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Icinga vs Nagios XI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
37th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
16th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
48th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
34th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nagios XI
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
15th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
9th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
16th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.5%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios XI is 3.5%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios XI3.5%
Icinga1.5%
Other95.0%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2292201 - PeerSpot reviewer
Innovation Service Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have but average multi-tenancy aspect
It's supported by the community. We use Icinga, which is not part of the Open-Source platform but is wrapped into a commercial solution from another provider, a local provider in Italy. Icinga is an open-source platform, so it is supported by the community. It's quite easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have. So it's not expensive, and it's quite a general purpose. We can easily monitor any kind of infrastructure we encounter. The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated. The alerting is the same as any other monitoring platform. It's not a "wow" feature that has changed our lives, but it's perfectly adequate.
Emmanuel Appiah Boateng - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simplifies setup and requires user interface enhancement
Nagios XI is easy to install, which sets it apart from other open-source solutions I've tried. Typically, setting up a monitoring system on Linux involves cloning files from GitHub, building it, and installing many dependencies, but with Nagios XI, it wasn't like that. Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"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."
"I would recommend Icinga; it's an open-source solution, it's quite easy and simple to use, and checks can be run with Python code and Shell Script code."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is one that not many are even aware of, as Icinga has a self-healing event handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted, and you can configure the handler to take action after the critical alarm without human interaction."
"The most useful aspect of this solution is the ability to customize it for the client agent."
"The solution has a lot of plugins and scripts integrated with it."
"Nagios XI helps us monitor the bandwidth of the internet connection, HTTP, DNS, active directory services, and exchange data availability. We have multiple servers to monitor databases, availability of servers, and ping."
"The integration with the alerting software, automated maintenance windows, and the ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves, are very valuable features."
"BPI: It allows defining peripherals to map business criticality for efficient monitoring, as required."
"Nagios XI is easy to install, which sets it apart from other open-source solutions I've tried."
"Nagios is my favourite open source monitoring system."
"In my view this product is very good value for money when compared with other commercially provided monitoring solutions."
 

Cons

"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 tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"Scalability is problematic. If you have a stable environment it's good, but if the environment is growing, I had some problems with Icinga."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"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."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"Nagios XI doesn't provide scripting. For example, if we have built up multiple IPX tunnels from a base location to a data center location and want to monitor or trigger an alert if the tunnel goes down, Nagios XI does not automatically send alerts notifying us that the tunnel is down."
"Technical support is very good but is very expensive. It is becoming more and more expensive just like the upgrade."
"The GUI could be improved. It's a bit too basic, and maybe having a GraphQL interface would resolve this."
"The Configuration Wizard needs improvement, because not all vendors are present."
"Nagios XI isn't really good for scaling, in my experience."
"The scalability of Nagios XI is scalable. However, it is not easy to do."
"WebUI should be improved (visual aspect) and should incorporate non-relational databases."
"We'd like to see more integration capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"It's an open-source solution."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"The solution is cheap."
"The solution is free to use."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
"It is good to contact experts for advice about what is the best solution for your specific infrastructure and enterprise."
"This solution is very expensive, at approximately $5,000 USD when I purchased it, which is why I haven't upgraded my version in several years."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"As it is not an agentless tool, I think it is expensive."
"Nagios XI is open source."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. Nagios XI and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.