No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Nagios XI vs PRTG Network Monitor vs Zenoss Cloud 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

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 2.4%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 3.3%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PRTG Network Monitor3.3%
Nagios XI2.4%
Zenoss Cloud0.7%
Other93.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

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.
ClaudiaChen - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect - Senior Technology Architect at Telstra
Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features
As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Nagios XI helps us monitor the bandwidth of the internet connection, HTTP, DNS, active directory services, and exchange data availability."
"The installation is no problem. I've installed Nagios several times."
"You want to monitor a specific metric that nobody else has? You can do it even with the most basic of scripting skills, and you can always share it with the vast community of Nagios Exchange."
"Nagios XI is an outstanding network Monitoring tool, which can be tweaked to suit any environment and it is a good solution for business looking for remarkable features at zero cost."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of processes."
"The solution has a lot of plugins and scripts integrated with it."
"Nagios XI helped me to draw the network and check for system failures."
"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."
"The solution is easy to manage and the reports are very accurate."
"PRTG Network Monitor has positively impacted my organization as we are not seeing any critical issues or major impacts for our applications, our servers, and our networks nowadays."
"If you're looking from a holistic infrastructure deployment and monitoring perspective, it's a good tool to use and to start with."
"This solution makes it easy to group devices, and it is easy when it comes to dependencies of devices, so if your router goes down, the three or four switches behind it will automatically be paused so that you don't get multiple alerts."
"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."
"We are using the basic PRTG that we can download for free, and PRTG is much cheaper than SolarWinds."
"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is its ease of use."
"We have seen an ROI as it allows us to avoid downtime."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past."
"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."
"With this solution, they can have one million users at the same time with no crashes."
"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."
"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing."
"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."
"It is the most flexible solution of this type, but it takes time to adapt."
 

Cons

"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of additional services. Monitoring streaming services is an example of something that is not currently supported, so in order to handle this, I would have to write a script."
"The reporting part should be made simpler. While we can obtain all the reports we need, we always have to create work-arounds to get them."
"The technical support is variable - sometimes I get answers, but most of my tickets go unanswered."
"The Configuration Wizard needs improvement, because not all vendors are present."
"Its simple deployment but complexity comes once you have to import more plugins."
"Improve the documentation, examples, and best practices, therefore users can understand how to do things."
"Adding new servers and passive checks (which require setting up agents and NRDS) on servers are a little difficult to do properly when employees don't understand the process."
"While the UI is functional, I have always thought there was room for improvement here."
"Its price can be better. Its price is a problem for us because it is in dollars, and there is a high conversion rate."
"Integration into service management ticketing systems could be better. They should simplify the integration into big service management platforms like ServiceNow, Remedy, and Cherwell."
"In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution."
"PRTG could use reporting tools and mobile alert tools. It should be easier to diagnose and respond to problems from a mobile device on the go."
"More training videos for installing and configuring PRTG Network Monitor would have been nice, especially when working with a lot of devices."
"Can be slow in the way it polls the different engines."
"I would like the ability to monitor Cisco IRS devices."
"PRTG Network Monitor needs to show bandwidth utilization in proper graphs. It isn't easy to learn."
"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."
"The AI aspect needs to improve."
"Technical support is 3/10, poor: Incomplete and poor documentation Undocumented processes Inconsistent solutions to problems depending on source"
"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."
"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."
"As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
"As it is not an agentless tool, I think it is expensive."
"The pricing is really cost efficient. The licensing is perpetual and can be renewed very easily."
"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"For the cost of the commercial product and support, and taking into account the open source characteristics of it, I believe it is difficult to a better value."
"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"It is good to contact experts for advice about what is the best solution for your specific infrastructure and enterprise."
"Right now, the smallest sensor pack that they have is just a bit out of range for me, as a business. This kills me, as I need the product. Therefore, there is always a balance between needing to buy it or continuing their free version."
"PRTG is now available as PRTG Enterprise Monitor, and the price varies depending on the total number of sensors the customer buys"
"When you buy PRTG, everything comes in one bundle. Licensing is very easy."
"Our licensing costs are 10,000 euros over three years."
"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."
"Licenses are very expensive, so I would like to see cheaper licensing."
"The price was pretty good, very competitive."
"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."
"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."
"It depends on the customer, what he wants."
"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."
"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
885,728 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Transportation Company
8%
 

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 Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

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 is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a larg...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics
 

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
2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: March 2026.
885,728 professionals have used our research since 2012.