances visibility with Elastic APM and Kibana.

What benefits and ROI should users explore in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers significant savings through efficient data management.
Rapid Incident Response: Minimizes downtime with quick troubleshooting tools.
Comprehensive Insights: Supports better business decisions with detailed data analysis.
Performance Tracking: Enables assessment of system effectiveness and improvements.

Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.

Elastic

Icinga is a robust tool for monitoring IT infrastructure, known for its distributed monitoring capabilities and seamless integration with multiple platforms. It efficiently observes servers, network devices, and environments like Linux and Windows, enabling proactive issue identification and resource management.

With a focus on task delegation and clustering, Icinga offers an intuitive interface through its GUI and Icinga Director, simplifying configuration. The extensive plugin library supports diverse technologies, while the API allows automation with tools like Terraform and Ansible. Despite its strengths, users report challenges with data display in the GUI, a need for improved dashboards, and complex configuration processes. Users benefit from its SNMP alerts, email notifications, and automated incident handling, making it essential for managed service environments and enterprises.

What are the key features of Icinga?

Task Delegation: Streamlines monitoring tasks across distributed systems.
Event Handler: Enables automatic service recovery with minimal intervention.
Plugin Library: Offers extensive support for integrating diverse technologies.
API Accessibility: Facilitates automation with popular tools like Terraform.
Custom Plugins: Allows easy creation and personalization for monitoring needs.

What benefits should you consider in Icinga reviews?

Flexibility: Tailors monitoring to specific requirements with community support.
Scalability: Successfully manages growing infrastructure demands.
Proactivity: Enhances issue identification and resource allocation.
Integration: Seamlessly works with existing IT operations platforms.

Icinga is widely adopted in IT environments for monitoring servers, networks, and applications across industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology. Its ability to integrate with various operating systems and automation platforms makes it a versatile choice for industries prioritizing comprehensive surveillance and proactive management of their infrastructure.

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

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

Elastic Observability vs. Icinga