Nagios Core and Zabbix are open-source IT infrastructure monitoring solutions. Nagios Core is a mature solution that focuses on flexibility in customization, timely alerts, centralized dashboards, and plugin support for versatile monitoring solutions. Zabbix offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, customizable alerting, user-friendly interface, and extensive reporting.
Comparing the features of Nagios Core and Zabbix:
Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core and Zabbix are free and open-source. Zabbix's user-friendly interface and web configuration might reduce setup and maintenance costs for some. Conversely, Nagios Core's large community and extensive plugin library could minimize the need for paid support. Ultimately, ROI depends on your technical expertise.
Room for Improvement: Nagios Core reviews highlight the need for a more modern UI and easier configuration options. Zabbix reviewers mention occasional scalability limitations for extremely large deployments.
Customer Support: With an open-source model, both rely on community support forums for free assistance. Paid support options are available for Nagios XI and Zabbix enterprise versions, offering faster response times and dedicated help. Reviews suggest a slight edge for Zabbix's community support due to its larger user base.
Deployment: Zabbix offers a more straightforward installation process with a web-based interface for configuration. Nagios Core requires manual configuration through text files, although a web interface is available with the paid Nagios XI version. Both have good documentation, but Zabbix's web interface might be easier for beginners.
The summary above is based on 58 interviews we conducted recently with Zabbix and Nagios Core users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services."
"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."
"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."
"Nagios Core is stable."
"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."
"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"Every new asset placed in the environment can be automatically detected, predicting human failures."
"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
"It provides high scalability, alerting, notification, templating, and end-to-end security."
"Zabbix can use old data to current data to set the threshold. We can use previous data to set the threshold."
"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."
"In terms of customization and integration, we have more flexibility. We can automate configurations, define deletion rules, and customize based on the needs. The client interface allows for further configuration, making it quite comprehensive."
"There is less computing power needed for scaling."
"The solution is open-source, easy to manage, and user-friendly making it easy for anyone to use."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"The tool needs to improve the integrations."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"In the next release, I'm hoping for features targeted towards larger users with more customizable options. Despite this, I think pre-canned reports that can be used straight out of the box would be beneficial rather than having to configure each report individually. Additionally, a deeper dive into software configurations on the machines would be useful, although I understand there may be challenges in implementing this due to scripting requirements. More documentation would also be appreciated."
"Zabbix technical support is sold separately."
"Zabbix is not easy to configure, and upgrading is also an issue."
"The networking monitor is not too easy to work with."
"There is a bit of a learning curve during installation."
"When we have a problem, we have to do a lot of research to solve it."
"Having a more customizable interface and dashboard would be an improvement."
"It could be more stable."
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Nagios Core is ranked 7th in Network Monitoring Software with 46 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in Network Monitoring Software with 101 reviews. Nagios Core is rated 8.0, while Zabbix 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 Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Nagios Core is most compared with Nagios XI, Icinga, Centreon, OP5 Monitor and LogicMonitor, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios XI and Amazon CloudWatch. See our Nagios Core vs. Zabbix report.
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