Nagios Core vs Zenoss Cloud comparison

Nagios and Zenoss are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Nagios is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.2, while Zenoss is ranked #77. Nagios holds a 3.0% mindshare in NMS, compared to Zenoss’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Nagios users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zenoss users who would recommend it.

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

4,161 Views
3,242 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Zenoss Cloud

Read 8 Zenoss Cloud reviews

643 Views
441 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

Zenoss Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Zenoss Cloud and Nagios Core are competitors in the IT infrastructure monitoring market, each catering to different needs. Zenoss Cloud has the upper hand with its advanced features, making it more appealing for businesses looking for a comprehensive, cloud-based solution.

Features: Zenoss Cloud offers advanced real-time analytics, dynamic network visualization, and predictive insights. Nagios Core is valued for its extensive plugin ecosystem, customizable alerting capabilities, and open-source adaptability.

Room for Improvement: Zenoss Cloud could improve by offering more flexible pricing options, enhancing integration with third-party tools, and simplifying its feature set to reduce complexity. Nagios Core could benefit from improving its user interface, offering dedicated customer support, and streamlining its installation process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zenoss Cloud provides a streamlined cloud-based deployment model, reducing setup time and includes dedicated customer support. Nagios Core requires manual installation and configuration but benefits from strong community support for customization.

Pricing and ROI: Zenoss Cloud's initial setup cost may be higher due to its comprehensive features but can offer better ROI through predictive analytics and reduced downtime. Nagios Core's open-source nature ensures minimal setup costs, with increased ROI as organizations leverage community resources and custom plugins.

To learn more, read our detailed Nagios Core vs. Zenoss Cloud Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. Zenoss Cloud

May 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

11th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

13th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zenoss Cloud

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

77th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

54th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (33rd), Event Monitoring (14th), Server Monitoring (23rd), Container Monitoring (10th), Cloud Monitoring Software (40th), AIOps (20th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zenoss Cloud is 0.4%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Nishith-Vyas

Tech Lead at STL Digital Limited

Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements

The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

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ClaudiaChen

Cloud Architect - Senior Technology Architect at Telstra

Generates close to real-time alerts so users can resolve issues, but needs more integration and public cloud monitoring features

As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

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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

"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."

"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."

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

"Other products are good but from the configuration point of view Nagios is really very lightweight. The price is really good in my opinion. Another important thing is that my Nagios engine still works with Dual core 8GB ram for the last 10 years."

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

"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."

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

"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."

More Nagios Core pros

"Its Docker Container concept is mind blowing. It is the first monitoring tool which comes with Docker features."

"The most valuable feature is the flexible discovery mechanism."

"The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training."

"They have also accommodated many state-of-the-art technologies like Docker and ZooKeeper."

"What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue."

"It's easy to use."

"The custom built integration is one of the most valuable features because you can see all the especially critical items."

Cons

"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."

"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."

"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 dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."

"I would like to see more training videos."

"It is a bit slow due to latency."

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

"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."

More Nagios Core cons

"There was a problem with Zenoss and storage monitoring."

"The AI aspect needs to improve."

"The inclusion of a feature to show a graphical view of the network would be a helpful improvement."

"As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server. What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor."

"It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts."

"There is room for improvement with the administrative part. They introduced Control Center to manage things in Zenoss 5. The services that Zenoss provides remained the same, but the administrative part, since they introduced Docker, etc., has become a little complex"

"Now it is stable, but they should design threshold parameters in percentage instead of raw values."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Nagios Core is free to use."

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

"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."

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

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

"The product is cheaply priced."

"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars."

"It depends on the customer, what he wants."

"There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five."

"It is very cost-effective compared to the tools I worked with in the past. The company is gaining a lot with respect to the cost factor. It provides agentless monitoring and in a very cheap way."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

24%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nagios Core?

What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.

See all answers

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 the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

In my experience, I worked with many monitoring software, but the one that gave me the most functionalities of a large-scale company is Zenoss, due to its ability to monitor completely hybrid and a...

See all answers

Comparisons

Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 25% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 17% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 14% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 8% of the time

Checkmk vs Nagios Core

Compared 4% of the time

More Nagios Core Competitors

Zabbix vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 36% of the time

Nagios XI vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 31% of the time

SolarWinds AppOptics vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Centreon vs Zenoss Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

More Zenoss Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

May 2025

Download Nagios Core product report

Buyer's Guide

Zenoss Cloud

April 2025

Download Zenoss Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Cloud Monitoring, Zenoss Service Dynamics

Overview

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

Nagios

Zenoss Cloud revolutionizes IT infrastructure monitoring with a service-centric approach, prioritizing the overall health of services and applications. Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIOps), Zenoss Cloud offers end-to-end visibility across servers, networks, storage, and applications. Real-time monitoring, event correlation, and automated remediation ensure immediate insights and efficient issue resolution. The customizable dashboards empower users to tailor visualizations to their needs, while scalability accommodates diverse infrastructures. Zenoss Cloud guarantees improved application performance, reduced downtime, and enhanced IT efficiency, making it an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes, from small enterprises seeking simplicity to large corporations requiring advanced scalability. Experience unified monitoring and proactive management with Zenoss Cloud, a comprehensive solution that transforms IT infrastructure optimization in today's complex environments.

Zenoss

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

2degrees, Rackspace, State of North Dakota, El Paso Independent School District, NWN Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. Zenoss Cloud

May 2025

Free Report: Nagios Core vs. Zenoss Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Core vs. Zenoss Cloud and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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