Nagios Core and Zabbix are open-source IT infrastructure monitoring solutions. Nagios Core is a mature solution that focuses on flexibility in customization, timely alerts, centralized dashboards, and plugin support for versatile monitoring solutions. Zabbix offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, customizable alerting, user-friendly interface, and extensive reporting.
Comparing the features of Nagios Core and Zabbix:
Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core and Zabbix are free and open-source. Zabbix's user-friendly interface and web configuration might reduce setup and maintenance costs for some. Conversely, Nagios Core's large community and extensive plugin library could minimize the need for paid support. Ultimately, ROI depends on your technical expertise.
Room for Improvement: Nagios Core reviews highlight the need for a more modern UI and easier configuration options. Zabbix reviewers mention occasional scalability limitations for extremely large deployments.
Customer Support: With an open-source model, both rely on community support forums for free assistance. Paid support options are available for Nagios XI and Zabbix enterprise versions, offering faster response times and dedicated help. Reviews suggest a slight edge for Zabbix's community support due to its larger user base.
Deployment: Zabbix offers a more straightforward installation process with a web-based interface for configuration. Nagios Core requires manual configuration through text files, although a web interface is available with the paid Nagios XI version. Both have good documentation, but Zabbix's web interface might be easier for beginners.
The summary above is based on 58 interviews we conducted recently with Zabbix and Nagios Core users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"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."
"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."
"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"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 most valuable feature is monitoring."
"We use Zabbix to monitor our organization's IT infrastructure and workstations. We don't use Microsoft Intune since it's expensive. The tool's real-time alerting system has proved crucial for us, particularly when a new device joins a network that is not one of our own devices. It notifies us about the presence of this new device, allowing us to investigate further. Additionally, it alerts us about disk usage, memory usage, and the software installed on the machine."
"The most valuable features in Zabbix are those that help us overcome bottlenecks in CPU usage, as well as reduce memory delay. I know that we have only reached the tip of the iceberg of what Zabbix's features can do for us, and we have not used all of them yet."
"The most valuable features of Zabbix are flexibility and a single interface for different types of monitoring."
"I have found that the reporting feature in Zabbix is most valuable. Additionally, the solution has given us bandwidth options, we are able to see where problems are. For example, we noticed a problem that occurred because of a bad interface going in the wireless VLAN."
"The level of discovery-based configuration that lets us auto-configure the monitoring for various systems is a valuable feature."
"The best thing about Zabbix is the integration and the APIs that are included are very fast"
"It is a great product. The SNMP protocol tracking feature is good. I really like how it tracks SNMP. The alerts are also great."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"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."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."
"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"If you want to use all of the features then you have to pay a licensing fee."
"In the next release, I'm hoping for features targeted towards larger users with more customizable options. Despite this, I think pre-canned reports that can be used straight out of the box would be beneficial rather than having to configure each report individually. Additionally, a deeper dive into software configurations on the machines would be useful, although I understand there may be challenges in implementing this due to scripting requirements. More documentation would also be appreciated."
"Zabbix could improve when it comes to large-scale use cases. Additionally, the inventory could be better when connecting to other solutions, such as ServiceNow. There show to be better integration with other platforms and storage."
"The user interface could be better."
"I would like to remotely connect to the computer, and Zabbix doesn't have this capability."
"The integration of the product is not so easy, especially when it comes to the application database."
"The documentation could be improved."
"Zabbix isn't a great tool for cloud-specific monitoring - its connection to public clouds needs to be improved. Other areas for improvement would be the lack of dashboards and integrations."
Nagios Core is ranked 7th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 46 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 98 reviews. Nagios Core is rated 8.0, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nagios Core writes "An Open Source Fully Featured Data Centre Monitoring Tool". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Nagios Core is most compared with Nagios XI, Centreon, Icinga, OP5 Monitor and LogicMonitor, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios XI and Amazon CloudWatch. See our Nagios Core vs. Zabbix report.
See our list of best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors and best Network Monitoring Software vendors.
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