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Elastic Observability vs Nagios Log Server comparison

 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Log Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (11th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
Nagios Log Server
Ranking in Log Management
32nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 1.3%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Log Server is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
Syarul Idzuddin Adzmi - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and affordable tool for monitoring data centers
Five engineers are needed for the maintenance of the product. I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. To increase the rating for the product, Nagios should offer remote support and offer more customization in reporting while making it easy for the customers to use it. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities."
"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Observability is the text search."
"Elastic APM has plenty of features, such as the Elastic server for Kibana and many additional plugins. It's a comprehensive tool when used as a logging platform."
"I think Elastic Observability is already in very good shape."
"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."
"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"Good design and easy to use once implemented."
"The product is scalable."
"The initial setup of Nagios Log Server was easy and straightforward."
"One of the most valuable features is the dashboard because the UI was effective and easy to use. The alert systems are good as well. We had no failovers and had high availability. We can search the queries fast as well in Nagios Log Server."
"A great feature of the solution involves its internal portal."
 

Cons

"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."
"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."
"Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal."
"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."
"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."
"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."
"The customization and dashboards have shortcomings and need to be improved to make the tool look more presentable."
"The support could be better."
"The configurations during initial setup could be improved. If they could be agentless, as in the case of the Ansible product, it would be better. I would like to be able to analyze the network bandwidth."
"As we are talking about a product which is open to the public, the pricing makes it challenging for us to profit off of its marketing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"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."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"For a single instance, the price is around $4,000."
"We found the pricing to be quite affordable."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap, I rate the pricing an eight or nine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 license for Elastic Observability is the same as for other uses; you pay for Elastic, and you can use it for various cases. Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
I think they are working on the AI-based features, which are currently in technical preview. The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language. Basic searching is very e...
What do you like most about Nagios Log Server?
The initial setup of Nagios Log Server was easy and straightforward.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Log Server?
My company pays around 500 to 1,000 USD per year toward the licensing cost of the solution. For support, we need to pay extra to Nagios. The solution's price is low. On a scale of one to ten, where...
What needs improvement with Nagios Log Server?
The customization and dashboards have shortcomings and need to be improved to make the tool look more presentable. The reporting side of the product should allow users to have more customized reports.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
IBM, impulse, wipro, comteco
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Nagios Log Server and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.