Nagios Core vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

Nagios and Progress Software are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Nagios is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.7, while Progress Software is ranked #26 with an average rating of 8.7. Nagios holds a 1.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to Progress Software’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Nagios users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

5,072 Views
4,210 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

WhatsUp Gold

Read 25 WhatsUp Gold reviews

5,476 Views
3,176 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

WhatsUp Gold

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

WhatsUp Gold and Nagios Core are competing network monitoring solutions. WhatsUp Gold has the upper hand in user-friendliness and customer support, whereas Nagios Core is preferred for its advanced feature set, appealing to users who seek complex customization.

Features: WhatsUp Gold offers intuitive network mapping, robust performance monitoring, and efficient alerting features. Nagios Core provides vast plugin architecture, comprehensive monitoring capabilities, and strong community support, allowing extensive customization options.

Room for Improvement: WhatsUp Gold could enhance its customization options, expand its plugin integrations, and offer more competitive pricing. Nagios Core might benefit from improving its user interface, simplifying configuration processes, and providing direct customer support options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WhatsUp Gold is known for a straightforward installation process and proactive customer support, minimizing setup time. Nagios Core requires more technical expertise and primarily relies on community-based support, necessitating more time for deployment.

Pricing and ROI: WhatsUp Gold typically has a higher initial cost but promises a quicker ROI through ease of use and support efficiency. Nagios Core's open-source model allows low-cost setup, offering long-term flexibility but with slower ROI due to necessary technical investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Nagios Core vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. WhatsUp Gold

February 2026

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Helped 881,733 peers since 2012

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

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

WhatsUp Gold

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

26th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

24th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (29th), Server Monitoring (16th), Configuration Management (19th), Log Management (32nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nagios Core	1.9%
WhatsUp Gold	2.0%
Other	96.1%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Husham Yaqoob

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.

Read full review

Erik Cheng

Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet

Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains

The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."

"We use the product to monitor server applications."

"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."

"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."

"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."

"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. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful."

"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."

"I would rate the overall solution ten points out of ten."

More Nagios Core pros

"The product is reasonably priced."

"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."

"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."

"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides. Additionally, WhatsUp Gold is a Windows-based solution which is a benefit."

"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."

"The documentation is very good."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the visibility it offers of everything in the network and infrastructure."

"This is a good, stable network monitoring solution for devices."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."

"The core version is no match for the XI version."

"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."

"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."

"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."

"The initial setup process could be easier."

"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."

"t was a little hard to get our setup represented in the configuration."

More Nagios Core cons

"The initial setup of WhatsUp Gold is a medium range of difficulty levels. However, if it is your first time it could be difficult."

"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."

"Adding on services increases the cost and on the version we have there is no option for ATM monitoring."

"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."

"The interface needs some work."

"The product is old and not updated."

"Setting up WhatsUp Gold is complicated and not easy because it requires managing SNMP and many complex settings in the devices it's monitoring, and fine-tuning it to fit our needs is also not very easy."

"Improvements are needed in integration, especially for WhatsApp call and messages. Our region heavily uses WhatsApp Messenger for communication, and integration with this platform would be beneficial."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."

"It's free."

"The product is cheaply priced."

"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."

"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."

"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."

"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."

"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."

"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	22

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about WhatsUp Gold?

The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?

Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?

It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.

See all answers

Comparisons

Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 9% of the time

LibreNMS vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 5% of the time

More Nagios Core Competitors

PRTG Network Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

LibreNMS vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

SCOM vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

NinjaOne vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

ManageEngine OpManager vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

More WhatsUp Gold Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

January 2026

Download Nagios Core product report

Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

January 2026

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

Overview

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

Explore and manage your entire network infrastructure effortlessly with WhatsUp Gold's robust layer 2/3 discovery, creating a detailed interactive map from the edge to the cloud. Monitor devices, wireless controllers, servers, virtual machines, applications, and traffic flows across various environments. Real-time alerts ensure optimal performance, allowing you to meet or exceed SLAs. The platform offers customizable maps, dashboards, and alerts for easy network management. Quickly resolve issues with intuitive workflows, reducing Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). WhatsUp Gold's integrated log management provides easy visibility and control of device log data, allowing monitoring, filtering, searching, and alerting on syslogs or Windows logs. Archive logs to comply with regulatory requirements and preserve historical data, all through a user-friendly interface. Streamline network monitoring and issue resolution with WhatsUp Gold, making network management efficient and hassle-free.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. WhatsUp Gold

February 2026

Free Report: Nagios Core vs. WhatsUp Gold

Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Core vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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