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Nagios XI vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Nagios XI
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
15th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
7th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
25th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
14th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
20th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (37th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 2.4%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.1%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios XI2.4%
WhatsUp Gold2.1%
Other95.5%
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.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Since this is an open source technology, if we are capable of writing the plugins in any scripting language, this product allows us to monitor anything we want."
"Nagios XI is stable."
"It's an essential part of our infrastructure, and we'll keep using it."
"The product allows comprehensive monitoring of your environment, from basic monitoring of your servers health to more complex tasks like AD, database, and, to some extent, application-level monitoring."
"I would recommend this solution because it's so powerful with no limitation, especially when using the XI version."
"In my view this product is very good value for money when compared with other commercially provided monitoring solutions."
"Nagios is my favourite open source monitoring system."
"If you are a mid-sied company with an eye on expansion, this solution is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."
"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the application monitors that allow for discreet roaming on network devices."
"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."
"It's a good product, and if one has the expertise to use it, it will be a good investment and it will help IT to save and plan for the future."
"There is a flow monitor option, so we can trace the source IP, the destination IP, and top talker feature in this."
"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
 

Cons

"Its simple deployment but complexity comes once you have to import more plugins."
"I think that the community needs to concentrate development to get a standard GUI (Adagios is a side project) and gives the user a better notification system."
"The tool's AI model needs to be fixed."
"The way Nagios displays information isn't easy for a new user to understand. It's not intuitive enough. You need to read some tutorials or be trained to understand what it's displaying. Also, I think it needs more features to improve network visibility because there are some things you can't detect."
"Technical support is very good but is very expensive. It is becoming more and more expensive just like the upgrade."
"I would like to see more customization in the network map because it is a bit tricky to use it."
"We're still experiencing stability issues with regards to collecting performance graphs."
"We are implementing our hybrid cloud strategy, and it will most likely not be suitable for monitoring our public cloud assets."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"Setting up WhatsUp Gold is complicated and not easy because it requires managing SNMP and many complex settings in the devices it's monitoring, and fine-tuning it to fit our needs is also not very easy."
"My understanding is that there are better products out there that do a better job."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user. All the monitoring is from inside out, we need something that also can give us from outside in."
"Users want SMS available via Whatsapp Gold. They don't want to go through third party SMS servers. The solution should work to make this possible."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is good to contact experts for advice about what is the best solution for your specific infrastructure and enterprise."
"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."
"We are using the free version of this solution."
"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"As it is not an agentless tool, I think it is expensive."
"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."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"This is a well priced solution."
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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
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

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 monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios XI vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.