We compared Centreon and Nagios XI across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Centreon features a user-friendly interface with useful options for customization and manual configuration. Users like the solution’s flexible dashboards and the ability to create plugins. Nagios XI received positive feedback for its versatility and adaptability. It offers a diverse selection of plugins and scripts for monitoring needs.
Room for Improvement: Some Centreon users requested better documentation and more flexibility to customize reporting. Other areas for improvement include auto-scanning efficiency and integration. Users have suggested Nagios XI could improve integration, simplify configuration, and make the platform more user-friendly. Nagios XI users also suggest improvements to network visibility and cloud discovery.
Service and Support: Centreon is highly regarded for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service that offers support in multiple languages. However, some customers feel that the lower levels of support are inadequate. Some Nagios XI customers complained about the lack of chat or phone support options.
Ease of Deployment: Centreon's initial setup is described as time-consuming and complex. The deployment varies in duration depending on the IT infrastructure. Some Nagios XI users found the setup to be relatively simple, while others considered it challenging. Deployment can take a few months to complete, and there’s a steep learning curve.
Pricing: Centreon's cost depends on the company's size. It is affordable and suitable for small companies, but it can be costly to scale up. Nagios XI’s pricing is considered reasonable and transparent, with no extra charges.
ROI: Centreon delivers value by helping users identify and resolve critical issues fasters, which could yield large savings. Nagios XI users reported positive outcomes overall, but some said visibility limitations lower the solution’s ROI.
Comparison Results: Centreon is a flexible solution offering a range of customization options. The solution has earned high marks for support and affordability. At the same time, users say the setup can be complicated and time-consuming. Others said that auto-scanning and integration have room for improvement. Nagios XI is an affordable, flexible solution with a broad feature set and a selection of helpful plugins. At the same time, users say the setup can be complex, and some expressed a desire for more convenient ways to contact support.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"It is decentralized, which is better, because you can reduce the load from a single system. Also, you get a better view because it's more independent. Then, for the management, it's nice because they have one central system. With that, they can manage all the other systems, as well. This means they don't have to configure each system by system. They can configure it from one single interface."
"For servers and for applications, it was very, very efficient."
"We have all our tickets inside Centreon in real-time and can monitor a lot of ELP and CLN in real-time for application purposes."
"What we like about it is that, whereas with Nagios, by design, if you have five or six data centers, you have to open five or six web pages to see what's going on, In Centreon, this is all included in one page, a single site, one dashboard. You don't have to jump from one specific dashboard to the other."
"Centreon helps me detect where the problem is quickly. When we resolve a problem quickly, this lowers our overall costs."
"The most important feature is that it permits us to receive alarms if there is an incident within the infrastructure. The feature I love the most is the reporting feature, the MBI (Monitoring Business Intelligence) which permits us to send advanced reports to our customers in PDF format or in Doc format. We also deploy Centreon Map which gives our customers intuitive views of their information system."
"We use the remote server functionality on some customer sites, because you can see an independent view and are not dependent on a single connection. If you have branch offices or bigger office outside your headquarters, you can use remote servers because if the connection is broken or disrupted, then remote server will obtain a view of your environment and server availability. This is a good point against using other solutions. Because with other solutions, you don't have this feature. Then, you will be blind if you have this type of a situation."
"The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks."
"The most useful aspect of this solution is the ability to customize it for the client agent."
"Nagios is a custom API manager, and we can expose custom APIs for our integration. This is a great feature."
"The Script Module in Nagios is really easy to use and is really cost efficient."
"The most valuable feature is its support for different types of devices, where it can use all of the equipment that you need."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of processes."
"It's great for monitoring IT services infrastructure."
"BPI: It allows defining peripherals to map business criticality for efficient monitoring, as required."
"Since this is an open source technology, if we are capable of writing the plugins in any scripting language, this product allows us to monitor anything we want."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The Home view could be improved by adding customization functions that allow users to change the size of the widgets for a more uniform layout."
"The most important issue is the capability to interconnect with other systems. It already exists for some of them. For example, the Stream Connector is something we use to populate data in another system. This kind of facility for connecting should exist for all products that it makes sense to have connected to a monitoring solution."
"I went through a few things with them to do with Centreon MAP, to do with active polygons, being able to draw an area and make that active. The functionality was in the older version of Centreon MAP and in the new version, which was a complete rewrite, they dropped it."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"This solution lacks service monitoring in the cloud."
"During the initial setup we faced some issues. Part of it was because we had to become more knowledgeable in the solution. There are some gray areas and if you don't know the product well you may have issues. Another part of it was some bugs that we came across, although that's part of every software solution in IT nowadays. But the initial setup could be easier."
"Sometimes, when the GUI and some of the search fields are being reset, and I return to the page, then I have to set them again. Therefore, some improvement on the UI and the filtering is needed."
"There are improvements that they need to make to their API. When we're using different systems and we want to disable monitoring for a specific server, we still can't do that through the API. That's something that's lacking."
"I would like to see support for notification via SMS."
"The technical support is variable - sometimes I get answers, but most of my tickets go unanswered."
"It is really difficult to integrate Nagios XI with another system to generate logs and alert our management of failures in security infrastructure."
"I would like a much easier GUI so that I can delete events and logs, which will free up a lot of space."
"We often need to develop custom plugins to get Nagios to work the way we want it to work because the features we need are not always available in Nagios."
"The way Nagios displays information isn't easy for a new user to understand. It's not intuitive enough. You need to read some tutorials or be trained to understand what it's displaying. Also, I think it needs more features to improve network visibility because there are some things you can't detect."
"Nagios XI can improve network and hardware monitoring, these parameters should be simplified to allow usage for monitoring. Additionally, if there was automatic reporting it would be helpful."
"The Configuration Wizard needs improvement, because not all vendors are present."
Centreon is ranked 11th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 27 reviews while Nagios XI is ranked 9th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 54 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while Nagios XI is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Nagios XI writes "Great for monitoring IT services infrastructure with nice tools and helpful notifications". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios Core, Icinga and Datadog, whereas Nagios XI is most compared with Nagios Core, Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Wireshark and Nagios Fusion. See our Centreon vs. Nagios XI report.
See our list of best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors, best Network Monitoring Software vendors, and best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.
We monitor all IT Infrastructure Monitoring reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.