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7,919 views|6,097 comparisons
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19,530 views|15,128 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 29, 2023

We compared Nagios XI and Zabbix across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:

  • Features: Nagios XI received positive feedback for its versatility and adaptability. It offers a diverse selection of plugins and scripts for monitoring needs. Zabbix is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, scalability, and reliable performance. It provides customizable dashboards, trigger dependencies, SNMP monitoring, and problem tracking.

  • Room for Improvement: 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. Zabbix could reduce false positives and improve integration, cloud monitoring, and reporting.

  • Service and Support: Some Nagios XI customers complained about the lack of chat or phone support options. Users had mixed opinions about Zabbix customer service. Some found it helpful, while others feel it needs improvement. Customers generally rely on online documentation and community forums for assistance. 

  • Ease of Deployment: 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. The complexity of Zabbix's initial setup varies, and it may require an experienced group of administrators and engineers.

  • Pricing: Nagios XI’s pricing is considered reasonable and transparent, with no extra charges. Zabbix is a free, open-source solution, but users can purchase support services and additional features.

  • ROI: Nagios XI users reported positive outcomes overall, but some said visibility limitations lower the solution’s ROI. Users say that Zabbix provides a cost-effective solution.

Comparison Results: 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. Zabbix is a highly customizable open-source solution with a wide range of monitoring capabilities, including the ability to monitor virtual machines and databases. However, Zabbix’s setup can be complex and may require technical expertise.

To learn more, read our detailed Nagios XI vs. Zabbix Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Which network monitoring tool is more customizable: Nagios or Zabbix?
Answer: I think that your best bet of the two is Nagios. I would also take a look a CA Nimsoft Monitor Freemium. This will have more OOTB functionality for you sir.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."

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"The most valuable feature is its support for different types of devices, where it can use all of the equipment that you need.""Nagios XI is a simple monitoring tool with performance management.""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.""It's great for monitoring IT services infrastructure.""The dashboard allows you to see what's going on in the overall system.""Though I downplayed the administrative NCC GUI, this is by far the strongest aspect of the Nagios XI product.""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."

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"The initial setup was not complex.""The most valuable features of Zabbix are flexibility and a single interface for different types of monitoring.""We detect problems before the customer does and before it actually happens using the predictive functions in Zabbix.""It meets my organizational needs. It's pretty easy to use.""We are able to monitor our virtual infrastructure, virtual machines, windows servers, databases, and the network using a simple network management protocol. We are able to pull almost all the metrics that we want, receive notifications, and have them integrate with telegrams for certain devices that are critical, such as UPSs.""The most valuable feature is the protocol to manage anything.""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.""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."

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Cons
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."

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"We'd like to see more integration capabilities.""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.""I would like to see more customization in the network map because it is a bit tricky to use it.""Technical support is an area that needs improvement. It is not available 24/7.""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.""It can be quite difficult to know which drivers and agents to use when setting up.""The installation and monitoring need improvement."

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"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.""The dashboard and the graph section could be a little bit more professional.""The event correlation could be better.""The only improvement I would suggest, revolves around its AI and ML capabilities.""If Zabbix had a better dashboard then it would be nice.""I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE.""Even though it’s such a powerful monitoring system, it would be more helpful if it had a flexible UI.""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."

More Zabbix Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
Information Not Available
  • "The pricing is really cost efficient. The licensing is perpetual and can be renewed very easily."
  • "You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
  • "For the cost of the commercial product and support, and taking into account the open source characteristics of it, I believe it is difficult to a better value."
  • "We are using the free version of this solution."
  • "This solution is very expensive, at approximately $5,000 USD when I purchased it, which is why I haven't upgraded my version in several years."
  • "The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
  • "The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
  • "Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
  • More Nagios XI Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It’s free of cost."
  • "It is a true open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
  • "The product is an open source and free solution."
  • "It's free software released under the GNU/GPL license."
  • "There are no licenses."
  • "We’re using the free version, which covers all our current needs."
  • "It is free, which allows us to reduce costs."
  • "I was using the free, Community Edition."
  • More Zabbix Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want using these, but they require quite some expertise before you can use them. Then there are the ones that are not open source, the enterprise softwares and cost you some money, but on the other hand, they are extremely easy to set-up and learn. You can have them up and running in a matter of minutes. And then there are those which are completely cloud based. They can be free of cost or charge some money depending on the software. The good thing about these is that you don’t have to install any extra software, and it can be managed completely online but then again these have limited features and you cannot exploit them to the full extent as you can do with the open-source and to some extent the enterprise software, so I won’t suggest you to use these, because these are generally not the complete solutions and require other support software to achieve the same. Below I have listed the outstanding pros and cons of the various Network analyzers that you can look into Nagios Pros: Nagios offers an extensive set of collector plug-ins that allows users to gather performance and availability data from a broad range of operating systems, including  Windows and Netware Nagios… Read more →
    Answers from the Community
    Avigail Sugarman
    it_user116742 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user116742 (Oracle Web Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees)
    Consultant

    ZABBIX ... of course :)
    We are working with this wonderful monitoring tool since 2008

    it_user90867 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user90867 (Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees)
    Consultant

    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

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points.
    Top Answer:The product is not expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
    Top Answer:The Wi-Fi side needs improvement. In most warehouse environments, there are shortfalls in such conditions. We often face… more »
    Top Answer:It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability.
    Top Answer:I don't deal with the licensing aspect of the product.
    Top Answer:The product's stability could be even better.
    Top Answer:In terms of customization and integration, we have more flexibility. We can automate configurations, define deletion… more »
    Top Answer:Zabbix itself is free, but professional support is paid. They have different pricing tiers based on the category and… more »
    Top Answer:There are areas of improvement. The database grows really fast. So, when you install Zabbix, you have to deal with some… more »
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

    Juniper Mist Premium Analytics is a comprehensive network analytics solution that provides organizations with valuable insights into their network performance and user experience. The primary use case of this product is to enable IT teams to proactively monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize their network infrastructure.

    The most valuable functionality of Juniper Mist Premium Analytics is its AI-driven insights and recommendations. Leveraging machine learning algorithms, it analyzes vast amounts of network data to identify anomalies, predict potential issues, and suggest remediation actions. This proactive approach helps organizations minimize network downtime, improve user experience, and optimize network performance.

    By providing real-time visibility into network performance, Juniper Mist Premium Analytics helps organizations quickly identify and resolve network issues. It offers detailed analytics on network traffic, application performance, and user behavior, allowing IT teams to pinpoint the root cause of problems and take immediate action. This not only reduces troubleshooting time but also enhances overall network reliability.

    Furthermore, Juniper Mist Premium Analytics enables organizations to optimize their network infrastructure. It provides insights into network capacity utilization, application usage patterns, and user behavior, allowing IT teams to make informed decisions about network design, resource allocation, and capacity planning. This helps organizations to ensure that their network is efficiently utilized and can support the growing demands of their users.

    Nagios XI provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components, including applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, systems metrics, and network infrastructure. Third-party add-ons provide tools for monitoring virtually all in-house and external applications, services, and systems.

    Nagios XI uses a powerful Core 4 monitoring engine that provides users with the highest levels of server monitoring performance. This high degree of performance enables nearly limitless scalability and monitoring powers.

    With Nagios XI, stakeholders can check up on their infrastructure status using the role-based web interface. Sophisticated dashboards enable access to monitoring information and third-party data. Administrators can easily set up permissions so users can only access the infrastructure they are authorized to view.

    Nagios XI Benefits and Features

    Some of the benefits and top features of using Nagios XI include:

    • Extensive IT infrastructure monitoring: Comprehensively monitor all of your organization’s infrastructure’s components. Hundreds of third-party add-ons let you monitor virtually any internal application, service, or system.

    • Proactivity: With built-in, automated trend analysis and capacity planning charts, organizations can plan infrastructure upgrades before legacy systems encounter unexpected issues. IT staff, business stakeholders, and end users are notified via email or SMS with details of the outage so they can begin handling the issue immediately.

    • Multiple integration options: Numerous available APIs allow seamless integration with in-house and third-party applications. Thousands of community-developed add-ons that extend monitoring and native alerting capabilities as well as custom interfaces are available, allowing you to customize Nagios XI to your company's needs.

    • Complete visibility: Get a single view of your entire IT operations network and business processes. The Nagios XI dashboards provide at-a-glance access to monitoring information and third-party data. Views give users quick access to the most useful information.

    • User-friendly interface: Customize the layout, design, and settings for each user’s GUI, providing clients and team members with the flexibility they need. Administrators can easily delegate control over monitoring configuration management, system settings, and more to end users and team members using the built-in web-based configuration interface. A configuration wizard guides users through the process of monitoring new devices, services, and applications without understanding complex monitoring concepts.

    • Configuration snapshots: Snapshots allow you to save and archive your most recent configurations. Later on, you can revert back to them whenever you like.

    • Advanced user management: Ensure a secure infrastructure environment by easily setting up and managing user accounts and assigning custom roles with just a few mouse clicks.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Nagios XI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its integration options and monitoring abilities, as well as its alerting features.

    David P., a senior DevOps engineer at EML Payments Ltd, writes, “We use Nagios as a network discovery tool. We use Nagios to maintain our uptime statistics and to monitor our services. It has allowed us to be much more sophisticated in our monitoring and alerting.”

    An IT-OSS manager at a comms service provider notes, “Nagios XI has a custom API feature, and we can expose custom APIs for our integration. This is a great feature.”

    Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services. 

    It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting. 

    With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.

    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
    1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider32%
    Manufacturing Company24%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Retailer8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization47%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Aerospace/Defense Firm7%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization33%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise63%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise53%
    Large Enterprise35%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business49%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise31%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise41%
    Buyer's Guide
    Nagios XI vs. Zabbix
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios XI vs. Zabbix and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Nagios XI is ranked 8th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 54 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 2nd in Cloud Monitoring Software with 96 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.