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Nagios Core vs SolarWinds ipMonitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds ipMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
79th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
63rd
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.5%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds ipMonitor is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.5%
SolarWinds ipMonitor0.4%
Other98.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at Optimum Origens Inc.
IP address management improves network efficiency but licensing cost could decrease
We are using SolarWinds for NPM and NCM, and we use IP address management for IP address monitoring. It helps us track which IP address is live and which is not. It also provides DHCP reservation and allows us to declare IP addresses for our integration. We have been using it for IP address…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The scalability of Nagios Core is very good, we can add as many hosts as we like, and we can work with the concept master and client, making it very scalable and easy to use."
"It is fairly easy to set up, and we can monitor pretty much everything we want to."
"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 features of Nagios Core that we find most valuable are the plugins we use, we can check the uptime and see how many servers and routers and create groups accordingly."
"Open source and very flexible, with a large ecosystem of tools and custom monitors built up around Nagios."
"I would rate the overall solution ten points out of ten."
"IPAM is used for IP address reservation and tracking, helping us easily identify live IP addresses."
"The most valuable feature is the availability of end devices."
"The initial setup is very straightforward and it is easy to add nodes."
 

Cons

"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"Setup is bit complicated due to the large set of libraries it needs, but this may be because it's open source."
"Nagios Core would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."
"The solution does not include enough features and has some performance issues."
"The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Most the plugin features are free."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"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."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."
"It's free."
"The solution is a bit expensive because the annual license does not include new features that are priced as add-ons."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Healthcare Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise24
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.
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds ipMonitor?
The licensing cost is high compared to other open-source tools. Being a corporate client, we require corporate licensing, which adds to the cost.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds ipMonitor?
The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools. The state monitoring tools could be improved with AI integration to track IP usage history. There is no local support; we must contact thei...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds ipMonitor?
We are using SolarWinds for NPM and NCM, and we use IP address management for IP address monitoring. It helps us track which IP address is live and which is not. It also provides DHCP reservation a...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
ipMonitor
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Core vs. SolarWinds ipMonitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.