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.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
"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."
"It is fairly easy to set up, and we can monitor pretty much everything we want to."
"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."
"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
"We use it to monitor and manage our servers."
"Simple network monitoring that is easy to install and manage."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"Zabbix is scalable."
"We use Zabbix to monitor our organization's IT infrastructure and workstations. We don't use Microsoft Intune since it's expensive. The tool's real-time alerting system has proved crucial for us, particularly when a new device joins a network that is not one of our own devices. It notifies us about the presence of this new device, allowing us to investigate further. Additionally, it alerts us about disk usage, memory usage, and the software installed on the machine."
"The pricing of the product is reasonable."
"The most valuable feature is the alert and alarm monitoring."
"Zabbix has a roadmap and they are continuously and frequently adding new features."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"I would like to see more training videos."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
"I think the reporting part of Zabbix can be improved in terms of more user-friendly graphics to display the collected data. Many simple users who don't know how to use Zabbix properly might get confused by the reporting, although at the same time it is very versatile for my company."
"Zabbix technical support is sold separately."
"The APM monitoring has room for improvement, although I hear that the new 5.2 version has some improvements in that area, and I'd like to give that a go. I would like to see a few more templates out there for different styles of monitoring. I use the Grafana interface for reporting. I would also like it to have an out-of-the-box ability to email reports. You can create reports, but to be able to email those reports would be really helpful. I've got users who are not interested in logging in and generating a report. They want it all pre-canned and sent to an email address. It would also be really handy if we could pin certain reports up onto platforms such as Teams or SharePoint. A GUI for the proxy server would be cool to have for debugging purposes and for the support teams to have a look at, but I don't know whether that's really feasible to do. I get enough from the log files themselves."
"The solution needs to add features for finding loopholes or problems and their root causes."
"The networking monitor is not too easy to work with."
"I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE."
"We would like to monitor other touchpoints such as ATM machines. It would be great if it can provide monitoring of ATM machines. Compatibility with other products would also be great."
"Zabbix isn't a great tool for cloud-specific monitoring - its connection to public clouds needs to be improved. Other areas for improvement would be the lack of dashboards and integrations."
Nagios Core is ranked 7th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 46 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 100 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, Centreon, Icinga, 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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