Nagios Core vs Nagios Fusion comparison

Nagios Core and Nagios Fusion are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Nagios Core is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.7, while Nagios Fusion is ranked #64. Nagios Core holds a 2.4% mindshare in IM, compared to Nagios Fusion’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Nagios Core users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Nagios Fusion users who would recommend it.

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

4,463 Views
3,526 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Nagios Fusion

Read 4 Nagios Fusion reviews

492 Views
487 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

Nagios Fusion

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Nagios Core and Nagios Fusion compete in network monitoring solutions. Nagios Fusion appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced features for managing multiple Nagios Core instances and offering centralized views, making it more suitable for large-scale operations.

Features: Nagios Core offers customizable monitoring capabilities, strong system observation, and application monitoring. Nagios Fusion provides centralized views, consolidated data management, and streamlined operational views.

Room for Improvement: Nagios Core could improve user interface design, reduce configuration complexity, and enhance reporting options. Nagios Fusion might benefit from broader compatibility with third-party integrations, more detailed alerting options, and additional customization features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nagios Core deployment requires significant configuration and technical expertise, but support from a strong community is available. Nagios Fusion simplifies deployment with its centralized management, reducing the complexity of multi-installation handling, and also benefits from solid support structures.

Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core offers a lower initial setup cost, ideal for smaller networks or organizations. Nagios Fusion has a higher setup cost, justified by enhanced capabilities ideal for overseeing multiple networks, potentially improving ROI by saving time and resources in extensive deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Nagios Core vs. Nagios Fusion Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. Nagios Fusion

January 2026

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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

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 (10th)

Nagios Fusion

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

64th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Fusion is 0.4%, up from 0.3% 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	2.4%
Nagios Fusion	0.4%
Other	97.2%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Husham Yaqoob

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.

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SyarulIdzuddin Adzmi

Operation Director at Digital Pulse Sdn Bhd

A suitable choice for unified and efficient infrastructure monitoring across diverse environments providing user-friendly GUI, cost-effectiveness, and versatility

We use it for this specific client, they've deployed multiple instances of it across various locations to facilitate monitoring. To effectively monitor their infrastructure, it seems necessary to implement additional monitoring solutions for all three types of devices they have Nagios Fusion…

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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 solution is quite efficient."

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

"Nagios Core integrates with tools like Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace. It is usually used as a feed to provide more technical information about devices or hosts to another system."

"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."

"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."

"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."

"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."

"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."

More Nagios Core pros

"It is easier for client installation, and the configurations are doable even for a newcomer in the field."

"It's very easy to manage and monitor it."

"Being open source lets us customize it for our monitoring needs, saving us money."

"Nagios Fusion version 12.8 excels in user-friendly GUI design, cost-effectiveness, and ease of deployment."

Cons

"I would like to see more training videos."

"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."

"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."

"The mapping is a little hard."

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

"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."

"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."

"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."

More Nagios Core cons

"In future iterations of this solution, there is a desire for more seamless integration with other monitoring software."

"There are some bugs, although not that many. There are some situations where the solution is not stable but the number of problems is not very high."

"Nagios Fusion should include a 'remember me' option when logging in, so we don't need to enter a username and password every time."

"Adding application performance monitoring to the product alongside infrastructure monitoring would make it a more complete and useful solution."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"Nagios Core is free to use."

"It's free."

"We are using the free version."

"It's free."

"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is quite reasonable, especially when compared to the broader market."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

Questions from the Community

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.

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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.

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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...

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Comparisons

Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 11% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 8% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 8% of the time

LibreNMS vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 5% of the time

More Nagios Core Competitors

Nagios XI vs Nagios Fusion

Compared 35% of the time

Icinga vs Nagios Fusion

Compared 35% of the time

Zenoss Cloud vs Nagios Fusion

Compared 30% of the time

More Nagios Fusion Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

January 2026

Download Nagios Core product report

Buyer's Guide

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

December 2025

Download Nagios Fusion product report

Overview

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

Nagios

Nagios Enterprises delivers official products, services, and solutions for and around Nagios – the industry standard in enterprise-grade IT infrastructure monitoring. With millions of users worldwide, Nagios is the undisputed champion in the IT monitoring space. Our team of dedicated professionals works to ensure total customer satisfaction with all the services we provide. Our extensive network of partners helps extend Nagios services and solutions to new organizations and markets worldwide to meet a variety of business needs. Nagios Enterprises was founded in 2007 by Ethan Galstad. Ethan created what would later become known as Nagios in 1999, and currently serves as the President of Nagios Enterprises.

Nagios

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

NuBlue, St.Elisabeth Hospital, Akamit Systems, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, ValueClick, Sunrise Banks

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. Nagios Fusion

January 2026

Free Report: Nagios Core vs. Nagios Fusion

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