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Nagios XI vs SolarWinds NPM vs Splunk Enterprise Security 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Nagios XI enhances efficiency and time management but concerns about increased costs affect ROI perception across organizations.
Sentiment score
7.4
SolarWinds NPM quickly proves cost-effective by enhancing network visibility, reducing support costs, and optimizing resource use for profitability.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk Enterprise Security boosts efficiency, improves visibility, and increases profitability, offering flexibility, automation, and significant ROI in operations.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
I have noticed a return on investment with Splunk Enterprise Security, as it delivers substantial value for money.
Splunk's cost is justified for large environments with extensive assets.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Nagios XI support is mixed; praised for responsiveness but criticized for high cost, complex licensing, and delayed responses.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM's service is knowledgeable but response times vary, with some customers finding direct support unsatisfactory.
Sentiment score
6.7
Splunk Enterprise Security support is generally positive, but faster resolutions often require premium options due to occasional delays.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
If you want to write your own correlation rules, it is very difficult to do, and you need Splunk's support to write new correlation rules for the SIEM tool.
I have sought assistance from Splunk Enterprise Security support in the past, particularly during deployment, and they provide friendly and effective help.
The technical support for Splunk met my expectations.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Nagios XI is scalable for small to medium environments but faces challenges in large infrastructures and cloud adaptability.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM is scalable, integrates globally, but managing resources and licensing is essential for effective performance and expansion.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in scalability with smooth integration but may incur cost issues due to volume-based pricing.
If the user interface isn’t presenting data well, it becomes difficult to manage when scaling.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
It is easy to scale.
I find it easy to scale Splunk Enterprise Security for our environment.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Nagios XI is stable, but large deployments may experience performance issues, database problems, and minor network dependencies.
Sentiment score
7.5
Proper configuration and adherence to documentation ensure SolarWinds NPM's stability, though upgrades occasionally cause issues requiring support.
Sentiment score
7.9
Splunk Enterprise Security is reliable, robust, and adaptable, effectively managing large data volumes with minimal downtime and ease.
It is very stable.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
It provides a stable environment but needs to integrate with ITSM platforms to achieve better visibility.
It is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Nagios XI's interface is outdated, lacks scalability, needs better cloud integration, APIs, automation, and improved documentation.
SolarWinds NPM needs UI enhancements, better integration, responsive support, and more flexibility for improved efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs user-friendliness, pricing adjustments, and improved integration to enhance functionality and user experience.
Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
The GUI could be improved. It's a bit too basic.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel.
Splunk Enterprise Security would benefit from a more robust rule engine to reduce false positives.
 

Setup Cost

Nagios XI provides cost-efficient enterprise-level monitoring with reasonable pricing, appreciated for its features and open-source options.
SolarWinds NPM offers scalable, valuable monitoring solutions with flexible pricing, starting from $2,000, based on deployment size and modules.
Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is complex and costly but justified by its advanced analytics and comprehensive features.
We are using the free, open-source version.
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
Splunk is priced higher than other solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Nagios XI provides customizable, flexible, and scalable IT infrastructure monitoring with real-time alerts and extensive plugin support.
SolarWinds NPM provides comprehensive network management with customization, scalability, and real-time monitoring to enhance performance and integration.
Splunk Enterprise Security excels with robust log management, seamless integration, real-time insights, and advanced threat detection for comprehensive monitoring.
Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
The alerting system is very effective.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
It provides a detailed overview of the network, which is valuable.
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
They have approximately 50,000 predefined correlation rules.
The Splunk Enterprise Security's threat-hunting capabilities have been particularly useful in later releases.
 

Mindshare comparison

IT Infrastructure Monitoring
Network Monitoring Software
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Amir  Said - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective alerting enhances network monitoring experience with an easy setup
We love Nagios XI due to the fact that JPS Web is very useful. JPS monitors the modem and performs switching, monitoring the computer, and performing switching. We implement some applications and traffic monitoring. The alerting system is very effective. For instance, if we have an alarm on some RAM storage if the traffic is cut or dropped.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Educational Organization
51%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Educational Organization
54%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nagios XI?
It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability.
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 the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is a...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingest...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitor...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in IT Infrastructure Monitoring. Updated: April 2025.
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