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."
"The solution is pretty stable."
"This is a very good solution and it is simple to use, for any company."
"Nagios XI helps us monitor the bandwidth of the internet connection, HTTP, DNS, active directory services, and exchange data availability. We have multiple servers to monitor databases, availability of servers, and ping."
"The ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves."
"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."
"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."
"BPI: It allows defining peripherals to map business criticality for efficient monitoring, as required."
"I can monitor a phone on a desk to very big servers of any company."
"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
"Zabbix is quite stable once it is set up. We haven't had any post-setup issues."
"Its overall flexibility is most valuable. When our customers have some custom applications that are not necessarily covered by the community or a standard monitoring tool, we use Zabbix to build our own modules with our own templates. This feature has been useful in using Zabbix for infrastructure and IT monitoring. It has also been useful for industrial equipment monitoring. Zabbix is very lightweight. It is efficient in terms of performance because it doesn't use a lot of resources."
"Setup was straightforward. Initial deployment took two or three months."
"We value the auto-host discovery, template import, bulk import/export features. Newer versions also add nice features, such as multi-IP per host."
"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."
"There is a problems page that shows us every warning or problem that occurs on our VMs globally. The map screen is also really useful because this is something that was missing. I don't know every other tool in the market. So, I don't know if this is a good point of only Zabbix, or other tools are also doing it, but from my point of view, this is the most useful page that I use, along with the problems page that efficiently lists the problem, recovery time, ending hours, starting hours, and so on."
"Simple network monitoring that is easy to install and manage."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"It can be quite difficult to know which drivers and agents to use when setting up."
"The reporting structure could be more streamlined."
"The scalability of Nagios XI is scalable. However, it is not easy to do."
"They need more documentation for the plugins."
"The installation and monitoring need improvement."
"The PNP4Nagios plugin not working easily with XI is an issue for me, because some open source monitoring plugins do not work out of the box. But in the end, you learn to live with it."
"The Configuration Wizard needs improvement, because not all vendors are present."
"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 user interface could be better."
"Zabbix is powerful, but it is difficult to understand initially. There are many things that can be improved, but we might not be using Zabbix to its fullest extent. The software has more features than we need."
"When we have a problem, we have to do a lot of research to solve it."
"Zabbix technical support is sold separately."
"The performance reporting could be improved."
"There are some features of Zabbix that are not good for reporting. The DX Spectrum solution has better reporting."
"The product could be more secure and more stable."
"Look and feel."
Earn 20 points
Nagios XI is ranked 8th in Cloud Monitoring Software with 10 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 2nd in Cloud Monitoring Software with 25 reviews. Nagios XI is rated 8.2, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nagios XI writes "Reasonably priced, reliable, and good return on investment". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Very mature, easy to scale, and free to use". 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