No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Icinga vs SCOM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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
27th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (12th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th)
SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.3%, 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
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM1.5%
Icinga1.3%
Other97.2%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Net Consulting
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.
AK
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"If you have a small infrastructure or a small number of devices that you want to monitor, then I think it's a good solution."
"People should know that it is simple and advanced."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"SCOM should be a good choice for fresh IT environments based on Windows servers or switching from open-source monitoring tools."
"The feature I like most about SCOM is that it is easy-to-use."
"IT management experienced a big improvement after implementation of this product."
"The solution is very user-friendly, and it offers upgrade options and update features with a simple click."
"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"Asset monitoring and auto alerts are the most valuable features of this product to me."
"It's a lot more powerful than people realize, and I believe people become dissatisfied with it because of the complicated setup, but once it's up and running, it's pretty amazing at what it can do."
"The license is very cheap compared to other products, and with SCOM license you get a license for all system center products."
 

Cons

"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
"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."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"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."
"The connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"Almost always, these alert storms can put IT managers and operators off the product and give the impression that everything is broken or not working properly, so making them easier to work with will help SCOM administrators (especially if they are new to SCOM) manage and understand what the product is showing them."
"Dashboarding and application performance management."
"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."
"The management of the servers could be better."
"Overall, support is not great but it's not bad."
"Application monitoring must be improved."
"In terms of features that could be improved, I would say the agent integration into the operating system; we are having difficulties integrating Linux into some of the networking devices."
"I feel that the stability of the tool has room for improvement and I would like to see that in the next version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"The solution is free to use."
"The solution is cheap."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"It's an open-source solution."
"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."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your primary use case for Icinga?
We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...
What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
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.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.