Icinga vs SCOM comparison

Icinga and Microsoft are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Icinga is ranked #37, while Microsoft is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.2. Icinga holds a 1.2% mindshare in NMS, compared to Microsoft’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Icinga users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Icinga

Read 17 Icinga reviews

6,705 Views
5,096 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

SCOM

Read 83 SCOM reviews

9,597 Views
6,430 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Icinga

SCOM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

SCOM and Icinga compete in the IT monitoring and management domain. Each product has distinct advantages, but SCOM seems to gain the upper hand due to its comprehensive integration with Windows environments and robust monitoring capabilities.

Features: SCOM offers built-in features with management packs that enable extensive Microsoft application monitoring, robust Windows and Unix monitoring, and detailed reporting. Users benefit from its network monitoring capabilities, offering a flexible object-based monitoring approach. Icinga provides an open-source model with extensive plugins that support diverse technology monitoring and ease of integration. It features automation capabilities which enhance its open-source appeal.

Room for Improvement: SCOM is often critiqued for its high costs and the substantial resource demands it places on users, focusing on the need for multiple management packs and configurations. Its dashboard may feel cumbersome, and enhancements in cross-platform monitoring are needed. Icinga’s areas for development include designing a more intuitive user interface and dashboard functionality. It requires additional plugins for SNMP trap support and log monitoring, and its complex setup process presents challenges for newcomers.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SCOM is typically deployed on-premises, with options for hybrid cloud environments, and benefits from Microsoft Premier Support, praised for its comprehensive nature, though some reliance on external assistance is noted. Icinga, largely deployed on-premises, leverages robust community-based support, offering flexibility in support despite the absence of a commercial support structure and its deployment complexity is acknowledged.

Pricing and ROI: SCOM’s pricing integrates with the broader Microsoft System Center suite, which may be cost-effective for organizations using Microsoft products, but its standalone use may incur high costs. Its ROI is linked to proactive infrastructure management, meeting SLAs and reducing downtime. Icinga, being open-source, offers cost-effectiveness with optional paid support, providing flexibility attractive to budget-conscious organizations, while potentially involving higher operational costs due to its manual configurations.

To learn more, read our detailed Icinga vs. SCOM Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Icinga vs. SCOM

June 2026

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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

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (48th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)

SCOM

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Event Monitoring (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SCOM	1.5%
Icinga	1.2%
Other	97.3%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

reviewer2292201

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.

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Akshita Kukreja

Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH

Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities

The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"People should know that it is simple and advanced."

"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 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."

"We monitor all, starting from UPS to international mail chains."

"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."

"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."

"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."

"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."

More Icinga pros

"If SCOM is implemented correctly, it can take away the need for administrators to constantly monitor things or perform health checks."

"The stability has been great."

"It integrates with your Windows environment seamlessly and provides a lot of visibility on your Windows environment."

"Mature product, strong brand, many customers, Gartner awards Excellent Microsoft server/application monitoring capabilities Fast and consistent UX for system admins Extensive dashboarding capabilities REST API available Excellent technical support, rich user community Designed for on-premise installations"

"The System Center 2012 R2 is really powerful, all products work great together, is not so expensive anymore, easy to license, and can cover from end to end (Networking, Hardware layer, OS, App and services, ports, etc.)."

"The most valuable features in SCOM are Azure monitoring and integration with Azure Monitor for monitoring Azure-hosted servers from SCOM on-premises."

"This product helps companies detect problems before they cause any real problems like downtime."

"The product’s auto-remediation feature helps with automation."

More SCOM pros

Cons

"It is not really adequate for our current needs. It causes additional issues which we have to work around and takes us time that a better solution would not."

"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."

"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."

"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."

"Scalability is problematic. If you have a stable environment it's good, but if the environment is growing, I had some problems with Icinga."

"The user interface should be improved."

"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."

"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."

More Icinga cons

"The price could be improved."

"It's not straightforward, SCOM is relatively noisy out of the box, so time is required to tailor the alerting, adjusting threshold triggers and over-riding alerts that are not required to ensure alerts captured are relevant and require action."

"In future releases, I would like to see APM solutions and dashboards like Grafana."

"This product is not easy to use."

"It lacks certain details that other products do better, like granular access and better application monitoring."

"System Center just provided upgrade and update features for Windows clients, and Windows systems, and did not support Linux, Android, or iOS, and other operating systems. They need to provide better integration with other operating systems if they don't already."

"Microsoft needs to train more people about how to sell SCOM (and other System Center family products) because there are a lot of emerging technologies that are replacing Microsoft."

"The System Centre Operations Manager (SCOM) is great at alerting you when something breaks. It's not so great at reporting."

More SCOM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source solution."

"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."

"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."

"This is an open-source solution with paid support."

"We're using the free version of Icinga."

"The solution is free to use."

"The solution is cheap."

"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."

"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."

"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."

"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."

"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."

"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."

"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."

"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."

More SCOM pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

University

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	54

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?

I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.

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What needs improvement with SCOM?

We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...

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What is your primary use case for SCOM?

My usual use case for SCOM is as an administrator role where I create reports and provide system configuration for Linux and installation of the SCOM agent. I handle deploying and upgrading the age...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Icinga

June 2026

Download Icinga product report

Buyer's Guide

SCOM

May 2026

Download SCOM product report

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012

Overview

Icinga is a robust tool for monitoring IT infrastructure, known for its distributed monitoring capabilities and seamless integration with multiple platforms. It efficiently observes servers, network devices, and environments like Linux and Windows, enabling proactive issue identification and resource management.

With a focus on task delegation and clustering, Icinga offers an intuitive interface through its GUI and Icinga Director, simplifying configuration. The extensive plugin library supports diverse technologies, while the API allows automation with tools like Terraform and Ansible. Despite its strengths, users report challenges with data display in the GUI, a need for improved dashboards, and complex configuration processes. Users benefit from its SNMP alerts, email notifications, and automated incident handling, making it essential for managed service environments and enterprises.

What are the key features of Icinga?

Task Delegation: Streamlines monitoring tasks across distributed systems.
Event Handler: Enables automatic service recovery with minimal intervention.
Plugin Library: Offers extensive support for integrating diverse technologies.
API Accessibility: Facilitates automation with popular tools like Terraform.
Custom Plugins: Allows easy creation and personalization for monitoring needs.

What benefits should you consider in Icinga reviews?

Flexibility: Tailors monitoring to specific requirements with community support.
Scalability: Successfully manages growing infrastructure demands.
Proactivity: Enhances issue identification and resource allocation.
Integration: Seamlessly works with existing IT operations platforms.

Icinga is widely adopted in IT environments for monitoring servers, networks, and applications across industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology. Its ability to integrate with various operating systems and automation platforms makes it a versatile choice for industries prioritizing comprehensive surveillance and proactive management of their infrastructure.

Icinga

SCOM monitors Microsoft environments with a focus on Windows servers and applications such as SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint. It offers integration with Active Directory and Azure, along with customizable dashboards, management packs, and robust alert mechanisms, aiding efficient management and control.

SCOM provides a comprehensive monitoring solution for Microsoft technologies, helping organizations track performance and availability of applications, services, and infrastructure. It integrates with Active Directory and Azure, offering capabilities for monitoring Windows and Linux environments. Extensive management packs, customizable dashboards, and automated alerts offer a refined monitoring experience. Users benefit from detailed performance data, network monitoring, and auto-discovery features, enhancing operational insights and server management efficiency.

What are key features of SCOM?

Microsoft Environment Monitoring: Specialized for Windows servers and applications such as SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint.
Integration Capabilities: Seamless integration with Active Directory and Azure for streamlined operations.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailor visual data displays to enhance monitoring and decision-making.
Extensive Management Packs: Broad range of management packs for enhanced resource and application control.
Robust Alert Mechanisms: Comprehensive alerting to maintain service stability and address potential issues promptly.

What benefits should users seek in reviews?

Operational Efficiency: Enhanced management of server applications and infrastructure.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Detailed insights into performance and service availability.
Proactive Issue Notification: Timely alerts for quick issue resolution.
Improved Control: More efficient server management through automation and visibility.

In technology sectors, SCOM is widely implemented for its ability to monitor server applications and infrastructure components. Healthcare and finance utilize its monitoring and alert systems for compliance and uptime. Enterprises integrate SCOM for managing complex systems like Exchange, SharePoint, and Active Directory, enabling comprehensive analytics and reporting.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre

Dialog Telekom

Buyer's Guide

Icinga vs. SCOM

June 2026

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