We compared Nagios XI and Nagios Core 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. Nagios Core is an adaptable solution praised for its integration, customizability, and ability to effectively monitor server availability and network connectivity.
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. Nagios Core users have requested better documentation, improved scalability, and a more user-friendly configuration process.
Service and Support: Some Nagios XI customers complained about the lack of chat or phone support options. Nagios Core lacks direct customer service, but users can generally find help from a supportive open-source community and large knowledge base.
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. Nagios Core's setup is generally seen as well-documented and straightforward.
Pricing: Nagios XI’s pricing is considered reasonable and transparent, with no extra charges. Nagios Core is free, but users may incur costs for installation and configuration.
ROI: Nagios XI users reported positive outcomes overall, but some said visibility limitations lower the solution’s ROI. Nagios Core users say they have saved money by replacing paid monitoring tools with this open-source 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. Nagios Core is a flexible open-source solution that is highly customizable and offers robust functionality commonly found in paid enterprise solutions. However, some users have said that Nagios Core becomes unwieldy when used at a large scale and that the documentation could be more thorough.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The most valuable feature depends on the project. It's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7. I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful."
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
"The solution is quite efficient."
"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."
"Nagios is stable and it's easy to use the monitoring software, which is why we chose this product."
"The ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves."
"It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability."
"Nagios is a custom API manager, and we can expose custom APIs for our integration. This is a great feature."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of processes."
"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 dashboard allows you to see what's going on in the overall system."
"The solution has a lot of plugins and scripts integrated with it."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."
"The mapping is a little hard."
"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."
"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
"I would like to see more training videos."
"The scalability of Nagios XI is scalable. However, it is not easy to do."
"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."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"Technical support is an area that needs improvement. It is not available 24/7."
"I would like to see more customization in the network map because it is a bit tricky to use it."
"I would like a much easier GUI so that I can delete events and logs, which will free up a lot of space."
"Nagios XI can improve its GUI for users with a new look."
"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."
Nagios Core is ranked 7th in Network Monitoring Software with 46 reviews while Nagios XI is ranked 8th in Network Monitoring Software with 54 reviews. Nagios Core is rated 8.0, while Nagios XI is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nagios Core writes "An Open Source Fully Featured Data Centre Monitoring Tool". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Nagios XI writes "Great for monitoring IT services infrastructure with nice tools and helpful notifications". Nagios Core is most compared with Zabbix, Icinga, Centreon, OP5 Monitor and LogicMonitor, whereas Nagios XI is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Wireshark, Icinga and SCOM. See our Nagios Core vs. Nagios XI report.
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Ultimately NagiosXI is the better solution than Core but shortlisting NagiosXI also definitely depends on the infra landscape, technology, network devices, and other scopes of activities in monitoring.
The biggest difference I see between Nagios Core and XI is the user interface, reporting, and onboarding any element for monitoring, and that onboarding is much easier in NagiosXI than Core. Nagios Core is little complicated where you have to use console called Nconf or editing conf files in Linux needs more technical knowledge than using NagiosXI.