Icinga vs SCOM comparison

Icinga and Microsoft are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Icinga is ranked #41, while Microsoft is ranked #25 with an average rating of 7.8. Icinga holds a 1.1% mindshare in NMS, compared to Microsoft’s 1.4% 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

7,233 Views
5,352 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

SCOM

Read 83 SCOM reviews

10,547 Views
7,066 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: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Icinga vs. SCOM

August 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

41st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (17th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (48th), Cloud Monitoring Software (32nd)

SCOM

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

25th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Event Monitoring (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.1%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SCOM	1.4%
Icinga	1.1%
Other	97.5%

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

"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."

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

"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."

"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."

"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."

"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."

"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."

More Icinga pros

"This is a product that does more generally than any of the competing solutions."

"It is a user-friendly product that requires almost no maintenance."

"The most valuable features for us are the monitoring, the health explorer, and the console."

"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.)."

"On this solution, the things we monitor are fine and perhaps other users will want more, but for our purpose and what we use it for, it's enough."

"SCOM is capable of providing full-featured infrastructure monitoring, alerting and reporting, especially for Windows-centric production environments."

"The dashboard is in a class of its own, with a whole other range of competing products in management of datacenters and cloud environment."

"It would have to be the ability to monitor services, devices, and operations for many devices from a single console leveraging a wide variety of Management Packs available."

More SCOM pros

Cons

"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."

"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."

"The user interface should be improved."

"Icinga’s automation could be improved."

"The installation and configuration are very complex."

"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 tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."

"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."

More Icinga cons

"The console was not stable at the early versions of 2007 product, opening multiple consoles might cause a crash, and the web console might hang when opening multiple sessions as well."

"Areas for improvement in my opinion are the resource footprint of the SCOM infrastructure side, the web console (drop Silverlight please!) and a few of the management packs."

"Overall, support is not great but it's not bad."

"We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting."

"There could be more integration of SIM in the solution."

"Stability and some performance issues exist and they need improvement."

"The suite is a monster. Without a clear strategy and fine tuning can produce a lot of noise (unnecessary noise) or miss critical aspects of your environment."

"SCOM agents have a heavy footprint. Would like a lighter, more-efficient footprint."

More SCOM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free to use."

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

"The solution is cheap."

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

"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."

"It's an open-source solution."

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

"The pricing and licensing are fair."

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

"It is the cheapest product available in the market."

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

"It is more expensive than the competition."

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

"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."

"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."

More SCOM pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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

Earn 20 points

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.

See all answers

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

Comparisons

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Compared 5% of the time

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Icinga

Compared 4% of the time

Nagios Core vs Icinga

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs SCOM

Compared 5% of the time

Zabbix vs SCOM

Compared 5% of the time

LogicMonitor vs SCOM

Compared 5% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs SCOM

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Icinga

August 2026

Download Icinga product report

Buyer's Guide

SCOM

July 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

August 2026

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