It's ability to monitor a good range of services out of the box and it's extensibility with the use of plug-ins, with an active user community sharing community contributed plug-ins to cover monitoring for a very wide range of services and components.
Manager of Infrastructure at a university with 10,001+ employees
It's helped us to improve our incident management, problem management, and capacity management.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
It's helped us to improve our incident management, problem management, and capacity management.
What needs improvement?
The web interface is perfectly fit for purpose but isn't up there with the best modern admin panels. There is scope for improvement to make it more dynamic and responsive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for three years.
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Nagios XI
June 2025

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Nagios XI ships as a virtual appliance and is easily deployed.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been no performance issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Clear instructions are provided on how to expand the disk capacity of the appliance and the solution can be scaled to allow several distributed Nagios monitoring instances to work together.
How are customer service and support?
Customer Service:
Customer service is excellent.
Technical Support:I haven't needed any technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used the free version of Nagios and decided that the commercially packaged version Nagios XI was well worth the cost and reduced the admin overhead significantly.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup is straightforward and allows monitored hosts to be added one-by-one using a wizard or added in bulk using the bulk add tool.
What about the implementation team?
An in-house implementation was done. I would advise that you need to understand the overall basic architecture of Nagios before implementing it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In my view this product is very good value for money when compared with other commercially provided monitoring solutions.
What other advice do I have?
Implementation is best done by people with a good general Linux/open source skill set. If you have these kinds of people then implementing Nagios should be fairly straightforward. If you have a bunch of Window admins who've never touched a Linux system, then implementation could be a challenge.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
It helps you get the best optimization in a non-local datacenters, or remote servers on subnetworks.
Valuable Features:
Nagios enables you to choose to have either a single server structure or multi server net. This helps you get the best optimization in a non-local datacenters, or remote servers on subnetworks.
Improvements to My Organization:
I once worked on a project for a consortium in a mixed setting with Windows and Linux machines. We have integrated Nagios servers in each of the 120 head offices with different specifications. It is used for the monitoring of more than 1300 servers and 16000 clients with different sub-networks and many different applications in a closed environment. The servers of their head offices were configured to propagate the data to the primary Nagios server of the main control center, and to this mirror in the operative center and to the mirror it in the disaster recovery center.
Room for Improvement:
They need to develop a better integration with a common ticketing system will be great. Once I built a complete integration with OTRS:ITSM and Nagios using the Samba LDAP database as the registry for user and machines in the software. It was a complex setup, but functional and could probably work in an Active Directory environment as well, but a fully-functional bidirectional bridge engine will be great. Nagios Enterprise has Nagios Incident Manager software but sometimes you need to work on preexisting systems with strong customizations.
Deployment Issues:
We have had no issues with the deployment.
Stability Issues:
There have been no performance issues.
Scalability Issues:
It's been able to scale for our needs.
Other Advice:
Nagios is the best software of its kind if you have time for configure any host and network, and you can do quite everything with a bit of scripting. It is well documented, scalable and modular, as well as being good for a small business and for an enterprise environment. Take your time to study the product and test the agents first; be very careful on the traffic generated by agents and server-to-server communication.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Nagios XI
June 2025

Learn what your peers think about Nagios XI. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
859,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Manager - Cybersecurity Technology, Cybersecurity Technology Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
I can track systems behavior and network failures.
What is most valuable?
Simplicity of configuration. I can set up configuration of 100 devices with about 10 services in one to two days.
How has it helped my organization?
I can track systems behavior and network failures.
What needs improvement?
It's in need of more standard plug-ins.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for around 12 years
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We had no deployment issues.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is quite stable, and we've had no issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There's been no issues with scaling it for our needs.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
I'm not using any customer service.
Technical Support:I'm not in need of any technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I started with this product.
How was the initial setup?
It's very straightforward initial configuration if you start with your distro packages.
What about the implementation team?
It's very easy, and you only need to familiarize yourself with its file structure. Sometimes you need to write your own plugin, so sometimes it is better to have it implemented by a vendor.
What other advice do I have?
It's very simple, and is very valuable to us. If you need to monitoring your environment just do it
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Manager Infrastructure at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Our infrastructure is now under monitoring proactively and we don't have to wait for complaints from the customers/internal operation team.
Valuable Features
- Real Time Alerts
- Network Map
Improvements to My Organization
Our infrastructure is now under monitoring proactively and we don't have to wait for complaints from the customers/internal operation team to inform regarding any issue with the service.
Room for Improvement
3D datacenter view of the infrastructure to have more specific control of the environment and concept of 360 solution to monitoring is now emerging.
Use of Solution
We've been using it for over a year.
Deployment Issues
There were no issues during the deployment.
Stability Issues
We have had no stability issues.
Scalability Issues
We've not scaled it as of now.
Customer Service and Technical Support
As it's an opensource project, there is good contribution to, and good support, from blogs and FAQs.
Initial Setup
It's a simple setup for a normal Linux users.
Implementation Team
In-house. Its simple deployment but complexity comes once you have to import more plugins. Do check the required infrastructure support before deploying and check alerting mechanism.
Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing
The community edition is free, and for an enterprise deployment its costing is good compared to other solutions.
Other Solutions Considered
I have tested Zenoss, ManageEngine solutions - Op Manager and Application Manager. We chose Nagios over Zenoss mainly because of its lightweight interface compared to Zenoss and the ManageEngine free edition has limited nodes.
Other Advice
First you need to do a complete analysis of the nodes and your requirements before implementing Nagios for monitoring.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Software Test Engineer at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
The monitoring and notification when an issue arises are the most valuable features.
Valuable Features
The monitoring and notification when an issue arises.
Improvements to My Organization
It was essential we had to have live monitoring as we were trial-ing a real-time communications application on a live site.
Room for Improvement
While the UI is functional, I have always thought there was room for improvement here. It is at times assumptive for the not so technical, rather than informative.
Use of Solution
I've been using it for 12 to 18 months. Presently I work as a software test engineer and my employer has been using Nagios for approximately ten years now. I first used Nagios in January 2014. I was in a small startup company based in the TSSG called Kodacall, it was based around WebRTC. I implemented in order that we could monitor our network as we had some clients who very kindly were letting us test our product on their live site. I really found Nagios a perfect fit for us and a good product to work with. As the saying goes “It does exactly as it says on the tin”. I hope what I have given might be of some small help.
Deployment Issues
It was deployed as a stand alone tool and is also integrated with Docker.
Stability Issues
It was deployed as a stand alone tool and is also integrated with Docker.
Scalability Issues
It was deployed as a stand alone tool and is also integrated with Docker.
Customer Service and Technical Support
I didn’t require any service as the documentation is good and most questions are answered on any number of forums.
Initial Setup
Setup ran pretty smooth. It's not overly difficult but it does require patience and some experience would make it easier. Like everything it is easier the second time around.
Implementation Team
We implemented it in-house.
Other Solutions Considered
Although we did look at other tools, we felt Nagios was a good fit for us.
Other Advice
I would have no hesitation in recommending it.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Network Engineer at TLCWEB S.R.L.
I've implemented a monitoring system Nagios-based to alert me when something bad happens.
Valuable Features
I think that the most important feature of Nagios is that you can write your own plugin, so you are able to create your monitoring system based on what you need.
For example, I'm using a backup system that writes in a file when it's done. If this file is empty it means that the backup fails: well i've written a Nagios plugin to check this so i can be sure if a backup is ok or not.
Improvements to My Organization
We're managing servers and services that needs constantly monitoring so I've implemented a monitoring system Nagios-based to alert me when something bad happens. For example, if a server goes down this system sends me a notification When a service becomes critical, it notifies me so i can check. This improve our time to handle problems and can make us proactive to customers.
Room for Improvement
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. For my system, I've developed the notifications because it basically just sends you an email.
Use of Solution
I tested Nagios at university for seven years, and have been using it intensively for three years.
Deployment Issues
It has no particular needs or configuration to works well. Actually i'm using it in a virtual environment with a Debian-based OS.
Stability Issues
There have been no issues with the stability.
Scalability Issues
We have had no issues scaling it.
Customer Service and Technical Support
Customer Service:
I haven't had to use it.
Technical Support:I haven't had any need to use it.
Initial Setup
Nagios setup is very simple. You can find some problem during plugin configuration or host configuration if you don't use a GUI like Adagios. If you use both it's easy to setup and configure your host and services.
Implementation Team
I implemented it in-house.
ROI
The ROI is absolutely linked to time. You can save a lot of time using Nagios monitoring because otherwise you need to check all of your services or system one by one.
Other Solutions Considered
There are several alternative to Nagios like Icinga (which is a 2.0 Nagios son), Observium, and LibreNMS. If you need only an SNMP monitoring system or you need real time graph Observium is your choice but Nagios is a complete solution.
Other Advice
The only advice is to be patient and creative because you can control everything you can need with Nagios.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Web Operations Engineer at a renewables & environment company with 501-1,000 employees
It's nice that you can rudimentary monitoring primarily for Linux systems right out of the box. Scaling Nagios to cover multiple regions or data-centers is challenging.
What is most valuable?
The product for which Nagios was used to monitor was:
- Brightmail back-end 7/24 Operation
- Brightmail heuristics engine and development infrastructure
The ability to write your own plugins is the most valuable feature, but also it's nice that you can rudimentary monitoring primarily for Linux systems right out of the box.
How has it helped my organization?
We spend less time verifying that everything is up and running as Nagios does that for us leaving us time to do the other things. When something does break Nagios directed you quickly to the cause. With Nagios enabled, disruptions were less frequent and attended to more quickly.
What needs improvement?
Scaling Nagios to cover multiple regions or data-centers is challenging. It requires another tool which I never incorporated. Due to this gap I used a dedicated Nagios servers within each specific operation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used Nagios since 2000. Before that it was called BigBrother and NetSaint which I hadn't used.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Implementation on Windows was painful. Also the use of NRPE can be problematic as its generally not inherent is OSes.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have had no issues with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There have been no issues scaling it.
How are customer service and technical support?
I didn't use customer service and technical support for Nagios. Everything I did I learned online through the extended community.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to using Nagios for monitoring we had grown our own monitoring solution which latter became the company NOCpulse and was picked up by RedHat. Previous to that I used various other homegrown monitoring methods.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward, but you need to have a good grasp of the underlying files structure. All the pieces are there but without this understanding where to put things is not entirely intuitive.
What about the implementation team?
I always installed Nagios by myself. I never used a team. Advice I would have is you need management buy in. More than a few times I would implement this solution but without managements support it got little traction upfront. Meanwhile management pursued pricey solutions which were cumbersome and had long implementation cycles.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I can implement Nagios is a day for a medium sized (500 units) operation. Since the cost is zero and it can use a fairly cheap server to run on the ROI is nearly immediate.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Currently I use New Relic and Munin to track and maintain the operation I run. New Relic however isn't designed to alert like Nagios and they have told me as such.
What other advice do I have?
Find a site where Nagios working and look at their implementation. Understand the file structure, dependencies and implementation. Start with the basics and add as needed. Identify what needs to be monitored and why.
Also, Nagios does not do trending/graphing well. I used the Nagios version of MRTG and it was pretty awful. I incorporated Cacti which partners well with Nagios. Without both tools you don't have a good understanding of how your operation is functioning.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Consultant Ingénieur de production informatique at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Correct and scalable Dashboards for management. There are no APIs for managing hosts/services are present.
What is most valuable?
We must separate the 2 parts of this product :
Monitoring Core (Nagios Core) -
Possibilities to manage Nagios Core and Nagios Client configurations by Service Manager like Ansible, Puppet etc. For big environment's, it's the simplest way for industrialisation
Interface (Nagios XI) -- Correct and scalable Dashboards for management
- Easy way to view you entire production ( more complete than Nagios Core interface)
How has it helped my organization?
My customer choose this product because he previously worked with Nagios Core 3 and didn't know other tools. His principal argument for him is that the Dashboards correctly present their work.
What needs improvement?
The important separation between Interface and Core to maintain historical plugins and methods generate complexity that makes Nagios unusable for repeat work. You must choose a way to manage your configuration, by interface or by files in Core, and never change your rules. If you choose files, you lose the dashboard advantage instead of importing them manually, and, for the moment, there are no APIs for managing hosts/services are present. If you choose Interface, you must configure hosts/services manually, and again there are no APIs for managing hosts/services are present.
Nagios Core has a big advantage in that has been lost in Nagios XI. Another way you could manage is by having three different databases
- Postgres for Nagios XI's hosts/services définitions
- MySQL with ndo2db for metrology
- Rrd for the Nagios Core
This is not easy to maintain and High Availability becomes complex. The simplest way is by VMware HA modifications preconfigured by Nagios.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for the last six months.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
It's very easy to install it and manage it with Nagios XI's interface.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been no issues with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I only have 50 hosts and haven't needed to scale beyond that.
How are customer service and technical support?
Nagios responds quickly when you need them, and the community is really big.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used HP SiteScope, Nagios Core 3, Xymon and Zabbix. I didn't choose Nagios, my customer choose it and I implemented it. My prefered tools is Zabbix for the moment.
How was the initial setup?
It's very easy for the basics features, but, like others tools, when you need plugins, it becomes more complex.
What about the implementation team?
We did it in-house.
What was our ROI?
No ROI was requested by my customer, only visibility by their management and using their knowledge on Core 3.
What other advice do I have?
Your architecture must be conceived prior to implementation as each error must become complex to change.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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