Nagios Core and Zabbix are open-source IT infrastructure monitoring solutions. Nagios Core is a mature solution that focuses on flexibility in customization, timely alerts, centralized dashboards, and plugin support for versatile monitoring solutions. Zabbix offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, customizable alerting, user-friendly interface, and extensive reporting.
Comparing the features of Nagios Core and Zabbix:
Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core and Zabbix are free and open-source. Zabbix's user-friendly interface and web configuration might reduce setup and maintenance costs for some. Conversely, Nagios Core's large community and extensive plugin library could minimize the need for paid support. Ultimately, ROI depends on your technical expertise.
Room for Improvement: Nagios Core reviews highlight the need for a more modern UI and easier configuration options. Zabbix reviewers mention occasional scalability limitations for extremely large deployments.
Customer Support: With an open-source model, both rely on community support forums for free assistance. Paid support options are available for Nagios XI and Zabbix enterprise versions, offering faster response times and dedicated help. Reviews suggest a slight edge for Zabbix's community support due to its larger user base.
Deployment: Zabbix offers a more straightforward installation process with a web-based interface for configuration. Nagios Core requires manual configuration through text files, although a web interface is available with the paid Nagios XI version. Both have good documentation, but Zabbix's web interface might be easier for beginners.
The summary above is based on 58 interviews we conducted recently with Zabbix and Nagios Core users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
"Nagios Core is stable."
"The solution is quite efficient."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."
"Dashboard and the customization of the items and triggers are the most valuable features."
"The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good. The monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great. The information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed."
"Setup was straightforward. Initial deployment took two or three months."
"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
"We like the user-interface for this solution, which makes it an easy to use tool."
"The calculations part is the most valuable."
"The basic setup is very easy."
"During my testing, the features that I like the most are that it can be integrated with my system, and it provides me with reports of all of my servers."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
"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."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"It is a bit slow due to latency."
"Zabbix could improve when it comes to large-scale use cases. Additionally, the inventory could be better when connecting to other solutions, such as ServiceNow. There show to be better integration with other platforms and storage."
"We had some scalability issues with a large number of nodes."
"If Zabbix had a better dashboard then it would be nice."
"The integration of the product is not so easy, especially when it comes to the application database."
"The reports are not great and should be improved."
"In an upcoming release, there should be automated reports which we are currently doing manually. For example, if we collect a report file every day and want to send it to a moderator for review. We are expecting this feature to come out soon but it would be valuable to have now."
"Zabbix does not draw automatic mapping of the network, this is something they should add in the future. There is a lot of effort that is involved in tailoring some of the settings which could be made easier."
"It would be helpful if they translated the documentation to Cyrillic languages."
Nagios Core is ranked 7th in Network Monitoring Software with 46 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in Network Monitoring Software with 101 reviews. Nagios Core is rated 8.0, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nagios Core writes "An Open Source Fully Featured Data Centre Monitoring Tool". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Nagios Core is most compared with Nagios XI, Icinga, Centreon, OP5 Monitor and LogicMonitor, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios XI and Amazon CloudWatch. See our Nagios Core vs. Zabbix report.
See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors and best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors.
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