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.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"Nagios XI is a simple monitoring tool with performance management."
"It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability."
"The installation is no problem. I've installed Nagios several times."
"You want to monitor a specific metric that nobody else has? You can do it even with the most basic of scripting skills, and you can always share it with the vast community of Nagios Exchange."
"The most useful aspect of this solution is the ability to customize it for the client agent."
"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."
"I can monitor a software made in-house to software of bigger companies."
"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 feature is the protocol to manage anything."
"I'm supervising all the IT departments, and Zabbix seems quite good for them. It provides graphics and information in real time. We get alerts about crashes on the system, enabling us to quickly repair issues. We can easily find devices with problems."
"The solution allows you to configure and customize how you want to collect information from servers or other systems."
"The level of discovery-based configuration that lets us auto-configure the monitoring for various systems is a valuable feature."
"The basic setup is very easy."
"It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the ease with which we can set it up at customer sites with our custom Zabbix proxy and tools."
"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."
"Open-source software is usually not user-friendly."
"I would like to see more customization in the network map because it is a bit tricky to use it."
"It is really difficult to integrate Nagios XI with another system to generate logs and alert our management of failures in security infrastructure."
"The technical support is variable - sometimes I get answers, but most of my tickets go unanswered."
"They need more documentation for the plugins."
"The reporting structure could be more streamlined."
"I would like a much easier GUI so that I can delete events and logs, which will free up a lot of space."
"Zabbix claims that there is an auto-discovery process but my team member was facing difficulty and was told that it's not really automatic, and there are some manual steps."
"I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE."
"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."
"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."
"Its UI should be improved. They did some improvements in version 5, but it could benefit from some more work. Its integrations should also be improved. They've been active for one year, and they seem to have noticed that. It has new integrations, but it could benefit from more integrations. As far as I know, there is no model to push statistics, metrics, or events towards Zabbix. This type of API isn't yet there, whereas some other tools provide an API for this."
"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."
"Even though it’s such a powerful monitoring system, it would be more helpful if it had a flexible UI."
"Zabbix can use better documentation and support for troubleshooting."
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.
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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