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FortiMonitor vs Nagios Core 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

FortiMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
18th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
22nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (13th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (8th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
11th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 1.6%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.6%
FortiMonitor0.7%
Other97.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2677554 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
HY
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution helps to see client infrastructure. It has many boxes and blinks green or red when the station goes up or down. We have different domains for the device groups that we monitor."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is the overall ability to monitor the health of the environment."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of FortiMonitor is user monitoring, as we are able to see if the user is following the policy or not from their system, and additionally the solution integrates well with Fortinet FortiGate and has centralized management."
"FortiMonitor is 100% stable."
"FortiMonitor is a great compliment to Cradlepoint; we have big backups for our Cradlepoint solutions, but FortiMonitor is a great routing device and we love working with them."
"It provides the best firewall features."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"Before we implemented Nagios, we did not know which servers were up or down until a customer told us, and now I can see trends over time and it gives me perspective of what needs to be improved so we are able to work proactively as opposed to reactively."
"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."
"The scalability of Nagios Core is very good, we can add as many hosts as we like, and we can work with the concept master and client, making it very scalable and easy to use."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
"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."
"This is probably the greatest advantage of Nagios - it can be customized to a degree to suit your monitoring needs."
 

Cons

"FortiMonitor needs to improve its alert system."
"The solution's initial setup process is time-consuming."
"Sometimes, during high CPU usage, we cannot access FortiMonitor and must refresh it."
"FortiMonitor could be improved by making it more convenient for smaller workloads, such as when configuring a few branches."
"There are no AI features in FortiMonitor, which might be an area for enhancement."
"FortiMonitor could improve by having compatibility with other operating systems, such as Linux."
"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."
"I think the current features are really good for me, nothing else comes to mind right now. Maybe some small improvements could be made in the customization and configuration part of the UI to make it easier or more intuitive. Customizable UI options, like we saw in the demo, could be helpful for everyone. But in our operational environment, having clear health status and system details is crucial for us system engineers. One feature I'd really like to see is a credential management system. It would help us keep track of who's logged in and how many times, which is important due to user restrictions. Sometimes, we need to manage logins more efficiently, like logging off other users to free up credentials. So having a feature like that would be really helpful."
"Some of the reporting functionality is a bit basic and configuration is a chore although by the use of NagiosQL this can be made a lot easier."
"It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
"A better UI for graphing would make it better. The present graphs are not very friendly and good to see."
"It would be nice if it was hosted in cloud. Also, they need to improve the graphs."
"t was a little hard to get our setup represented in the configuration."
"Don't use it. If you're starting from scratch, there are products that scale better and perform better, and they use the same plugin syntax as they were initially Nagios forks."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are additional costs needed for certain functionality, such as scalability."
"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."
"FortiMonitor's price is very high."
"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."
"The tool's pricing model in Vietnam is a bit high. I rate the product price as an eight out of ten."
"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."
"We have a large customer base for Fortinet, and the additional buying power got us really great discounts."
"It's free."
"We are using the free version."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid 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."
"It's free."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise23
 

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...
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.
What needs improvement with FortiMonitor?
There are areas for improvement that FortiManager is addressing. We have not yet upgraded to the latest software versions, being a full revision behind, but we plan to update soon since the current...
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.
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.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Panopta
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SONY, GoDaddy, HCL, ING, ARMOR, billboard
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiMonitor vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.