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reviewer2032893 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Monitoring & IT Service Automation Product Consultant and Team Lead at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Apr 22, 2023
Is stable and customizable, but cloud monitoring needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."
  • "Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."

What is most valuable?

Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs.

What needs improvement?

Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Nagios Core for almost two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution, and I would rate the stability at eight out of ten.

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Nagios Core
June 2026
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate the scalability at five out of ten.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees.

What other advice do I have?

Nagios Core is a good tool overall, and I would rate it at six on a scale from one to ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Systems and Virtualization Engineer at Altelios Technology Group
Real User
Oct 27, 2022
Beneficial plugins, large community support, and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
  • "The scalability of Nagios Core is very good, we can add as many hosts as we like, and we can work with the concept master and client, making it very scalable and easy to use."
  • "Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."

What is our primary use case?

We use Nagios Core to detect any issues in our infrastructure, software, system service, and network issues. It is a centralized monitoring service.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want.

What needs improvement?

Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Nagios Core for approximately eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Nagios Core is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Nagios Core is very good. We can add as many hosts as we like, and we can work with the concept master and client. It's very scalable and we have added the SentryOne as another layer. It's become very easy to use.

This solution is used by two engineering and three technicians. It is not used for end-user.

How are customer service and support?

We use the open-source version of this solution and there is a large community that can provide support for any of our issues.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I am using SCOM in parallel to Nagios Core, it's a monitoring solution by Microsoft. However, I prefer Nagios Core.

How was the initial setup?

Nagios Core is deployed in a Linux operating system and it is simple to do. For a medium-sized infrastructure, the deployment can take a day.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free.

What other advice do I have?

The free version of the solution does not have an interface, but the paid version does.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Nagios Core an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Buyer's Guide
Nagios Core
June 2026
Learn what your peers think about Nagios Core. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2026.
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reviewer1276566 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Jan 15, 2021
Efficient and easy to manage with good stability
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is quite efficient."
  • "The solution is very complete and mostly easy to manage."
  • "It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for monitoring ops for computers and our server. We're considering adding other device monitoring as well and at points of sale.

What is most valuable?

The solution is quite efficient.

The system's alerts are quite good.

The solution is very complete and mostly easy to manage.

What needs improvement?

The latest version is a bit more difficult. There have been some changes that have not really improved the solution.

We have a new manager coming in, and they will watch and see over the course of the year if the solution needs any specific improvements. We're still in the process of testing the solution.

The implementation and deployment might need to be slightly improved.

It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly.

It would be good if the solution had some sort of alarm system to alert managers to any issues. We get good alerts, they just need to get to the right person more efficiently.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've used the solution over the last 10 months or so. It's been almost a year. We initiated the product in 2020.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is quite good. We haven't had any issues per se. It's been reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues with scalability. If a company needs to expand it, it should be able to.

We have about 100 hosts and about 10 servers at this point and maybe 19 at the point of sale.

How are customer service and technical support?

We don't really have technical support from the solution. We rely instead on learning the solution and focusing on documentation if we need assistance. There's also a community online that's quite helpful.

Their documentation is very complete and they have pretty good policies in place.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did previously use a different solution. We still use it. It continues to monitor our network. We have a new CTO that is looking to make changes. We're evaluating more economical options.

How was the initial setup?

The installation is initially a little bit complex.

The process took several months. Originally, we were using Linux systems.

What about the implementation team?

We didn't have installers or another company assist us. We handled the implementation ourselves.

What other advice do I have?

We're just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Nagios.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

We're still in the early days in terms of usage. We're still feeling the solution out and testing it for its acceptability within the greater framework of our organization's requirements. We're looking to test it at the point of sale to see how successfully it operates.

Overall, I would recommend the solution to other organizations.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1123962 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Operations Center Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Sep 28, 2020
Open-source, good reporting and online documentation, but the GUI needs improvements
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
  • "The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."
  • "This solution is not scalable at all. If you want to add an AI, or if you wanted to monitor different types of metrics, you won't get the most out of it."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner. The creating availability, the ratios, the uptime, downtime, and the outages.

What needs improvement?

Most of the issues have been covered through Nagios XI, but they could select some of the small features that are in the paid version and include them as part of Nagios Core.

Especially the graphical user interface in terms of configuration when you add in hosts, you have to use CAC and CLI to add hosts. You could use the GUI to add hosts instead.

The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Nagios Core for a couple of years.

We are using the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Nagios Core is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is not scalable at all. If you want to add an AI, or if you wanted to monitor different types of metrics, you won't get the most out of it.

It's not scalable, which is important these days when you want to see more data and how your network is performing.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have not contacted technical support. Most of the online documentation is helpful.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

I can't say how long it took to deploy as we had several deployments at the same time, but it was not a problem at all. We didn't have any issues.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are using the open-source, unpaid version.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend it for small network deployments or if you have other open source applications or other metrics like utilization, CPU. So if you're running alongside other open source applications and in the small space, it works. But anything beyond that is not recommended.

I would rate Nagios Core a six out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Tech consultant at select softwares
Real User
Oct 2, 2019
Alerts to network element errors, but the core version is no match for the XI version
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
  • "Inspite of this limitation it is a fantastic product to use at zero cost"
  • "The core version is no match for the XI version."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use for this solution is basic network monitoring of a MPLS network.

How has it helped my organization?

Nagios Core informs me when my network elements are misfiring.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system. Nagios Core ill continuous monitor the endpoint for most common parameters on an obsessive mode and that will give you a better insight into the endpoint operating conditions

Please bear in mind that the Core edition is very limited in capability/features unlike the Enterprise XI . Inspite of this limitation it is a fantastic product to use at zero cost

I had deployed Nagios Core to monitor my MPLS network endpoints like routers and switches and also my firewalls and printers

It does a very good job I must say

An analogous product if I may refer to is Spiceworks which is a free tool for IT inventory and does an excellent job of monitoring inventory and reporting on the software etc on the endpoint

What needs improvement?

The core version is no match for the XI version. But the OEM should consider introducing some of the features of the XI version in the core version so that potential customers are actually compelled to to consider upgrading to the enterprise version

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Supremely stable if you right size and maintain the system periodically

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My old instance still runs on a Esxi VM with zero support on the hypervisor or the Nagios system its just a 2GB vRAM and single vCPU with about 40 GB storage and handles about 70 odd hosts and runs just fine apart from the log files maintenance its easy

How are customer service and technical support?

No vendor involvement 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Tried many other similar products all demo versions hence did not take to production

How was the initial setup?

Pretty straightforward to set up and configure basic system

What about the implementation team?

I did it myself so no vendor is involved

What was our ROI?

Can't say coz my cost of investment is only personal effort , no money so its 100% ROI

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Zero cost for the core edition but you need to know linux based apps configuration a=in general but in this case the installation and configuration guides make things a lot easy . A bit of patience and clear thinking you may end up doing a lot more in your setup than you expected !!!!

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Tried many other similar products all demo versions hence did not take to production

What other advice do I have?

Definitely try it out if you have zero budget 

Even if you don't have a budget restriction please do give it a try

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user1096917 - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Jul 12, 2019
A feature-rich solution with valuable plugins and automatically escalating alerts
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
  • "We have used this product now for quite some time and we are happy with it."
  • "I would like to see more training videos."
  • "Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution to monitor our IT infrastructure, like servers, the network, and things like that.

What is most valuable?

I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them. I also find
the plugins by which you can easily add the divisions valuable.

What needs improvement?

I am satisfied, but I think there is a little bit of improvement that can be made.

Lessening the price point would be an improvement.

I would like to see more training videos. It is a vast product and it covers so many areas and so many kinds of devices, so I do understand that it's a challenge when you want some kind of integration, or add a plugin, to always have documentation. But, yeah, as much as possible on the documentation, if it can be done better, that would be good.

If there was more application monitoring, it would be much better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I find the solution stable. I don't have any complaints in regards to the instability of the product. We have used this product now for quite some time and we are happy with it.

How are customer service and technical support?

For technical support, I think I would try to rate it somewhere around seven out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, this is the first one that we started using. There was nothing that we have to complain about here from the past experience.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was actually done by one of the vendors so we were one of the partners who collaborated with this for the installation. We were working together to do the installation and then they handed it over to us and then we took it over from there.

What other advice do I have?

In terms of advice, I'd say that you need to know what the plan is and try to understand from which direction you are going to monitor. And, to understand what additional things you'll probably want to do from your side, like putting in scripts and other kinds of automation. So the planning is everything. If there is a particular tool you want to integrate with those things have to be properly planned beforehand.

With the number of features that it has and the ease of integration, I would rate the solution somewhere close to nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user978732 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jun 24, 2019
Improves memory and disc space usage, but is not user friendly
Pros and Cons
  • "Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
  • "It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
  • "The initial setup was complex, mainly because it was in Linux and had many packages that we're not used to."

What is our primary use case?

We used Nagios Core to monitor our servers in other countries. Our main server is in Cairo, while we monitor other servers in Germany, which are hosting Jenkins and other web services to make sure that the infrastructure is stable and if anything goes wrong it reports it automatically.

How has it helped my organization?

Before using this solution, sometimes Jenkins went down and we didn't know the reason. We eventually discovered that the issue was disc space that exceeded a certain percentage. Now that we have Nagios to monitor the servers, we know if anything goes wrong it can solve the problem before it happens.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features to us are the ability to improve memory usage, disc space usage, and the PDU load of each node.

What needs improvement?

It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through. In addition, I would appreciate an FNP server for sending emails, which now depends on the resting servers for Nagios Core. If it comes with its own FNP server, it would be much better. Also, if it can be installed in other cores, that would be awesome but right now it only uses Linux.

Alias excavation and configurations from the wall rather than the server itself would be great improvements. Also, general UI enhancements and better UX, user experience.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Nagios Core for four months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable because it's a Linux based code, which is very basic. It doesn't have many big features, so it's stable. You can add a node in less than half an hour, I think.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We're only currently using Nagios Core on one to ten servers. In the future, we may add more nodes.

How are customer service and technical support?

I haven't tried to contact support. I was searching on the support forums, but that was not for me. I tried many solutions from the support forums. One of them is working, but only after a long time.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex, mainly because it was in Linux and had many packages that we're not used to. I had to install them one by one on the app to configure the complication on the app that was solved to authenticate Nagios on the central app. It comes with regular users in files and in order to authenticate, you have to make a lot of confirmations, using Apache as well as Nagios. This was all very hard, and it took me a week to configure it.

I think deployment took about two weeks at the most. We did the deployment by ourselves. We have two people for deployment and maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Nagios Core is free to use.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Nagios Core as seven out of ten because it was hard to configure and the implementation process itself took about two weeks. Also, the UI is not friendly. Other products have features that aren't included in Nagios Core. I think that one was the easiest to restore. Also, Nagios supports only Linux, not A/UX. It can't be installed on the servers. If they supported all of these things, it would be much better.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1061970 - PeerSpot reviewer
Corporate Infrastructure Manager with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Apr 11, 2019
This is the open source product, so it's a toolkit rather than a complete solution
Pros and Cons
  • "Nagios allows IT staff and end-users to see the status of critical services on the network and can alert and notify selected users if critical services fail, reducing the mean time to recover."
  • "This is the open source product, so it's a toolkit rather than a complete solution."

What is our primary use case?

  • Monitoring the critical services and network environment for a large multi-site company. 
  • It is also used for troubleshooting issues and capacity planning.

How has it helped my organization?

Nagios allows IT staff and end-users to see the status of critical services on the network. It also can alert and notify selected users if critical services fail, reducing the mean time to recover.

What is most valuable?

Availability of additional plugins like SNMP for instant alerts and PNP4Nagios for graphs make this a powerful solution.

What needs improvement?

This is the open source product, so it's a toolkit rather than a complete solution. See Nagios XI for a more complete version. 

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Systems Architect at Rezgateway
Real User
Top 20
Jul 2, 2018
It prevents disasters long before they can take place
Pros and Cons
  • "It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."
  • "We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
  • "It is a bit slow due to latency."

What is our primary use case?

We use Nagios to monitor hundreds of CentOS cloud servers (and a few Legacy Windows servers). Nagios is monitoring well over 5000 service endpoints. Some plugins were handwritten in PHP, Perl, Python, Java and Bash.

How has it helped my organization?

It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place.

What is most valuable?

  • Historical Alert records/data
  • Plugins
  • Data sources (MySQL)
  • Grouping of services and servers

We use the Alerting and Graphing to minimize the downtime. The old RRD Graph module is now used by Grafana. We outgrew the old PNP4Nagios a few weeks back. 

What needs improvement?

The GUI of the Core is still a long way off, but the features are 100 percent above average. It would be great to see better UI themes which could be configured by Netadmin or instructions that help combine graphs and Nagios.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have never had stability issues. Nagios has been stable for over 10 years. Although, we never left it running for more than two weeks without uploading new services, plugins, and threshold changes, then restarting it..

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No scalability issues, though it is a bit slow due to latency. However, after tweaking the Nagios and off-loading the graphing to NPCD, I was able to scale the Nagios to more than 5000 services checks with 0.5s latency.

How are customer service and technical support?

The end-users love quick alerting and Grafana dashboards.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not previously use a different solution. Nagios was the first solution that we started using 10 years ago.

How was the initial setup?

Since its Nagios, it is a bit time consuming, but worth the effort. It took a few hours setting up the entire environment, including RRD, PHP, Apache, Nagios, PNP4Nagios, Perl, Python, OpenSSL, etc.

What about the implementation team?

We did an in-house installation.

What was our ROI?

We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

10 years ago, there were not too many options.

What other advice do I have?

There are thousands upon thousands of plugins. This is a winning product. Nothing can match the plugins, even I have contributed about six plugins.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
it_user873816 - PeerSpot reviewer
Strategic Staffing Solutions at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Jun 4, 2018
Monitors our entire production environment, alerts us to any issues that may occur
Pros and Cons
  • "Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."
  • "We have the ability right now to see and create reports to tell whether or not we're meeting our SLAs on our production servers, through it."
  • "Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."

What is our primary use case?

It's monitoring all of our production environment and alerting us to any issues that might pop up.

How has it helped my organization?

The benefits are that it's free and it allows us to monitor all of our production. So it gives us a comfort level of knowing that if there is a problem that pops up, we get notified.

What is most valuable?

  • GUI interface
  • Notification capabilities
  • Real-time reporting

What needs improvement?

In terms of any further features, that would bump us into their paid product. For what we get and what we use, and all the libraries that are available, it's pretty robust.

However, for the version we're using, making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been rock solid.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, it has met our needs. As far as I know, from reading blogs and the like, it can go to many more servers and even multiple data centers. It seems like it's pretty scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

Tech support has been pretty good. There have been a couple of occasions where we've had to pick up the phone and call, and for the most part, they are very prompt, very quick, very responsive.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I had used this solution before and there wasn't anything in place here that was any good, so it was a no-brainer for me.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are 

  • flexibility
  • supportability
  • scalability.

How was the initial setup?

I set the whole thing up. It wasn't complex, it was just that I had to do a lot of planning. If you follow your plan then you won't end up in trouble. If you deviate from the plan, you are going to have trouble.

What other advice do I have?

We have the ability right now to see and create reports to tell whether or not we're meeting our SLAs on our production servers, through it. That is something that we wrote and implemented as a plug-in.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10 because it's relatively easy to implement and the cost is great, it's free.

My advice would be, save yourself a lot of time - go get it and install it.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Nagios Core Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: June 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Nagios Core Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.