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Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Zabbix 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 August 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 6.4%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.5%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 27.4%, up from 24.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring
 

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.
KhalidOmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a good interface used for monitoring devices
I rate the solution's alerting mechanism and its impact on our operations ten out of ten. We have around 600 retail offices, and the solution helps us save costs by preventing shutdowns. I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
B Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless global client monitoring with reliable remote connectivity
I use the solution to provide a perfect environment for remote connectivity with my clients. Many tools that I require for system maintenance are included. I can easily monitor all of my clients throughout the world I did not give much thought to it, however, improvements could be made to Zabbix.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a very good solution and it is simple to use, for any company."
"It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability."
"The dashboard allows you to see what's going on in the overall system."
"The ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves."
"It's a monitoring agent. It's designed to do one thing. Its most valuable feature is its monitoring."
"We love Nagios XI due to the fact that JPS Web is very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard, where I can have a single screen that provides a summary for hundreds of servers."
"The most valuable features of Nagios XI are you can customize it based on your use case and requirements. It is flexible and easy to integrate with our systems. You can customize the solution by adding additional features using code."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."
"The solution can be deployed quickly."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."
"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"It has improved our server performance monitoring overall. We know right away when there are problems. It has built-in statistics, so we can go back and see if there's spiking. We can check what's happening every day around the same time and check the configuration to see if there's something that's running and needs to be fixed."
"Health and communication links availability."
"Like other common Linux distributions, some of the most valuable features of this solution are the ease of use and deployment. It's simple and has a lot of packages and a lot of software."
"The best feature is that Zabbix can report everything, and everything in Zabbix is free."
"It provides high scalability, alerting, notification, templating, and end-to-end security."
"Simple network monitoring that is easy to install and manage."
"The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good. The monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great. The information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed."
"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
 

Cons

"I would like a much easier GUI so that I can delete events and logs, which will free up a lot of space."
"We'd like to see more integration capabilities."
"Nagios XI can improve its GUI for users with a new look."
"There's room for improvement in the visibility, and in the ability to extract information. Stuff like this should be more simple."
"We often need to develop custom plugins to get Nagios to work the way we want it to work because the features we need are not always available in Nagios."
"Open-source software is usually not user-friendly."
"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."
"The Configuration Wizard needs improvement, because not all vendors are present."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."
"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. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"We would like to see the addition of automatic push functionality to this product. This would save time when monitoring our servers and networks as, at present, we have to manually install the Zabbix agent on any hardware to be monitored."
"In terms of user-friendliness, large maps could be more interactive. We should be able to click on some areas and move some objects. It would make it simpler to see things while analyzing some dedicated parameters."
"The user interface could be a bit better. They could update it a bit."
"Zabbix isn't very good at automation just yet."
"One of the things we don't like is that Zabbix has a license structure with a price that is high compared to the competition. It's very high, for example, compared to something like Microsoft Teams."
"The documentation gets a bit messy between versions and is not too detailed, which is a bit painful for first-timers, especially when they run into issues."
"The user web interface is a little bit too basic, we need to link Zabbix to Grafana to have more options, such as graphs and charts. The interface needs to be improved. Additionally, there could be better integration with Grafana API."
"Having a more customizable interface and dashboard would be an improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"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."
"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"The pricing is really cost efficient. The licensing is perpetual and can be renewed very easily."
"As it is not an agentless tool, I think it is expensive."
"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
"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."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"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."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"The price is too high."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"We are using the free, open-source version."
"There are no licenses."
"The solution is free to use but they offer support as a paid service. If you can go read the manuals and do the fine-tuning based on your needs, you do not need to pay anything and you will have a full solution."
"The product is an open source and free solution."
"It's free software released under the GNU/GPL license."
"The tool's licensing is good."
"My manager is very happy because it doesn't cost anything."
"This solution is completely open-source, so it is quite affordable."
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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
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
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 needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and App...
What do you like most about Zabbix?
The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?
We didn't use the commercial version. We used the free version.
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
I think it's the best solution for monitoring. I don't know any better.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
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.
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, ServiceNow, VMware and others in Server Monitoring. Updated: July 2025.
864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.