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."
"The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."
"Predetermined templates allow for simple and fast service monitoring configuration."
"Valuable features include the ability to schedule downtime, intensity or depth of monitoring which it does, different plugin packs, Centreon MAP, Centreon BI."
"It supports active monitoring so we don't have to use traps. From time to time traps are not very useful because we never know if they are actually working or not. The reporting part is also valuable as are the event logs. Using them we can check right away if something has had a hiccup."
"I really like the filtering capabilities of it. You can easily tell what's critical next to what's okay, the state of the services. It's very easy to get the whole picture quickly."
"We have a single GUI where we can view the status of all our infrastructure."
"I can't point to one valuable feature. All of Centreon is good."
"The product is available in ISO image format, ready for deployment. Centreon also has a comprehensive guide and documentation that are simple and easy to follow."
"The ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves."
"It's a monitoring agent. It's designed to do one thing. Its most valuable feature is its monitoring."
"The features I've found the most useful are the plug-ins, the fact that you can connect almost everything to it. That's very useful."
"Nagios allows us to configure any device so that we can send pager alerts when people don't have access to emails. It also allows us to schedule downtime and maintenance."
"The installation is no problem. I've installed Nagios several times."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard, where I can have a single screen that provides a summary for hundreds of servers."
"The most valuable features of Nagios XI are you can customize it based on your use case and requirements. It is flexible and easy to integrate with our systems. You can customize the solution by adding additional features using code."
"Nagios is stable and it's easy to use the monitoring software, which is why we chose this product."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The reporting has room for improvement."
"Release management and quality of testing need improvement, because with each major upgrade we have many issues coming in. Then, it takes several minor upgrades to get rid of them."
"This solution lacks service monitoring in the cloud."
"Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services."
"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."
"It is necessary to improve service monitoring of database services in the free version."
"Centreon is actually missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD."
"To get it started is a lot of work, since it comes empty. We had to push information into it to make it work."
"Open-source software is usually not user-friendly."
"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."
"Improve the documentation, examples, and best practices, therefore users can understand how to do things."
"The product's stability could be even better."
"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."
"I would like to see support for notification via SMS."
"The product uses the backend as Perl and could be modified to a more lightweight solution like what's being offered by other vendors."
"I would like to see more customization in the network map because it is a bit tricky to use it."
Centreon is ranked 10th in Network Monitoring Software with 27 reviews while Nagios XI is ranked 8th in Network Monitoring Software 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 Splunk Enterprise Security, whereas Nagios XI is most compared with Zabbix, Nagios Core, PRTG Network Monitor, Wireshark and OpsRamp. See our Centreon vs. Nagios XI report.
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