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 #30 with an average rating of 8.7. Nagios holds a 1.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to Progress Software’s 1.5% 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

4,463 Views
3,749 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

WhatsUp Gold

Read 25 WhatsUp Gold reviews

3,998 Views
2,199 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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. WhatsUp Gold

December 2025

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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

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

11th

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

30th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

29th

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 (31st), Cloud Monitoring Software (24th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 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 1.5%, 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	1.5%
Other	96.6%

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 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."

"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."

"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."

"We use the product to monitor server applications."

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

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

"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."

"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."

More Nagios Core pros

"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."

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

"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 link. You can go into a particular part of the topology map, scroll in, and see exactly which module it is."

"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."

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

"The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless."

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

"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."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"The interface could be improved."

"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."

"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."

"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."

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

"The dashboard should be improved."

"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."

"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."

More Nagios Core cons

"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."

"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."

"Regional product team support is not very good."

"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."

"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."

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

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Most the plugin features are free."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

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

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

"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."

"We are using the free version."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"This is a well priced solution."

"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."

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

"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."

"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."

"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

11%

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

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

LibreNMS vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 5% of the time

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PRTG Network Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 5% of the time

LibreNMS vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

ManageEngine OpManager vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

NinjaOne vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

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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

December 2025

Free Report: Nagios Core vs. WhatsUp Gold

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