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Amazon CloudWatch vs Nagios Log Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Log Management
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (10th)
Nagios Log Server
Ranking in Log Management
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Log Server is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively address issues with seamless monitoring while enhancing custom metrics functionality
We use CloudWatch for monitoring and logging. It helps us monitor our applications' performance, particularly in ensuring that every API hit returns a response within four seconds, which is our SLA. We also monitor invocation errors in Lambda and use CloudWatch alerts to notify us of any issues…
Syarul Idzuddin Adzmi - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and affordable tool for monitoring data centers
Five engineers are needed for the maintenance of the product. I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. To increase the rating for the product, Nagios should offer remote support and offer more customization in reporting while making it easy for the customers to use it. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution offers very detailed metrics for their services."
"We can create events and alerts. We use the information to dive down into the infrastructure performance."
"The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It is a robust analytical tool and it goes beyond mere functionality and extends into the realm of providing comprehensive insights."
"Our team finds it overall quite useful."
"It's useful to analyze past data and compare it with recent activities."
"The monitoring features are valuable."
"The initial setup of Nagios Log Server was easy and straightforward."
"One of the most valuable features is the dashboard because the UI was effective and easy to use. The alert systems are good as well. We had no failovers and had high availability. We can search the queries fast as well in Nagios Log Server."
"The product is scalable."
"A great feature of the solution involves its internal portal."
 

Cons

"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."
"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."
"The monitoring part and GUI are areas in Amazon CloudWatch that have shortcomings currently and can be considered for improvements in the future."
"I do not know whether or not CloudWatch can be integrated with on-prem services."
"It's not an advanced way of monitoring."
"It's not very intuitive. It doesn't have drag-and-drop functionality to trigger actions from notifications."
"The drill-down aspect on the dashboard of the solution needs improvement. We get a very good high-level overview, but when we drill down, it becomes a little less clear. We have given this feedback to AWS as well and hope they will improve this in the future."
"The solution's pricing is a bit higher."
"The configurations during initial setup could be improved. If they could be agentless, as in the case of the Ansible product, it would be better. I would like to be able to analyze the network bandwidth."
"The support could be better."
"The customization and dashboards have shortcomings and need to be improved to make the tool look more presentable."
"As we are talking about a product which is open to the public, the pricing makes it challenging for us to profit off of its marketing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon CloudWatch has very cheap pricing, and it hardly costs my company $25-$30 a month for fifty systems, so it's pretty affordable."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."
"The tool is not expensive."
"We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap solution."
"For a single instance, the price is around $4,000."
"We found the pricing to be quite affordable."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap, I rate the pricing an eight or nine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Apart from traceability of network resources, Amazon CloudWatch needs to be more interoperable with other tools because many companies are starting to use AI-based dashboards. When using third-part...
What do you like most about Nagios Log Server?
The initial setup of Nagios Log Server was easy and straightforward.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Log Server?
My company pays around 500 to 1,000 USD per year toward the licensing cost of the solution. For support, we need to pay extra to Nagios. The solution's price is low. On a scale of one to ten, where...
What needs improvement with Nagios Log Server?
The customization and dashboards have shortcomings and need to be improved to make the tool look more presentable. The reporting side of the product should allow users to have more customized reports.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
IBM, impulse, wipro, comteco
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Nagios Log Server and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.