Nagios Core vs NetMon comparison

Nagios and Exabeam are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Nagios is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3, while Exabeam is ranked #53 with an average rating of 7.7. Nagios holds a 2.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Exabeam’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Nagios users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Exabeam users who would recommend it.

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

3,994 Views
3,475 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

NetMon

Read 11 NetMon reviews

696 Views
640 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

NetMon

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

Nagios Core and NetMon are both network monitoring tools. Nagios Core has an advantage as a free and open-source solution, while NetMon offers more comprehensive visibility and threat detection features due to its advanced analytics capabilities.

Features: Nagios Core is noted for its flexibility and customizability, supported by a broad ecosystem of tools and plugins for extensive monitoring functionality. Its custom notifications and reporting functions are significant, meeting varied monitoring needs effectively. NetMon excels in traffic analysis, offers holistic network views, and features deep packet analytics, providing superior threat detection and integration capabilities, which are crucial for comprehensive network monitoring.

Room for Improvement: Nagios Core’s interface is outdated and complex, requiring significant expertise for configuration. The setup process may be prone to errors due to command-line reliance. Enhancements like better scalability options and dynamic configuration can improve usability. NetMon’s licensing costs are high, and it requires enhanced integration and cost-efficiency improvements. Deployment processes need simplification, and analytics customization could be more refined.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nagios Core provides flexibility in deployment across on-premises and cloud environments but lacks direct support, depending on community forums. NetMon is generally deployed on-premises and includes more structured support options, though increased complexity arises due to its additional features, which can complicate integration and configuration processes.

Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core is attractive due to its open-source nature, substantially reducing network monitoring investment costs and enhancing ROI through minimized downtime. In contrast, NetMon demands higher costs for its robust feature set and licensing but delivers significant value through advanced threat detection and network visibility, making it cost-effective for large-scale operations.

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

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. NetMon

September 2025

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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 Network Monitoring Software

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (11th)

NetMon

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

53rd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (16th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.5%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetMon is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nagios Core	2.5%
NetMon	0.4%
Other	97.1%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

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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AshishDubey

Product manager at Tata Communications Ltd

A stable and scalable tool useful for network behavior analysis, DPA, and network forensic services

I have not worked much on LogRhythm NetMon to be able to comment on what needs improvement in the product since there is another team in our company that is working on the solution presently. LogRhythm NetMon's pricing model is an area of concern that should be made a little bit cheaper in comparison to the other players in the market currently. With players like IBM QRadar that propose QNI or Darktrace in the market, LogRhythm NetMon needs to consider a reduction in its pricing model.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"It is fairly easy to set up, and we can monitor pretty much everything we want to."

"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."

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

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

More Nagios Core pros

"Visibility is a valuable feature, the ability to see even if the traffic is not going into the firewall"

"It has a very strong artificial intelligence engine."

"The protocols with which you see the traffic for a particular website that a client has in their environment, for example, are valuable. We can monitor whether the traffic is up to the mark or whether they need to add more bandwidth. Also, we can see if we're able to get real-time environment data as well. The customization dashboard is really good. LogRhythm NetMon has its own in-built dashboards which are helpful in guiding customization."

"The initial setup is straightforward because we can deploy an open server."

"The most valuable feature is the log, which can be analyzed by our SIEM solution."

"NetMon's best feature is traffic analysis."

"LogRhythm NetMon's most impressive feature is that it's a bundled package, so you're not just relying on monthly data; you get a six-month view for more comprehensive indicators of compromise. This dual approach is precious. We implement LogRhythm NetMon in our cybersecurity strategy mainly for compliance and correlation of network, user, and decision activities, particularly for network firewalls and access control."

"The analytics feature is the most valuable feature."

More NetMon pros

Cons

"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."

"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."

"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."

"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."

"t was a little hard to get our setup represented in the configuration."

"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."

"The dashboard should be improved."

"The tool needs to improve the integrations."

More Nagios Core cons

"Some of the automated tasks we can perform on QRadar cannot be performed on LogRhythm because the solution has limitations."

"LogRhythm NetMon's pricing model is an area of concern that should be made a little bit cheaper in comparison to the other players in the market currently."

"I would like to see better integration with multiple products. Integration is not something that is readily available for most of the products."

"The main concern is that LogRhythm has not improved NetMon but instead introduced a separate product, which many customers, including us, would prefer to be integrated into a single platform for easier management."

"The training for this product is not very good and needs to be improved."

"The platform's integration features often need to be improved."

"Sometimes it's hard to find the network devices' self-audit logs."

"Could use a topology diagram which would help get an exact visual."

More NetMon cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"It's free."

"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."

"We are using the free version."

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

"Nagios Core is free to use."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"Pricing is okay. There were some competitors that were extremely expensive and there were some which were really inexpensive but LogRhythm stayed in the middle of them."

"The product is expensive for smaller companies."

"I don't have visibility into the pricing of LogRhythm NetMon as it's handled through our commercial partnerships."

"The price of this solution is too high, so it should be made more practical and more valuable for the customer."

"LogRhythm's licensing part is something that depends on the license you want since they offer it on a perpetual and subscription basis."

"NetMon's licensing costs about $85k per year, with some extra costs for support."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Comms Service Provider

Performing Arts

22%

Financial Services Firm

20%

Insurance Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

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

What do you like most about LogRhythm NetMon?

It has a very strong artificial intelligence engine.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LogRhythm NetMon?

I don't have visibility into the pricing of LogRhythm NetMon as it's handled through our commercial partnerships.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LogRhythm NetMon?

The main concern is that LogRhythm has not improved NetMon but instead introduced a separate product, which many customers, including us, would prefer to be integrated into a single platform for ea...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

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SCOM vs NetMon

Compared 20% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs NetMon

Compared 16% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs NetMon

Compared 15% of the time

Opmantek NMIS vs NetMon

Compared 14% of the time

Niagara Visibility Controller vs NetMon

Compared 13% of the time

More NetMon Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

September 2025

Download Nagios Core product report

Buyer's Guide

NetMon

September 2025

Download NetMon product report

Also Known As

No data available

LogRhythm Network Monitor

Overview

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

Nagios

NetMon offers significant capabilities in log aggregation, traffic analysis, and real-time network insights. Its ease of use accommodates both entry-level and advanced functionalities, enhancing network visibility and threat detection.

NetMon provides seamless analytics with its real-time dashboards and advanced AI integration. The platform is designed for comprehensive monitoring and detailed analysis, making it indispensable for identifying network traffic, origins, destinations, and facilitating threat detection through lateral traffic visibility. Despite its powerful analytics and customization features, improvements in product integration, customer support, and pricing could increase its competitive edge. Connectivity, topology visualization, and server performance are areas noted for enhancement. Integration with protocols like Gflow and Netflow might alleviate agent-based restriction challenges. NetMon sends correlated data to LogRhythm SIEM for enhanced threat analysis and is used for tasks like traffic analysis and DPA.

What are NetMon's key features?

Log Aggregation: Seamless collection of diverse network logs for analysis.
Traffic Analysis: Detailed inspection of network traffic for identifying irregular patterns.
AI Integration: Advanced analytics powered by robust AI capabilities.
Customizable Dashboards: Real-time insights tailored to user requirements.
Correlation Engine: In-depth correlation of network activity for comprehensive reports.
Deep Packet Analytics: Thorough examination of data packets for granular insights.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Enhanced Threat Detection: Significant improvements in identifying lateral threats.
Comprehensive Insights: Complete visibility into network and user activities.
Efficient Monitoring: Real-time analytics streamline network monitoring processes.
Compliance Support: Strong integration supports adherence to compliance standards.

NetMon is widely adopted in industries requiring detailed traffic monitoring and security, such as finance and healthcare. Its capabilities in traffic type identification and correlated analysis make it essential for environments where detecting irregular patterns is critical. It's utilized for network security through comprehensive analysis and integration with SIEM systems.

Exabeam

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Sera-Brynn

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. NetMon

September 2025

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