FortiMonitor vs Nagios Core comparison

Fortinet and Nagios are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Fortinet is ranked #21 with an average rating of 8.8, while Nagios is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.7. Fortinet holds a 0.7% mindshare in NMS, compared to Nagios’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Nagios users who would recommend it.

FortiMonitor

Read 15 FortiMonitor reviews

2,144 Views
1,501 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

5,072 Views
4,210 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

FortiMonitor

Nagios Core

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Nagios Core and FortiMonitor are competitors in network monitoring. FortiMonitor seems to have the advantage due to its advanced feature set.

Features: Nagios Core offers open-source versatility, extensive plugin support, and alerting mechanisms. FortiMonitor provides cloud-based monitoring, automated remediation, and flexible scaling options.

Room for Improvement: Nagios Core could improve user interface, automated management, and scaling capabilities. FortiMonitor may focus on enhancing customization, integration options, and reducing dependence on a cloud-only model.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nagios Core requires significant setup time and technical knowledge. FortiMonitor supports a straightforward deployment with comprehensive technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core's low initial costs are offset by infrastructure and maintenance expenses. FortiMonitor uses a subscription model offering higher ROI through reduced downtime.

To learn more, read our detailed FortiMonitor vs. Nagios Core Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

FortiMonitor vs. Nagios Core

February 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 881,733 peers since 2012

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

FortiMonitor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

21st

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

23rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Alerting and Incident Management (12th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (7th)

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of FortiMonitor is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nagios Core	1.9%
FortiMonitor	0.7%
Other	97.4%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

reviewer2677554

Network Engineer III at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Managing diverse networks with detailed alerts enhances device oversight

FortiManager is very helpful in managing our networks. We use it to manage 20 farms and various networks with hundreds of devices. The version we are using provides more detail than the older dashboard. We appreciate the alerting capabilities, which are integrated with SolarWinds to notify our team via SMS.

Read full review

Husham Yaqoob

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure

The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything. Everything in the IT domain, you can monitor anything. You can even monitor printers, the ports of printers, Core workstations, and storage. You can monitor the workflow Core and the utilization of computes. If you want to grasp everything of your IT equipment on a single interface, you can use Nagios. It's the best one. It provides dashboards, and you can also configure your emails and alerts with it. If something is critical, you can configure it to notify via emails. It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool continuously improves, adapting to support new vendors and technologies. Importantly, it automates the process, triggering alerts when devices require attention, and eliminating the need for manual intervention."

"FortiMonitor is 100% stable."

"FortiMonitor has a very intuitive dashboard, which makes it particularly helpful for analyzing traffic, alerts, and other information."

"With FortiMonitor, you can get all the logs of the traffic information of the destination or the source."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is what the devices are used for. We have big backups for our Cradlepoint solutions, but FortiMonitor is a great routing device and we love working with them."

"Fortinet's customer support is very good."

"In FortiMonitor, we're linked up with our Netgear, CactusServer, and NOC. It's really valuable because everything's migrating to one dashboard for us system engineers. We can keep an eye on traffic, blocked sites, and the health of our hardware. That last part, about knowing if something's going to fail soon, is super important. It gives us time to sort things out before any big problems happen. As a system engineer, I need to keep tabs on everything – temperature, monitoring systems, and network operations. This data is really handy because it helps me ensure our site runs smoothly, whether it's turning systems on or off. Just last night, there was a system failure, but thanks to real-time monitoring, I quickly identified the problem and got the necessary replacement parts."

More FortiMonitor pros

"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."

"The solution is quite efficient."

"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."

"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 Core is stable."

"Monitoring with Nagios Core is helpful because it provides immediate alerts if something goes down, such as a server, or wireless router, or if there's a cable break. This allows us to respond promptly to any issues."

"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."

"Nagios Core integrates with tools like Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace. It is usually used as a feed to provide more technical information about devices or hosts to another system."

More Nagios Core pros

Cons

". Enhancements in the dashboard, such as clearer alerting, maintenance window management, software version tracking, and better visualization, would be beneficial."

"FortiMonitor's monitoring could be much better. It should be like, in Palo Alto."

"There are no AI features in FortiMonitor, which might be an area for enhancement."

"Additionally, there are no AI features in FortiMonitor, which might be an area for enhancement."

"Sometimes, we get corruption when upgrading from firmware to the new generation, causing a lot of issues."

"FortiMonitor could be improved by making it more convenient for smaller workloads, such as when configuring a few branches."

"There is room for improvement in the FortiMonitor report. It is not ideal for showcasing to tech customers or managers, especially when trying to display high CPU usage from logins within a specific range of months or the most recent month."

"We use FortiToken, and it's a pain to use because you have to send things through your phone and then confirm by email. Only after this can you log in. It's dual-factor authentication. I wish that I could just log in or bring up a dashboard where I could log in from."

More FortiMonitor cons

"The initial setup process could be easier."

"The tool needs to improve the integrations."

"The interface could be improved."

"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."

"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."

"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."

"I would like to see more training videos."

"The mapping is a little hard."

More Nagios Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other solutions, FortiMonitor is a very expensive solution."

"The price of FortiMonitor is approximately $200 annually for 225 users. The price is competitive."

"We have a large customer base for Fortinet, and the additional buying power got us really great discounts."

"There are additional costs needed for certain functionality, such as scalability."

"FortiMonitor's price is very high."

"In terms of licensing, while it may not be the most expensive option on the market, it's relatively cost-effective. You can obtain licenses at a lower cost, with the calculation being straightforward. For example, if you onboard around 5,000 devices, you'll need approximately 5,000 licenses, as each device typically counts as one license."

"The tool's pricing model in Vietnam is a bit high. I rate the product price as an eight out of ten."

"On a scale from one to ten, I rate the pricing a nine since it is a good solution that is available at a cheap price."

"It's free."

"The solution is expensive."

"We are using the free version."

"The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server."

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."

"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."

"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	22

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

I have a clear bias because I work for Panopta. We aren't a fit for everyone, but I can confirm that Panopta is a lot less work to stand up and maintain. It's also a lot easier to use and onboard n...

See all answers

What do you like most about FortiMonitor?

In FortiMonitor, we're linked up with our Netgear, CactusServer, and NOC. It's really valuable because everything's migrating to one dashboard for us system engineers. We can keep an eye on traffic...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiMonitor?

FortiMonitor does save time but not significantly on costs, as there are still expenses related to procurement, installation, and licensing.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?

Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Nagios Core?

The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Nagios Core?

I was a senior system administrator. I've been using Nagios Core for more than ten years now. It can be used to monitor hosts, such as machines, and monitor services of any kind. I'm using it to mo...

See all answers

Comparisons

ThousandEyes vs FortiMonitor

Compared 14% of the time

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs FortiMonitor

Compared 10% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs FortiMonitor

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs FortiMonitor

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs FortiMonitor

Compared 6% of the time

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Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 9% of the time

LibreNMS vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)

January 2026

Download FortiMonitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

January 2026

Download Nagios Core product report

Also Known As

Panopta

No data available

Overview

FortiMonitor is a comprehensive, SaaS-based digital experience monitoring (DEM) platform that helps organizations modernize their performance-monitoring tools. It provides visibility into endpoint application performance and digital experience—no matter where the user resides or where the application is hosted.

Fortinet

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

Sample Customers

SONY, GoDaddy, HCL, ING, ARMOR, billboard

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Buyer's Guide

FortiMonitor vs. Nagios Core

February 2026

Free Report: FortiMonitor vs. Nagios Core

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