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Elastic Observability vs Icinga 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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), Log Management (16th), Container Monitoring (4th)
Icinga
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
25th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (17th), Server Monitoring (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 3.4%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 4.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable, scalable and cost-effective solution that helps with inbuilt scripts for easy modification
I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I recommend Elastic Observability for its completeness of vision and wide ecosystem."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests."
"I think Elastic Observability is already in very good shape."
"The product has connectors to many services."
"Good design and easy to use once implemented."
"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."
"It has always been a stable solution."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"Icinga has multiple automation and integration features. There is an API for everything and a web UI for configurations. The APIs enable you to automate tasks in Icinga. We can also use plugins to talk to the API. The Icinga Director talks to a database in the background, and you can import settings from the CMDB to all systems in Icinga."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."
 

Cons

"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."
"Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage."
"The price is the only issue in the solution. It can be made better and cheaper."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"The interface could be improved."
"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."
"If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built."
"It needs Trap SNMP. I saw the documentation for Zabbix, that it has its own built-in product which handles SNMP traps, and there's nothing similar in Icinga or Nagios. I think this feature is most important for me."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"The user interface should be improved."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."
"The product is not that cheap."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is free to use."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"The solution is cheap."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
The license for Elastic Observability is the same as for other uses; you pay for Elastic, and you can use it for various cases. Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
I think they are working on the AI-based features, which are currently in technical preview. The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language. Basic searching is very e...
What do you like most about Icinga?
The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?
It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...
What needs improvement with Icinga?
There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Icinga Cloud Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Icinga and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.