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Icinga vs NETSCOUT nGeniusONE comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
25th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (13th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (30th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
29th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.8%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Icinga1.8%
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE1.2%
Other97.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
ES
General Manager at MOCOMSYS
Offers detailed network monitoring but requires improvement in deployment complexity and pricing
The price is really high, making it difficult for many financial companies to purchase immediately; it will take time for them to afford any budget for the purchase. The traffic data correlation feature's effectiveness with performance issues for clients remains uncertain as there are questions that need to be addressed through engineers regarding how many customers are actually using it. Regarding pricing and value for money, while the solution has the potential to save time and money for clients in the long term, monitoring solutions for performance management or network monitoring do not cause immediate damage to a company. It could lead to damage over time, but financial and management teams typically cannot see the immediate crisis. This is why many big companies Samsung and Hyundai try to build their own monitoring solutions using open-source tools and their own engineers, though it has not been successful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"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."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"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."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"The most valuable feature of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is it helps customer to understand what risks are in their network. For example, if a customer has some wrong configurations. It could cost them some critical services to slow down."
"It catches bigger issues on a weekly basis. That's how often we find something big enough that the only reason we know about it is because of the nGeniusONE. The bigger issues are mostly security-type issues: Odd traffic leaving our network or coming into it, that has found its way past a firewall."
"The installation process is straightforward."
"The visual and graphical interfaces in the display that it provides for us to show our senior leadership. We can show them what is actually happening, instead of a spreadsheet."
"We've saved a lot of time in triaging. We have found root cause identities on packet captures and have been able to feed that information back to a specific vendor, because a lot of our technology is emerging. So, we're able to give that feedback to our vendors and have them solve the problems that they need to fix, and they have the evidence to do so."
"The support is good."
"The real-time insights that NETSCOUT nGeniusONE provides are very helpful."
"The quick drill-down views are similar to Wireshark views. Those are quite nice, with the views on how you interpret some of the data. The granularity of how far you can drill down into milliseconds or microseconds is a very nice feature. It actually stores quite a lot of data in its database."
 

Cons

"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
"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 tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"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."
"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."
"A lot of tools highlight what's going on but they don't actually pinpoint the user experience. It would be good if there were a small message or something highlighting what the user experience is like and any degradation that's actually occurring."
"This is a typical thing, but every time they do a major code upgrade, we get hit with some nasty bugs. Some of them literally stop the whole platform from collecting traffic data. They should really do more Q&A on the software stability before release."
"The product is a little complicated."
"There are so many features that it makes it hard to know it all. You end up paying for things that you don't use and probably don't even need. It might be better if Netscout came up with a modular way to pay for what you're going to use and not pay for all of this "white elephant" without being able to take advantage of all of it."
"They can improve still on the workflows, document their workflows that are commonly used... We don't know some of the workflows yet, and it's not something that you can just read up in the manual. There is some stuff in the help manual and online, but it's to a point where you need to purchase extra training and services from them. You can't just go and read up on it yourself and learn from A to Z..."
"We see it overload once in a while. It doesn't have built-in protection. Therefore, once it gets too much data, it tends to crash. Then, we have to recover it."
"The single pane of glass view is a challenge. I like the graphics, they're easy to understand, but when more digging is required, it's more complicated to get what I'm expecting."
"Comparing this to a vendor like Cisco, who provides any component next business day, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE took a long time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free to use."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"The solution is cheap."
"It's an open-source solution."
"Their pricing is very competitive with other solutions... But what I like about NETSCOUT's licensing is that it's shared across all their platforms. They don't create a new licensing scheme for every one of their products. So for nGeniusONE, you buy a certain license level, and it works on all of their products."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product may come across as a cheap tool for some, while it may seem costly for others."
"The platform is expensive."
"The product is too expensive compared to other products."
"It is very expensive, but it's well worth the money."
"Make sure you get the low down on your licensing and understand the licensing requirements before making a purchase, especially when it comes to an upgrade. Make sure that it suits your needs before you commit to it. For example, we purchased ATA at version 6.2.1. At that time, the licensing covered everything we need. NETSCOUT comes out with 6.2.2, stating that in order to upgrade, you had to purchase CyberStream licensing. Now that requires some additional funding from both a capital investment and a maintenance cost. That's something that should have been said, "Well, if you want these additional features, you will need to purchase these CyberStreams." Otherwise, we should be allowed to continue on the basic operations as it is now through the newer releases without being stuck."
"Licensing is flexible, it's not tied to anything else. We can easily switch up the licensing piece... Obviously, NETSCOUT is a little bit in the higher range, but it gives you value for money. You get what you pay for."
"The license becomes cost prohibitive very quickly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise37
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
What do you like most about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.
 

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring
NETSCOUT nGenius, nGeniusONE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Cerner Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. NETSCOUT nGeniusONE and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,176 professionals have used our research since 2012.