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Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs Nagios Core 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

Instana Infrastructure Moni...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
67th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (40th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.6%
Instana Infrastructure Monitoring0.7%
Other97.7%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Hakimuddin Ronaque - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at Lauren Information Technologies Pvt Ltd
Has the capability to automatically integrate with a large number of products
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I have not worked much on other technologies, like SAP or VMware's virtualization part, on-prem infrastructure, or cloud infrastructure. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is so fast and easy to adapt that it works fine. I have not explored other operating systems or infrastructure solutions because my company doesn't have that customer scale. Most of our customers are on-prem or on AWS or Azure, but Instana Infrastructure Monitoring adapts to their infrastructure very well. My company came to know how well Instana Infrastructure Monitoring adapts to our customers' infrastructures when we take care of the PoC phase. Around 12 to 15 people in my company use the product.
HY
Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group
Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure
The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything. Everything in the IT domain, you can monitor anything. You can even monitor printers, the ports of printers, Core workstations, and storage. You can monitor the workflow Core and the utilization of computes. If you want to grasp everything of your IT equipment on a single interface, you can use Nagios. It's the best one. It provides dashboards, and you can also configure your emails and alerts with it. If something is critical, you can configure it to notify via emails. It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to deploy."
"The product's initial setup is easy."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"It sends alerts to the right people which ensures there is no delay in the correct person or team looking into issues, and it has helped to reduce downtime in the production environment to almost zero so we now spend less time on network or server administration."
"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."
"Before we implemented Nagios, we did not know which servers were up or down until a customer told us, and now I can see trends over time and it gives me perspective of what needs to be improved so we are able to work proactively as opposed to reactively."
"Reliability Security Flexibility Functionality Availability - controllability anywhere and with different methods"
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
"This is a fit for purpose product which means that if you have a definite list of requirements and are not willing, or unable, to spend money on big enterprise tools, then Nagios is a tool to go to."
"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
 

Cons

"Instana Infrastructure Monitoring needs to support monitoring of the .NET framework since it is one of the areas where the solution currently has shortcomings."
"The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."
"I would like to see more training videos."
"Application level monitoring is limited."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"The mapping is a little hard."
"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of the tool is around 130 USD per month."
"It's free."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"It's free."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."
"Most the plugin features are free."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.
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 the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.
What is your primary use case for Nagios Core?
I was a senior system administrator. I've been using Nagios Core for more than ten years now. It can be used to monitor hosts, such as machines, and monitor services of any kind. I'm using it to mo...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

booxware, drivenow, scopevisio, enevo, TimoCom, mobitech
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.