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Nagios XI vs PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios XI3.5%
Zabbix5.2%
Datadog3.7%
Other87.6%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PRTG Network Monitor2.9%
Zabbix4.1%
SolarWinds NPM3.7%
Other89.3%
Network Monitoring Software
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.0%
Zabbix10.7%
Nagios XI6.1%
Other80.2%
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Emmanuel Appiah Boateng - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simplifies setup and requires user interface enhancement
Nagios XI is easy to install, which sets it apart from other open-source solutions I've tried. Typically, setting up a monitoring system on Linux involves cloning files from GitHub, building it, and installing many dependencies, but with Nagios XI, it wasn't like that. Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
madhan kumar hs - PeerSpot reviewer
software engineer at Capgemini
Alerting precision has reduced incident response times and improved department-level network visibility
The auto-pause sensor during the maintenance window is good without any false alerts, and it prevents me from getting flooded with alerts during planned maintenance, helping department heads understand their own network usage better. It has reduced incident response time by giving clearer ownership of each alert, ensuring alerts go to the proper recipient. SNMP testers and auto-pause are among the best features of PRTG Network Monitor, which is particularly useful for different departments such as HR and finance, where alerts can be filtered accordingly. The alerting features and dashboard of PRTG Network Monitor are very helpful, especially in our industry. However, the dashboard can look cluttered on smaller screens, which is one negative aspect. PRTG Network Monitor has impacted us positively; we have stopped getting flooded with alerts during planned maintenance or unplanned outages. Compared to others, this gives specific alerts very quickly and helps department heads understand their own network usage better, thus reducing incident response time so that each alert has clear ownership.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility
From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Nagios is an open source monitoring tool for monitoring network services, with easy installation, a user-friendly and configurable interface, and the ability to monitor disk space, CPU utilization, memory usage, host availability, NFS availability and many other things, making it widely used in IT markets."
"Nagios XI is a simple monitoring tool with performance management."
"Though I downplayed the administrative NCC GUI, this is by far the strongest aspect of the Nagios XI product."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard, where I can have a single screen that provides a summary for hundreds of servers."
"Nagios is great for verify quality and quantity in a datacenter."
"This is a very good solution and it is simple to use, for any company."
"It is a very stable solution and the best solution for monitoring any IT infrastructure for all companies."
"Nagios allows us to configure any device so that we can send pager alerts when people don't have access to emails, and it also allows us to schedule downtime and maintenance."
"PRTG Network Monitor is user-friendly and offers flexible alerting systems."
"The fact that I can use custom MIB files to customize my sensors for the things that are not there as a default is a good feature."
"Monitoring takes time, and anything that cuts down on time spent monitoring saves money."
"The scalability is good, you can improve a remote host or the clustering, giving you the flexibility to monitor another infrastructure remotely."
"The technical support seems to be quick, clever, and has a comprehensive knowledge base online, which is fantastic."
"It has provided us with early warning for potential issues and has stopped potential downtime before it occurs."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"For others who are interested in using this solution, I would recommend it; please use it, it's good, it's very friendly, easy to use, and it's web-based, which means you don't have to be logged into a server to get something done."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
"SolarWinds SAM is very stable, and we are using it with hundreds or thousands of customers and there are no stability issues."
"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"SolarWinds fit the bill because it gave many possibilities in monitoring with a good amount of out of the box capabilities."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
 

Cons

"The pricing has recently risen. I know they've changed what is covered under the license, however, it doesn't change the way we use it and adds nothing to our experience, and yet we now have to pay more."
"Nagios XI can improve network and hardware monitoring, these parameters should be simplified to allow usage for monitoring. Additionally, if there was automatic reporting it would be helpful."
"Backup mechanisms and some kind of templating system for dashboards are needed."
"The technical support is variable - sometimes I get answers, but most of my tickets go unanswered."
"The scalability of Nagios XI is scalable. However, it is not easy to do."
"The installation and monitoring need improvement."
"It's in need of more standard plug-ins."
"It is really difficult to integrate Nagios XI with another system to generate logs and alert our management of failures in security infrastructure."
"We're using more cloud services now. It would be useful to be able to get information back from these cloud services in detail, and display any issues within PRTG for the rest of our systems."
"It would be nice if it gave us alerts via Gmail or SMS message."
"PRTG Network Monitor could improve by having descriptions for the tab usages. The dashboards or interface could be easier to understand."
"Its price can be better. Its price is a problem for us because it is in dollars, and there is a high conversion rate."
"In a very few cases, customers want more detailed reports, which we cannot meet."
"The setup aspect of it and getting devices working needs improvement."
"The desktop app is the one area where it do with some improvement. From a user's perspective, I would like to be able to get more out of the desktop app as opposed to where we are now with it."
"This product can be improved by updating the net flow interface. The one that is in place works – I can get all the information I need from it – but it is a little bit clunky."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system."
"The technical support team's response time could be improved."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"We are looking into other solutions because it is just too expensive to keep scaling."
"There is one feature that is a report writer, and they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
"For our country in North Africa, it's expensive and we could purchase another solution for that price. But it's a reasonable price if we're speaking in international terms."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"This solution is very expensive, at approximately $5,000 USD when I purchased it, which is why I haven't upgraded my version in several years."
"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"It is about £4,500 for the first year, then about another 15 to 20 percent annually after that. So, we are looking at about £1000 running costs a year. When you think about how much an outage costs per minute, it's negligible."
"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is more expensive than other solutions, such as OP Network Manager."
"We are using the basic PRTG that we can download for free. For now, we only need to monitor less than 100 devices. For more than 100 devices, we would need to buy a license. PRTG is much cheaper than SolarWinds."
"We have unlimited devices and sensors, and it is a bit pricey, but we do have unlimited sensors. With all things considered the price is fine, related to the solution itself. PRTG Network Monitor is good value for money."
"Because we are only on the free version, we have a limited number of sensors. Therefore, we are not monitoring as much as we want to be to obtain historical information."
"One thing I like is that when you buy sensors, it's a perpetual license, so once you buy 2,000 sensors, you've got 2,000 sensors; it's not a recurring cost."
"When you have a lot of devices, PRTG Network Monitor can be costly."
"PRTG Network Monitor is not that expensive, so I like it cost-wise. There's no additional cost apart from the standard licensing fees. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I would rate the cost of PRTG Network Monitor a two."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for mon...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?
The pricing was higher at the beginning, but the recurring licensing cost is affordable and reasonable. Overall, the ...
What needs improvement with PRTG Network Monitor?
The reporting features look very technical and that can be improved. If they can change the report so everyone can un...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dash...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with o...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in IT Infrastructure Monitoring. Updated: May 2026.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.