Zabbix OverviewUNIXBusinessApplication

Zabbix is the #1 ranked solution in top Server Monitoring tools, #2 ranked solution in best Network Monitoring Tools, #2 ranked solution in Infrastructure Monitoring tools, and #2 ranked solution in top Cloud Monitoring Software. PeerSpot users give Zabbix an average rating of 8.4 out of 10. Zabbix is most commonly compared to Nagios XI: Zabbix vs Nagios XI. Zabbix is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 51% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a educational organization, accounting for 19% of all views.
Zabbix Buyer's Guide

Download the Zabbix Buyer's Guide including reviews and more. Updated: May 2023

What is Zabbix?

Zabbix is a free software tool traditionally used for monitoring your organization’s IT infrastructure, including networks, servers, virtual machines, and cloud services. Zabbix makes it possible for you to maintain control of your infrastructure by collecting any metric from any source. The solution also offers agentless monitoring, synthetic monitoring, custom collection methods, and data transformation.

Zabbix offers:

  • Network monitoring
  • Server monitoring
  • Cloud monitoring
  • Application monitoring
  • Service monitoring

Zabbix Features

Zabbix has many valuable key features, including:

Action Log, Anomaly Detection, Auditing, Automated Actions, Availability Reports, Capacity Planning, Custom Scripts, Custom Templates, Data Retrieval, Drill-Down Reports, Encryption, Event Correlation, History Data Analysis, Metric Collection, Multiple Authentication Methods, Multiple Severity Levels, Native WMI Support for Windows Agent, Network Discovery, Notifications, Root Cause Analysis, Trend Prediction, WMI Support, Web Services Widget-based Dashboards, Zero-Maintenance

Zabbix Benefits

There are several benefits to implementing Zabbix. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

  • Flexible deployment options: Zabbix can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud to help you stay fully in control of your data.

  • Unlimited scalability: Zabbix is scalable to any infrastructure. It can easily scale for your personal home, or can scale for a large enterprise environment.

  • Ready-to-use templates: Zabbix comes with ready-to-use templates which makes it easy to integrate with systems you already use.

  • External vault: Zabbix enables you to keep your data secure and safe by providing an external vault storage option.

  • High availability: By using Zabbix’s high availability solution, you can negate the risk of data loss and gain 24/7 uptime.

  • Partner and vendor-backed: The solution is backed by 250+ global partners and multiple external vendors, giving you confidence in the solution.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Zabbix users.

PeerSpot user Shibu B., Regional Manager/ Service Delivery at ASPL Info Services, says, "The solution is quite mature and very stable. The monitoring capabilities of the product are excellent.” He also adds, “The solution is very easy to scale and the product is open-source, meaning there aren't any licensing costs associated with it.”

Julian L., Senior Specialist Critical Infrastructure at an educational organization, comments that the solution is “A complete solution that doesn't cost anything, does what I need it to do, and has easy-to-use templates and very good scalability.” He also mentions “The agents are pretty cool. They're easy to roll out. The standard out-of-the-box templates are also pretty easy to use. The integration with other learning products is also good.”

Faycal N., CEO/Founder at Zen Networks, praises the product, mentioning, “Its overall flexibility is most valuable. When our customers have some custom applications that are not necessarily covered by the community or a standard monitoring tool, we use Zabbix to build our own modules with our own templates. This feature has been useful in using Zabbix for infrastructure and IT monitoring. It has also been useful for industrial equipment monitoring. Zabbix is very lightweight. It is efficient in terms of performance because it doesn't use a lot of resources."

Zabbix Customers

Bodybuilding.com, LLC., ITtelligent Consulting Services,Eltele AS, Total Server Solutions, LLC., ChinaNetCloud

Zabbix Video

Zabbix Pricing Advice

What users are saying about Zabbix pricing:
"Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed."

Zabbix Reviews

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Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Manager/ Service Delivery Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
ExpertModerator
Very mature, easy to scale, and free to use
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is quite mature and very stable."
  • "Zabbix isn't very good at automation just yet."

What is our primary use case?

One of our services is implementation.

Basically what we're doing now in terms of use cases is we have customers that have implemented Zabbix including at one of the biggest banks out in Nepal and India. The basic monitoring for the banks are taken care of by Zabbix. Zabbix being open-source, has available APIs for any device or any service that can be easily mapped onto it for monitoring. 

If the customer comes and tells me that I need to monitor an ATM machine, typically, what happens is you need to go back to the OEM to ask for the API so that it can be integrated. However, in the case of Zabbix, we just need to get into the ATM machine or the contact OEM of the ATM and get the scripts for it and add it into Zabbix. It's that easy for us. 

Some customers may be using Zabbix, however, they don't know how to implement it. What we do is make our teams certified on Zabbix implementation. Sometimes customers may be using Zabbix but then have some issues in terms of configuration or they want to work on some specific reports that they need some help with. Getting in touch with Zabbix may be difficult  Therefore, we, as a partner, help out customers. If they need to do an implementation, we help them out in implementation and then with the support services.

We have our own certified guys who help the customers as a sort-of extended arm of Zabbix. Zabbix is open-source and therefore doesn't cost anything. That said, the configuration is something with which you need support, and it requires technical expertise. That's where we pitch in. We pitch and then we say, you download it and after that, whatever is required in terms of configuration, whatever it requires in terms of preparing reports, we can help with due to the fact that we are certified.

How has it helped my organization?

Easy addition of devices to monitor with customized thresholds and integrating with multiple tools for single dashboard.

What is most valuable?

The monitoring capabilities of the product are excellent.

The solution is quite mature and very stable.

The solution is very easy to scale.

The product is open-source, meaning there aren't any licensing costs associated with it.

  • Action Log
  • Agentless Monitoring
  • Anomaly Detection
  • Auditing
  • Automated Actions
  • Availability Reports
  • Built-in Java Application Server Monitoring
  • Capacity Planning
  • Custom Scripts
  • Custom Templates
  • Data Retrieval
  • Dependencies
  • Distributed Monitoring
  • Drill-Down Reports
  • Encryption
  • Event Correlation
  • Hardware Monitoring
  • History Data Analysis
  • Issue Management
  • Log Monitoring
  • Messaging
  • Metric Collection
  • Mobile Apps
  • Multiple Authentication Methods
  • Multiple Severity Levels
  • Native WMI Support for Windows Agent
  • Network Discovery
  • Notifications
  • Optimized for High Performance
  • Proactive Monitoring
  • Real-Time Monitoring
  • Root Cause Analysis
  • Scaling to Large Environments
  • Template management
  • Trend Prediction
  • True Open source
  • User Permissions
  • Virtual Marchine Monitoring
  • WMI Support
  • Web Services
  • Widget-based Dashboards
  • Zero-Maintenance

What needs improvement?

Zabbix isn't very good at automation just yet. It's something we are working on. The extent of automation and the scripts that we have in ManageEngine are much more than what Zabbix gives out. For Zabbix, what we are doing is, we are creating scripts and trying to run them, however, that's not always the right way to frame it. It would be much better if there was a tool within the solution itself.

The reporting is quite limited on the product. As an organization, what we did is we started utilizing a couple of connectors for the reporting. For example, we started using Power BI, and we started using Grafana. That's how we are enhancing our experience to the customers now. Zabbix doesn't give you a tool.

Buyer's Guide
Zabbix
May 2023
Learn what your peers think about Zabbix. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2023.
708,461 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

We are using Zabbix for the last three years now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

On the stability front, we have never faced any issues. Zabbix has been in the market for many, many years, and has matured nicely. It's a very decent tool. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution works with companies of various sizes. We have companies that are medium-sized, however, we also use this for enterprises.

I would recommend that enterprise customers start using Zabbix. Zabbix, being a free tool, saves a lot on operations. You remove out your license cost, and you don't have a maintenance cost, and it's only the housekeeping that is required. It's easy to take a contract with certified implementation partners to get going. For enterprise customers, if you go with any other tool, you pay licenses on 50 hosts or 100 hosts or 150 hosts. With this tool, you don't have to work with growing costs, and it still grows with you.

It's very easy to scale as you don't have a licensing model. You only have a proxy model. It's only that the client or the customer has to have a supported VM to add more hosts onto it. There's nothing that the customer loses. There's also no investment as such. It's just a matter of for VM to be popped up and then you can start adding those devices to make it scalable.

How are customer service and support?

When it comes to the code level on the development of issues, we contact Zabbix directly. Everything else, we have a few different people that can handle it internally. If we fail on that is when we contact Zabbix. Over the last three or four years, we have only contacted Zabbix once for a technical issue. Otherwise, our team is capable enough 

They also have a good amount of data on the forums. It's very unlikely that we would need to get in touch with the support service as the forum itself is great in that it has huge amounts of data. Any issues that you have, you just browse the forum, and you get a response if you ask questions. 

For us, that has been a good experience.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We also use ManageEngine for monitoring.

Comparing the two is tricky. When it comes to Zabbix flow, I would not be comfortable working with Zabbix as there's a bit of a lack on the reporting and automation front. That's the negative part of Zabbix at this point in time. When it comes to ManageEngine, they have been very proactive. They have a very good reporting dashboard and they have very good automation. The only concern that comes to us when we go to the customer is that I can sell Zabbix at very low costs as I don't have any investment in it. I can fulfill almost 75 to 80% of the customer's request with very little overhead. However, when it comes to ManageEngine, it's expensive as you will need the licenses.

Even though ManageEngine gives you better reporting and automation, there's a cost to it. That is where we are trying to make Zabbix more efficient. We have started working on the automation front. When it comes to reporting, we have reached a level where we can say that we are okay with the reports. We are using a couple of other reporting tools to extend the data. However, with automation, we're starting at zero. That's where we are working hard.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is a very simple process. It's only when it comes to configurations where it gets complicated. You need expertise so that you do the right configurations and set up the right parameters for the devices. Before that, it's very easy. You just follow the steps that have been given to you and you can just install it. 

For a basic installation, it takes just two days. You set up a VM and you have the basic configuration, and that part takes two days. Configurations, however, depend on each customer. Some customers need some devices to be monitored at track level, for example.

It doesn't require maintenance, per se, however, there is required housekeeping. That's how I would put it. For example, today you may have to put in a hundred devices for monitoring, but tomorrow you start decommissioning some devices. If you don't remove them out from Zabbix, then your dashboard itself is going to give you false alerts. That's why you need to have regular housekeeping whereby you know your map, and what is required. 

When it comes to upgrades, it is pretty easy. We have a change management process. We have never faced an issue on the maintenance spot as such with any of our customers. 

What about the implementation team?

We handle the process for our clients. We've got a couple of clients who already have Zabbix on-premise. Typically we come in to configure the devices as per the parameters for that specific device. So that is something which you need expertise on the tool now. The customers are not able to do that. If they want to outsource the entire local operations to us, then we take it up. If they say no, that they want to run their own lock, then we put in our team and we stabilize their entire Zabbix implementation beside it. 

What was our ROI?

Depends on the environment and the existing product the customer is using .

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

The solution itself is open source and doesn't cost anything, however, many companies need technical expertise for configurations.

What other advice do I have?

We are a certified implementation partner for Zabbix.

In our operations, we are the only certified implementation partners for Zabbix and just two months ago, we got certified for the Middle-East operations as well. When it comes to this region, we are the only certified implementation partners for Zabbix in the entire Middle-East.

We are working with the latest version and it getting upgraded right now. We have two environments basically. We have a production as well as a development (or staging) environment. Presently, our upgrades are going onto the staging environment. We have a go ahead on the staging environment after that. We will start on the production as we have around 50 to 70 customers who are already on the Zabbix. Directly upgrading it on the production is a challenge for us. We don't want to get into a situation where the entire thing goes down. We plan to roll the updated version around February.

Presently we have it on a hybrid module. With a primary running on the cloud and a secondary running on our data center, which is on-premise. This way, if the primary site goes down, we have a secondary site to support the customers. 

I'd recommend organizations try the solution, however, if they have issues, they should not just throw it out. The tool is capable. You just need implementation partners. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Shibu BabuchandranRegional Manager/ Service Delivery Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
ExpertModeratorReal User

Integrate Zabbix Monitoring Solution into your IT environment in accordance with corporate requirements and specifications.

Faustine Chisasa - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering Supervisor- Corporate Data Solutions and Services at TZ Telecoms. Corporation
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Powerful, scalable, flexible for different use cases, highly customizable, supports multitenancy, and has a powerful API for integration
Pros and Cons
  • "It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

As a network services provider we use Zabbix to monitor our network infrastructure and customer services. I have also set instances for a number of government institutions to monitor their entire ICT Infrastructure. I will focus on the largest instances, the service provider use cases.

I use Zabbix to monitor network devices, servers, databases, virtual machines, services and applications. For the network services provider, I run an instance for our internal infrastructure and another instance for monitoring our customer services so they can have access to monitor the state and status of their services, SLA, view utilization graphs on demand or in real time and produce needed reports and also receive alerts when problems happen

We can now easily monitor anything on our infrastructure and customer services using Zabbix as a consolidated solution for all our network infrastructure and customer services monitoring needs , as Zabbix is highly flexible and customizable to fit the specific needs of our organization.

How has it helped my organization?

Zabbix has greatly improved our operations and maintenance by helping us be more proactive. We can easily spot problems or undesired states on our infrastructure or customer services

With the Zabbix out-of-box multitenancy support, our customers can have restricted access to their service utilizations and other operational data in real time or on demand. The feedback from our customers shows they are very happy and they appreciate how easy it is to learn using it.

Time to work on issues is greatly reduced, as Zabbix provides powerful alerts and details into what is happening in our network. Issues that could take weeks to resolve can now easily be spotted in a few minutes as all essential metrics for all devices are monitored in real time.

Zabbix fits well with our multi-vendor environment and it has a lot of out-of-box templates that can be customized to fit our needs.

We can easily provide infrastructure status reports with Zabbix. We can produce reports even for old devices that were not properly and consistently monitored since they were installed.

What is most valuable?

Zabbix is highly customizable and flexible, which makes it easy to have all our monitoring needs accommodated. Many elements like auto-discovery, dashboards, templates, graphs, maps, metrics, SLA's can easily be customized to fit specific needs

Zabbix has a powerful API that support integration with third party software, automation and creating new applications. It can be easily integrated with other  tools as a data ingest, processing or visualization platform. The API allows for utilizing better software in specific areas that Zabbix may be lacking like Grafana which allows for more customizable dashboards.

Auto Discovery and Custom Actions are greatly helpful in doing mass discovery, the grouping of hosts, and templates association. The flexibility in setting discovery rules and actions is really helpful for complicated use cases.

Multi-tenancy support which a result of granular use roles, automatic actions, tags, and host grouping. User permissions can be limited to specific sections, services, applications, device groups, access level etc. This has proven to be very helpful for our customer's services monitoring instance.

Out-of-box templates that are customizable, can be changed or modified to suit specific use cases. Additional items can be added to these templates and more filtering or pre-processing rules can be specified in these templates

It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps. Although more powerful solutions can be used, Zabbix caters for all our needs in that area as it provides the flexibility we need.

Zabbix provides regular updates and a clear and timed roadmap. Very helpful as our c company can see whether  expectations will be taken care in coming releases of the software.

What needs improvement?

Although Zabbix is great, the documentation is a bit lacking. The documentation gets a bit messy between versions and is not too detailed, the learning curve is steep and can be difficult for first-timers, especially when they run into issues.

Zabbix depends on other open-source projects, so it would be a good idea to add more information on fine-tuning a Zabbix instance especially the essential details when working with specific choices of OS, database, webserver etc. I had to do most of the things with limited resources in the fine-tuning of the database, OS, and other packages. Although not entirely a Zabbix issue it is a good idea to provide guidance on the basics.

Automatic maps. It would be great if Zabbix could create automatic topology maps using discovery protocols like LLDP or CDP.

Automatic Updates of host templates. It would save a lot of time if that could be done with new releases while keeping personal configurations intact.

Out of box high availability setting for all sections of Zabbix

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Zabbix for two years

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a very stable solution. It is a low maintenance solution and if finetuned and optimized properly can handle a heavy workload with minimum resources.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This product is highly scalable.  HA and redundancy can be set for database, proxy and front-end.

How are customer service and technical support?

Zabbix experts provide great ideas on the open-source forums for the products. The Zabbix community, including the CEO and the technical experts, are friendly. Since they are doing great with the community, I am confident they are doing great with their optional Technical Support which we have not subscribed to.

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

I had used other solutions before but the licensing was too expensive for our company and still, other solutions were limited because we have a multi-vendor environment.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is a bit complex but can be done with the right  skills. More important than the initial setup is optimization and finetuning which requires multiple skills.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it in-house. I primarily worked on the database, Zabbix server, Zabbix proxy, frontend and other server side stuff. I also prepared agent and SNMP configuration scripts for other Engineers to implement on network devices and servers.

What was our ROI?

I can confidently say that our ROI is 100%.

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

Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed.

Zabbix provides support although we have not subscribed to the support. We implemented the instances on our own and we also operate and maintain them on our own.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had to evaluate several options including SolarWinds NPM, PRTG, OpenNMS, Cacti, Nagios, and Zenoss Core. We used Huawei U2000, Cisco Prime and PRTG for some devices before we switched to Zabbix.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, Zabbix is a great product. I have been using it for almost two years, and I am very happy with it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Zabbix
May 2023
Learn what your peers think about Zabbix. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2023.
708,461 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Co-Founder at Nobius IT
Reseller
Top 5Leaderboard
Fabulous flexibility - supporting a vast variety of data sources including IoT protocols. Very stable and well supported. Scalable to many thousands of values per second.
Pros and Cons
  • "The flexibility of this solution is amazing."
  • "Documentation terminology could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

I'm currently dealing with three implementations - two are on cloud and one is on-premise. Our clients use the solution to monitor IT infrastructures, IT networks, applications, and cloud as well as containers.

I have a very exciting additional use case as well that we're working on, using Zabbix 5.x for internet of things (IOT) monitoring. It supports MQTT and ModBus, which allows us to monitor IOT devices.

The flexibility of taking monitoring data from such a wide variety of platforms - beyond traditional IT - makes Zabbix a highly flexible solution.

I'm a consultant of this solution as well as a user. I'm a Zabbix certified professional and director of a Zabbix authorized reseller (Nobius) in the UK. 

How has it helped my organization?

As our business has grown, we use Zabbix to monitor our Zabbix implementations - a 'manager of managers' setup. This has given us better resource utilisation and improved our service delivery.

What is most valuable?

The ability to take data from multiple sources. The Zabbix agent is probably the most lightweight monitoring agent available. The agent itself is extensible providing simple expansion capabilities to support new use cases. Alongside the built-in agentless monitoring via SNMP, SSH, WMI and others, this means we have a solution that has  no limits as to the data that can be ingested and alerted on.

What needs improvement?

If anything could be improved, it would be some of the terminology that is used in the documentation. The documentation is good, but it's been translated into English and occasionally suffers from terminology issues. There are additional features that the commercial software has that Zabbix doesn't. Full AIOps isn't cheap, things like machine learning and artificial intelligence attract a massive price premium and are rarely implemented properly. But they are major, major features.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with Zabbix for over four years following 25yrs as an IT Monitoring specialist within user organisations, consultancies and major global software vendors.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is unparalleled. Processes are all well-behaved and logging is clear and succinct. Support for separating the front end, server and database allow resources to be load-balanced and clustered.

Zabbix runs equally well in cloud- and on-premise configurations.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution can take hundreds and thousands of values per second, so scalability is excellent. The ability to add proxy servers to distribute the data handling load is impressive and they are very straightforward to set up. This also adds to reliability in distributed environments.

How are customer service and support?

If you consider that Zabbix is open source, their technical support is fantastic because the people, the developers of the application, are the guys who do the technical support as well. You don't have to wait to get through different levels of technical support. You get a very, very knowledgeable person on the phone straight away which is a big plus.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

Yes, previously used and consulted on HPE SiteScope, HPE Operations Manager, Micro Focus Operations Bridge and others.

Sitescope is useful, but doesn't have the muli-tenancy or proxy facilities and is agentless only making it unjustifiable in an MSP environment.

Operations Manager was too complex to maintain and became obsolete.

Operations Bridge is resource hungry, complex to install and configure and extremely expensive.

How was the initial setup?

I've deployed so many times that the initial setup is straightforward, but I would say that for someone who is totally inexperienced in Linux, it can be a little time consuming. If you understand a little about Linux, then it's no problem. A full system can easily be configured in two hours but it took two days the first time I did it. If you're not a technical person you can still install it but it will likely take some time.

As an example, configuring SNMP trapping into Zabbix needs configuration outside of Zabbix itself. This is not complex, but can slow down the process for inexperienced installers.

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

The software itself is open source, it can be easily downloaded,  and use it with no limitations.

Be very careful about using the "appliance" configuration in a production environment. It is only suitable for evaluation or very small environments.

Invest in support, training and consultancy from Zabbix or from third parties. Architecting a robust, resilient and secure monitoring platform from day 1 will save time and money at a later stage.

Zabbix and 3rd parties offer far more than a traditional support contract. No other organisation in my experience includes pro-active and on-site support as a core part of their offerings. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Nagios - too much development effort to maintain and configure.

What other advice do I have?

I believe it's crucial to plan the implementation. Just because the software is free, you shouldn't just install it and let it run. Plan your implementation carefully and you'll get more out of it than you ever thought possible

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: UK Based Certified Partner. Author is Zabbix Accredited Certified Professional
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Open-source and easy to deploy with great API capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "There is less computing power needed for scaling."
  • "The event correlation could be better."

What is our primary use case?

We deploy it for our customers.

The main use case is monitoring of the workplace services. That means lot of VDI systems, little machines, and all that stuff around office routers, switches, and even printers for example.

What is most valuable?

The Zabbix agent is one of the highlights. It's easy to deploy and self-registering into the system. This is very helpful. Using the template and the discovery, it's very easy to find examples from the community and make some changes if you need to, and deploy it and roll out. While the discovery is very easy, all the important things when getting connected is pretty straightforward.

The initial setup is very easy.

There is less computing power needed for scaling.

The solution is stable. 

It is open-source.

One of the real benefits is the API. You can do anything with an API; it makes life much easier. If you want to get reports or if you want to document something or you want to add something, you can use the API for that. That's really, really helpful.

What needs improvement?

The service module started with version six. There is room for improvement, due to the fact that this first step looks nice, yet it can be improved here for a better combination with the services and the dashboard. 

The event correlation could be better. From day one, we're using the API to create tickets for our operations, however, the correlation is not good, not there. A lot of the time, in that case, we are opening a few tickets for one problem, and then the correlation functionality is very, very limited.

The reporting is lacking. It is there, however, it's not a real reporting from my perspective. Reporting in Zabbix means you create a dashboard and then you can schedule that and you get it as a PDF. It's probably not the reporting most operations need especially if you need more data for importing Excel or whatever. Reporting is even, in a lot of ways, missing. In the other end, we are using the API to do that now. That said, the issue there is you need the developer to do that if you decide to go that route.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have one year of experience with this solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. I would rate it five out of five since we have no issues. It's been running well since the first day. We did two release updates in the meantime, however, there was no reason to restart something. The performance is very good. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have around 50 people using the solution. It is mostly the operation teams from different departments.

I was wondering if an open-source solution would scale well, since we have experience more with a lot of other enterprise tools, including Broadcom and HP. There are others which need much more resources to monitor the same devices, I would say. However, if you go to an enterprise solution like Broadcom or HP or ScienceLogic or BMC, you need much more infrastructure for monitoring than you do if you use Zabbix. In this sense, I can say it scales well. 

I'd rate the scalability five out of five. 

How are customer service and support?

We haven't used the support from Zabbix so far. At the moment, all we are doing is using the manuals to troubleshoot. The documentation is good. Otherwise, we are using the community forum if we have any questions especially for creating templates or something like that. The community forum is great.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very straightforward and simple. It's easy, not overly difficult. 

We started with just one single device, one single server, since we did not have too many devices. We have, I'd say, around about 2000. However, we found it enough to monitor them all with one device. We have one device for a UI, for the application and for database as well and it's just one single server. We started with that and figured out, from the performance, it was more than enough.

The deployment, just for the application, took less than a day. It was quick. There was not too much to do. 

What about the implementation team?

Our team managed the deployment. We did not need outside assistance. 

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

The solution is an open-source product. We are using that version and have yet to purchase a license, which we may do further down the line - maybe a year for now.

What other advice do I have?

I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The good thing is that it is easy to test. This is one of my favorite benefits and why I like open-source software. You can test it very well without signing contracts with enterprise vendors, for example. New users should put it on their laptop and try it out. It doesn't need much resources and you can discover your home network or your lab if you have something. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Manager/ Service Delivery Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
ExpertModerator
Makes it much easier for us to provide the customizations that customers want
Pros and Cons
  • "The best thing about Zabbix is the integration and the APIs that are included are very fast"
  • "The integration capabilities and APIs are the best part."
  • "The only improvement I would suggest, revolves around its AI and ML capabilities."

What is our primary use case?

Our customers like Zabbix because it's an open-source tool, but integration with other tools is not that easy. The company that I work for employs talented people and a good integration team who can get the end-to-end implementation and integration done properly. 

Zabbix is basically network monitoring software. Often, we are working with various solutions that we are attempting to integrate with Zabbix, and at the same time, we're trying to integrate a couple of bots to take automation to the next level. 

How has it helped my organization?

We have been able to address all the monitoring challenges with Zabbix , which is in addressing all the concerns from the customers

What is most valuable?

Because Zabbix is an open-source tool, it makes it much easier for us to provide the customizations that customers want nowadays. The best thing about Zabbix is the integration and the speed of the included APIs, that's the beauty of this product. It's an enterprise-level tool that allows you to monitor it with a number of devices and hosts. The integration capabilities and APIs are the best part.

What needs improvement?

Currently, we're looking for more AI and ML related capabilities, which is missing from Zabbix at this point in time. There are tools out there with plenty of AI and ML capabilities and this is something that Zabbix needs to come out with. That would make this a great solution to sell. Essentially, they are trying to achieve automation by introducing external RP bots. If Zabbix could fix this issue, it would be a fabulous solution for us to sell and for companies to use.  

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for three years.

How are customer service and support?

Currently, we have a support agreement with technical support, and we're happy with it. We have taken up a paid service on support models with them as a partner, but lately, our own developers have been solving any issues. So, for slightly over six months, we have not contacted Zabbit for support. 

How was the initial setup?

The setup was free and because we use multiple tools, it was very easy for us. We had some teething issues, but the community is very good and helped us with that. The Zabbix community is very reliable and is quick to supply you with information when needed. 
The online support that we received from the community was very good and the KD was good enough for us to get it deployed. We didn't experience many challenges because we already had some concrete knowledge surrounding it. 

Deployment depends on the setup; I believe we had it installed in two days. Our customization depended on what level we were taking it to. We did all of the integrations and customizations ourselves, as required, but I believe we finished the base implementation within two days.

We have about 10 engineers, three to four of whom are certified on Zabbix and they take care of all maintenance related issues.  

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to anyone interested in enterprise-level monitoring and integration. The only improvement I would suggest revolves around its AI and ML capabilities. Those are the only problems, at this point in time, that I see with this solution. If these issues are addressed and included in a future release, then this will be an end-to-end, fabulous product for monitoring and automation.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Zabbix a rating of nine, simply because the world is rapidly progressing toward an AI and ML environment. Whenever you check out a new product, from Moonsoft for example, most of the marketplace jargon revolves around AI. So, when we talk about AI, the customers are ready to just blindly buy the product without understanding if it is real AI and ML, truly capable of completing the task at hand. That's why we started using bots to automate steps; to show the customers that even Zabbix, as a solution, can be used for automation using bots. It's a tedious process, but it's a great method of comparison.  

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Shibu BabuchandranRegional Manager/ Service Delivery Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
ExpertModeratorReal User

Zabbix is Open Source and comes at no cost.
...
Be notified in case of any issues, guaranteed


  • Send messages.

  • Let Zabbix fix issues automatically.

  • Escalate problems according to flexible user-defined Service Levels.

  • Customize messages based on recipient's role.

  • Customize messages with runtime and inventory information


Contact Zabbix Certified Partner - ASPL INFO SERVICES for Implementation & Support at shibu.b@asplinfo.com

Engineering manager at BGH Tech Partner
Real User
Very user friendly, but needs more documentation to help understand how to use the product
Pros and Cons
  • "We have found that Zabbix is more easy to use than other applications."
  • "There are not too much documentation or manuals. We found the tutorials very easy to understand but do not go deep enough in the use of Zabbix. We need more manuals, proper use, documentation, etc."

What is our primary use case?

We delivered a project for telemetry but not just for IT. We are running a project monitoring different parameters for radio communication sites, so we collect information about alarms and analog values, not specifically IT projects. We need an application that  collects SNMP traps and show on the screen and take an historical report or graph. We contract with Zabbix for companies that have Zabbix for telemetry. We have integrated the system to our communications systems. This system is used in mission critical applications for radio communications, police, firemen's, health, etcetera.

How has it helped my organization?

It gave us one powerful tool to develop monitoring systems tailored to customer needs and maintenance staff.

What is most valuable?

We have found that Zabbix is more easy to use than other applications.

What needs improvement?

There are not too much documentation or manuals. We found the tutorials very easy to understand but do not go deep enough in the use of Zabbix. We need more manuals, proper use, documentation, etc. We would like to see some applications or plugins as bricks that we can use to construct applications to use with Zabbix. For example, we are starting using Zabbix with Grafana for presentations and apparently they match very easily but you need to put in a lot of work to get the final results. If you have some applications that you can add one to one, you can construct the project more quickly.

For how long have I used the solution?

One year and a half

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is good after you tune each module application and sensor data collection.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Great for our applications. We use with Graffana GUI application that supports gauges, bars, time-related graphs, and maps.

How are customer service and support?

The support is good. When we have something difficult to implement, we explain what the problems are and we get an answer quickly.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

Many of our clients have an IT department and most of them work with WhatsUp Gold but some of them are starting to use Zabbix and when we started this project for telemetry it was not specifically for IT. We found many examples using Zabbix. Apparently, Zabbix is more user-friendly for non-IT people.

What about the implementation team?

Both the vendor and the in-house team worked on the implementation. We bought it through a vendor and he trained our in-house engineers. Then we developed the system, supported by the vendor who also provided us with most of the sensors and data collection devices.

The local vendor's expertise and presence are the most valuable advantages we had. They were quick to answer any problem. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

What was our ROI?

The tart costs are very low, but you must consider the costs of having trained and enthusiastic people to develop and tune any application and the time to invest. This also has a positive side: you can win experience to solve new challenges instead of buying standard solutions focused on one market.

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

I would rate Zabbix at eight on a scale of ten.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have some clients that have WhatsUp Gold but a few say they are oriented specifically for IT data centers, but that's not the orientation of our project. Some clients ask for WhatsUp Gold but most of the applications are not near to our needs. Some people are using Zabbix and recommend Zabbix. 

What other advice do I have?

If you have IT monitoring needs, ask your IT System expert and probably he/she will opt for Whats Up Gold, but if you need Monitoring Services besides IT and many assorted technologies, you can look at Zabbix 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Volkan Yirik - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy General Manager at İdea Teknoloji
Real User
We our customers replace their enterprise solutions, the ROI is massive and immediate because they don't pay support or licensing fees
Pros and Cons
  • "Our customers also like that they don't have to use multiple modules. Micro Focus and major vendors typically require you to buy several modules and plugins. Our customers do not like that. We offer them a single product for all their monitoring needs."
  • "Implementing Zabbix is difficult. I've deployed many solutions over the years, and Zabbix is the hardest to implement. You have to do some development to get it to work with IBM, Micro Focus, or HP products."

What is our primary use case?

Many of my customers want to replace enterprise products from Micro Focus, IBM, Computer Associates, eMT, etc., with Zabbix. They don't want to pay a high price for many modules and pieces of software, so they switch to an open-source product. 

I work for a software development company that produces a product, but it's not like Zabbix. We make an umbrella people-management solution, but we also integrate Zabbix. We typically offer customers a people management and business intelligence solution integrated with Zabbix for monitoring. We tell them Zabbix can meet all their monitoring needs, including servers, websites, applications, networks, etc. 

What is most valuable?

I like the Zabbix Interface. There are links to every menu. You can choose a node and right-click to pick a suite or go to alarms, support, graphs, etc. The software and server monitoring are excellent. The reporting has also improved considerably compared to the older version. 

Our customers also like that they don't have to use multiple modules. Micro Focus and major vendors typically require you to buy several modules and plugins. Our customers do not like that. We offer them a single product for all their monitoring needs. 

What needs improvement?

Zabbix needs to work on the network monitoring part. The competing products provide a network map. Zabbix lacks an adequate networking map. It has a map but it's static, it's not dynamic.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have sold Zabbix for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Zabbix eight out of 10 for stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Zabbix 10 out of 10 for scalability.

How was the initial setup?

Implementing Zabbix is difficult. I've deployed many solutions over the years, and Zabbix is the hardest to implement. You have to do some development to get it to work with IBM, Micro Focus, or HP products. 

You can find some plugins or an integration package in the Zabbix community, but you'll always need to custom-develop something. Enterprise products aren't open-source, so creating a new integration is challenging. You may need to pay for software production professional services, which are expensive.

Many people in my country fail to implement this product. They say, "This is open-source, so I can implement it myself." However, it isn't easy in the beginning. An IT technician who has no experience with network or server monitoring tools will find it difficult to plan this implementation. They call us for help.

You need one person to implement the product, but you need help from the customer side. We need someone familiar with the customer's network, database, etc. The person implementing Zabbix needs to know Linux and have some programming knowledge. 

What was our ROI?

My customers are large enterprises monitoring thousands of devices. With commercial software, they must pay incredibly high licensing fees, and support costs are worse. 

When they replace their solutions with Zabbix, the return on investment is immediate because they don't pay support or licensing fees. They're saving more than $1 million in some cases. Some customers are paying upwards of $2.5 million for software support alone. These commercial solutions usually have several modules that are difficult to maintain and upgrade. 

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

It is open-source, but you can buy official Zabbix support. I will purchase this for my customers upon request. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Zabbix nine out of 10. If you're thinking about implementing Zabbix, you need to understand that deploying an open-source solution can be challenging. You must carefully plan your implementation. 

If you don't have a plan, you'll need to restart over and over. The planning phase is crucial, and millions of free video tutorials are online. I suggest studying these before starting a Zabbix project. They explain how to plan your deployment and install Zabbix. 

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
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Tchidat Linda - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer of Telecommunication at Gold Telecom
Real User
Top 5
Simple to use with a quick setup
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup was very quick. The first time it was long because I didn't know it yet. I was only using Windows. The first time was very difficult because of the operating system."
  • "My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We needed a tool to know what the space inside of the infrastructure is like. My work was to use Zabbix to get information about the IT infrastructure in the village or in the towns that are very far from the headquarters. I had to use Zabbix to provide information with maps that the IT was working and so that the headquarters can see in real-time what the healyh of the IT infrastructure we had deployed in the electrical network is.

After this experience, I tried Zabbix in african organization based in my country and it was used to monitor the IT infrastructures in three countries, cameroon, benin and ivory coast. For the moment, Zabbix is not yet very popular here but I really appreciate it and really want to make people know that it's very simple to use. 

How has it helped my organization?

Zabbix has improved the daily monitoring tasks by making them easier and faster.

What is most valuable?

The feature that I find most valuable is the stateful map. In fact, the Zabbix map designing tools permit to make monitoring stateful maps with topologies similar to the reals IT network maps.

What needs improvement?

My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement. 

For how long have I used the solution?

II have been using this product for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very scalable because I tried version 5. I used 5 from 0 and I see that they have improved many things, but there is not yet this option to have an access terminal where you have many functionalities. 

The scalability works fine because the community is very active. When a new version comes out, we can see that they have tried to add.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is very quick. When I have a problem and I post it in the community, they answer me very quickly. For now, i don't need any technical support. 

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

In fact, even if I have looked at Nagios first, before Zabbix I did not really use it or any other monitoring solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very quick. The first time it was long because I didn't know it yet. I was only using Windows. The first time was very difficult because of the operating system. 

What about the implementation team?

I implement Zabbix in-house with as outsourcing offficials webs tutorials

What was our ROI?

Zabbix exploitation has dispensed with financing frequent visits to the technical area through alerts, notifications, and stateful maps. Thus, the return on investment is more than 100%.

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

Zabbix is an effective cheaper network monitoring solution because it doesn't need any ongoing cost due to licensing.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing Zabbix, we evaluated Nagios but we were not comfortable with notifications messages syntax and configurations.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Zabbix to people who want to monitor a simple network.

I have found that the literature on the website is not very easy for some people. They want to be in those to read more about Zabbix, how to install it, and what the normal problems are.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Buyer's Guide
Download our free Zabbix Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2023
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Zabbix Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.