Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs Nagios Core comparison

Instana and Nagios are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Instana is ranked #37 with an average rating of 9.5, while Nagios is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3. Instana holds a 0.5% mindshare in IM, compared to Nagios’s 3.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Instana users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Nagios users who would recommend it.

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Read 2 Instana Infrastructure Monitoring reviews

715 Views
558 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

3,994 Views
3,435 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Nagios Core

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Nagios Core and Instana Infrastructure Monitoring compete in infrastructure monitoring. Instana appears to have an upper hand due to its advanced features, which users feel justify its price.

Features: Nagios Core provides robust network system monitoring, alert capabilities, and is customizable through plugins. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring includes dynamic discovery, contextual intelligence, and automated root cause analysis, offering real-time insights and analytics.

Room for Improvement: Nagios Core could improve its user interface, offer more comprehensive support options, and reduce complexity in plugin integration. Instana could enhance integration with third-party applications, provide more flexible pricing options, and reduce resource consumption on client systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nagios Core's deployment is challenging due to manual configuration and community reliance. Instana simplifies deployment with automated setup and provides professional support for better customer satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core offers low setup costs, appealing to small to mid-sized enterprises seeking economical entry with ROI. Instana, priced at a premium, offers higher ROI through predictive capabilities and operational efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Nagios Core Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Nagios Core

September 2025

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Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

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

37th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (24th)

Nagios Core

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.1%, 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 (%)
Nagios Core	3.1%
Instana Infrastructure Monitoring	0.5%
Other	96.4%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Hakimuddin Ronaque

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.

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Nishith-Vyas

Tech Lead at STL Digital Limited

Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements

The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

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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."

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."

"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."

"Provides timely notifications."

"The most valuable feature depends on the project. It's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7. I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful."

"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."

"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."

"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."

More Nagios Core pros

Cons

"The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Instana Infrastructure Monitoring needs to support monitoring of the .NET framework since it is one of the areas where the solution currently has shortcomings."

"There is room for improvement in the graphics."

"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."

"The dashboard should be improved."

"The core version is no match for the XI version."

"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."

"It is a bit slow due to latency."

"I would like to see more training videos."

"It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly."

More Nagios Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of the tool is around 130 USD per month."

"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."

"The solution is expensive."

"We are using the free version."

"It's free."

"The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	22

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

The product is easy to deploy.

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What needs improvement with Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

I use the solution in my company, especially if an application is down and it is considered to be a P1 issue or a critical issue. The network team will blame the application team, while the applica...

See all answers

What do you like most about Nagios Core?

What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 19% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon CloudWatch vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 15% of the time

Zabbix vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 14% of the time

Elastic Observability vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 11% of the time

More Instana Infrastructure Monitoring Competitors

Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 21% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 14% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 12% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 7% of the time

Checkmk vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

More Nagios Core Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

September 2025

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring report

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Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

September 2025

Download Nagios Core product report

Overview

Instana ensures that your application delivery organization has the data, visibility and information they need to manage the performance of critical business applications across the DevOps lifecycle. Built to handle the dynamic nature of containerized, microservice architectures, Instana automates infrastructure and application monitoring helping you to ensure the performance and quality of custom applications and accelerate your CI/CD cycle.

Instana

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

Sample Customers

booxware, drivenow, scopevisio, enevo, TimoCom, mobitech

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Buyer's Guide

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Nagios Core

September 2025

Free Report: Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Nagios Core

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