We compared Nagios XI and Zabbix based on our users' reviews across several parameters. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Nagios XI is praised for its ease of deployment, real-time monitoring capabilities, and comprehensive reporting features. However, users have raised concerns about the outdated interface, lack of detailed documentation, and limited customizability of alerts. Zabbix is lauded for its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, customizable alerting system, user-friendly interface, and responsive customer service. Users appreciate the value of their investment and reasonable pricing of Zabbix, though some have suggested improvements in the user interface, documentation, and scalability.
Features: Nagios XI boasts ease of monitoring multiple systems and customizable alerts. Zabbix excels in comprehensive monitoring, user-friendly interface, and extensive reporting. Nagios XI emphasizes integration capabilities. Zabbix focuses on monitoring various system aspects.
Pricing and ROI: Nagios XI has a minimal setup cost, while Zabbix has no setup costs. Nagios XI offers transparent pricing and value for investment, while Zabbix users find the pricing reasonable and the licensing flexible. Both are considered competitive options in terms of cost., Nagios XI users noticed improved productivity, efficiency, and system visibility with quick issue resolution and cost savings. Customizable alerts prevented downtime, ensuring smooth operations. Zabbix users reported positive outcomes, proving to be a valuable investment for their organization.
Room for Improvement: Nagios XI users have cited outdated interface, lack of detailed documentation, limited customizability of alerts, and high cost as areas needing improvement. Zabbix users suggest enhancing user interface, providing better documentation, improving scalability, and performance.
Deployment and customer support: Nagios XI has a range of deployment options with different complexity levels. Zabbix's setup can vary in difficulty and may require clear documentation and customization for success. Deployment durations for Nagios XI range from 30 minutes to a few months, while for Zabbix, it can take hours to weeks. Customers of Nagios XI appreciate the efficient technical support provided, though there are occasional delays in being connected to the appropriate representative. Zabbix users favor self-help resources such as manuals and community forums.
The summary above is based on 54 interviews we conducted recently with Nagios XI and Zabbix 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."
"I can monitor a phone on a desk to very big servers of any company."
"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 Script Module in Nagios is really easy to use and is really cost efficient."
"It's a monitoring agent. It's designed to do one thing. Its most valuable feature is its monitoring."
"BPI: It allows defining peripherals to map business criticality for efficient monitoring, as required."
"The dashboard allows you to see what's going on in the overall system."
"It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability."
"An excellent solution that is easy and intuitive to implement."
"I like being able to use proxy servers for different locations. 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. I have, in the past, used Slack, but we've integrated it with Microsoft Teams. We also use it for SMS with a service called Redcoat. It is very flexible. It does what I need it to do, and my manager is very happy because it doesn't cost anything. We are nearing 4,000 hosts inside Zabbix, and we've got another 6,000 access points to add to it. We've thrown everything at it, and it has managed to keep going. I am very impressed with the tool, and I'd shake their hand very hard if I got to say the compliments to the Zabbix team. They keep improving it and doing refreshes, which is one good thing about it. There is also online information as well as books that you can purchase if you're willing to read enough. There is a lot to pick up, but it is a pretty complete solution."
"The features I found most valuable are the user interface and a wide range of network devices that are easy to configure."
"Simple network monitoring that is easy to install and manage."
"The most valuable feature is the alert and alarm monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides network segregation for server monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is monitoring."
"The flexibility of this solution is amazing."
"Zabbix is quite stable once it is set up. We haven't had any post-setup issues."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"I would like to be able to extend it to all of our data centers, whether they are in the cloud or not. It would be helpful if I could connect everywhere."
"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."
"They need more documentation for the plugins."
"The Configuration Wizard needs improvement, because not all vendors are present."
"The installation and monitoring need improvement."
"The product could be optimized to improve the administrative user experience via the Nagios Core Configuration (NCC) GUI module."
"Technical support is an area that needs improvement. It is not available 24/7."
"The product does not have SAP monitoring."
"The System Center Operations Manager can be improved."
"Its UI needs to be improved a little bit more so that an end-user is also able to handle it. I can handle it, but others should also be able to handle it in a better way. It becomes complex when we are growing and need to add proxies. We need more scalability features and documentation for different use cases. A lot of articles are available, but they need to be in proper documentation. For example, when you have thousands of servers that have to be monitored in different regions of the world, there should be some kind of documentation to describe how you can create proxies and add them. Sometimes, when you are using the database, it can get overloaded. When the network is growing, the number of transactions becomes very high, and the database gets overloaded. There should be information about how to reduce the load on the MySQL database, which is what Zabbix is using. The market is growing a lot, and it should be enhanced for a lot more things. We are currently bringing enhancements at our end for different use cases. For example, when dockerization is going on, how can we check the logs inside the Dockers. We should also be able to monitor and check the number of logins and add features such as SSO login and two-factor authentication as a protocol. These are the security features and concerns that we have to deal with. Currently, we are developing modules to add features to Zabbix, but they should also work on these features."
"It could be more stable."
"Implementation is always tailored to the customer and the kind of information we need from the client to carry it out can make them very uncomfortable. Sometimes the clients are not ready to share it."
"When using this solution in enterprise monitoring, you are able to see that there are some issues with equipment that could be causing a problem. Sometimes you want to make a root command that you do not want to be executed automatically. What we have tried to do is open an SSH session directly from the solution's interface but it is not possible."
"For us, the initial setup was complex"
"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."
"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."
Nagios XI is ranked 10th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 54 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 2nd in Cloud Monitoring Software with 98 reviews. Nagios XI is rated 8.2, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nagios XI writes "Great for monitoring IT services infrastructure with nice tools and helpful notifications". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Nagios XI is most compared with Nagios Core, PRTG Network Monitor, Icinga, Wireshark and SCOM, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios Core and Amazon CloudWatch. See our Nagios XI vs. Zabbix report.
See our list of best Server Monitoring vendors, best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors, and best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.
We monitor all Cloud Monitoring Software 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.
ZABBIX ... of course :)
We are working with this wonderful monitoring tool since 2008
ZABBIX ... of course :)
We have been working with this wonderful monitoring tool since 2007 (before we had used Nagios, Openview, Whatsup, Hobbitmon, etc) and until now we haven't seen any limitations in our projects.
If you need to learn a little bit more about 'how to customize ZABBIX' you can search about:
- ZABBIX UserParameters;
- ZABBIX pluggable modules;
- ZABBIX LLD;
- ZABBIX API;
I think this things will help a lot to know how to extend/customize ZABBIX.
Luciano