Nagios Core vs SolarWinds AppOptics vs Zabbix comparison

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Nagios Core

SolarWinds AppOptics

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Nagios Core, SolarWinds AppOptics, and Zabbix based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in IT Infrastructure Monitoring.

To learn more, read our detailed IT Infrastructure Monitoring Report (Updated: April 2026).

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

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Helped 886,976 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 5.3%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Zabbix	5.3%
Nagios Core	2.0%
SolarWinds AppOptics	0.8%
Other	91.9%

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.

Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions

John Yuko

Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd

I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

Helps reduce response time but has room to improve customization complexity

KamranBhatti

Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

We are not working on simple standalone solutions like Kaspersky DDoS Protection or Hybrid Cloud Security. Once you understand Zabbix, then it is easy to customize those web pages and graphs for our customer use. It is fully automated to your requirements. Zabbix is working fine with no issues, and I am satisfied with it. We have combined Zabbix and SolarWinds. The integration works fine, and it is easy to integrate Zabbix with the IT environment. We were trying to purchase MDR (Managed Detection and Response), but we are not working on that. I don't have real experience with MDR. We are using Falcon software for that. We are working with Falcon Complete, not with Sandbox. We are not using Kaspersky for business or cloud protection. For that, we are using Zabbix CrowdStrike Falcon Complete solution. I have given this review an overall rating of 8.

More SolarWinds AppOptics pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Monitoring with Nagios Core is helpful because it provides immediate alerts if something goes down, such as a server, or wireless router, or if there's a cable break. This allows us to respond promptly to any issues."

"Nagios Core is a great tool for monitoring the infrastructure including MSM queues, and when we use the agent, we can add other things as well."

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

"Nagios Core is a great solution for monitoring pretty much any size of deployment but you do need to know your way around a Linux system to set it up and run it."

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

"The poller is really good, I can easily implement new stuff and it is scalable."

"Nagios Core is stable."

"Inspite of this limitation it is a fantastic product to use at zero cost"

More Nagios Core pros

"It's a solid application."

"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."

"AppNeta provides a range of products, all based around intelligent network testing algorithms."

"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."

"The product has a great dashboard."

"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."

"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."

"Customer service is exceptional, as they are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction."

"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the ease with which we can set it up at customer sites with our custom Zabbix proxy and tools."

"The performance and bandwidth are valuable features."

"I'm supervising all the IT departments, and Zabbix seems quite good for them. It provides graphics and information in real time. We get alerts about crashes on the system, enabling us to quickly repair issues. We can easily find devices with problems."

"The pricing of the product is reasonable."

"Simple network monitoring that is easy to install and manage."

"This is a stable product."

"Simple, we know everything about our infrastructure, problems, etc."

"I would absolutely recommend Zabbix to others."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"I would like to see a much better Nagios Manager GUI that can support all type of configuration items, and advance search options."

"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."

"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."

"They should simplify the features so it becomes easier to setup out of the box."

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

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

"This solution is not scalable at all. If you want to add an AI, or if you wanted to monitor different types of metrics, you won't get the most out of it."

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

More Nagios Core cons

"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."

"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."

"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."

"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."

"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."

"The solution should be more user-friendly."

"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."

"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."

More SolarWinds AppOptics cons

"I want Zabbix to improve the UX/UI. Zabbix doesn't use a JavaScript chart for images, and I want them to improve this."

"As far as I know, there is no model to push statistics, metrics, or events towards Zabbix. This type of API isn't yet there, whereas some other tools provide an API for this."

"An area for improvement would be the ease of doing aggregation from the value or different devices."

"If anything could be improved, it would be some of the terminology that is used in the documentation."

"I would like for this solution to be more cloud-friendly."

"This is not a product that I recommend. Instead, I recommend using SolarWindows or ManageEngine for monitoring because there are more features on Zabbix with limited usability."

"There are a lot of areas for improvement, specifically in the dashboards and reports functionalities."

"The low discovery functionality is still very young so this feature has a lot of room for improvement."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios Core is free to use."

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"We are using the free version."

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."

"The product is cheaply priced."

"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."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."

"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."

"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."

"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."

"I use the tool's free version."

"Its licensing is fair. It seems to be much cheaper than others."

"We are using the free, open-source version."

"The tool's licensing is good."

"Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed."

"Zabbix is free but if you use it in production then you have to pay for it."

"The solution is open source so is free."

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Construction Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	23

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	56
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	34

Questions from the Community

Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour...

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 ...

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 monit...

What do you like most about Zabbix?

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?

I think Zabbix is economical, whereas SolarWinds is expensive. SolarWinds has a lot of secure features, but Zabbix is...

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

The potential and customization is a little difficult because you have to learn scripts. I think Zabbix needs to impr...

More Nagios Core Competitors

Comparisons

LibreNMS vs Nagios Core

Compared 7% of the time

Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 5% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 5% of the time

OpenNMS vs Nagios Core

Compared 5% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 4% of the time

New Relic vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 12% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 7% of the time

Infraon IMS vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 4% of the time

Netdata vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 3% of the time

More SolarWinds AppOptics Competitors

Checkmk vs Zabbix

Compared 5% of the time

LibreNMS vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

Icinga vs Zabbix

Compared 3% of the time

Nagios XI vs Zabbix

Compared 3% of the time

BMC TrueSight vs Zabbix

Compared 1% of the time

More Zabbix Competitors

Product Reports

Nagios Core

Download Nagios Core product report

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Download SolarWinds AppOptics product report

Download Zabbix product report

March 2026

Also Known As

No data available

AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato

No data available

Overview

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

Nagios

AppOptics is a SaaS-based simple, powerful and affordable Infrastructure & Application monitoring for custom on-premises, cloud, and hybrid systems.

Your business runs on applications, and when they go down or run slowly, it can impact the business in lost productivity, customers, or revenue. To add to the complexity, your IT environment is changing, and workloads can be spread across data centers, and cloud resources. You need to monitor the availability and performance of applications and infrastructure, regardless of where they are, so you can identify potential issues early and address them before they impact users

SolarWinds

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista

1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba

IT Infrastructure Monitoring