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Nagios XI vs SolarWinds AppOptics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

Nagios XI
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
20th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (23rd), Server Monitoring (12th)
SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
60th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
45th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (57th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 3.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios XI3.3%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.8%
Other95.9%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Emmanuel Appiah Boateng - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simplifies setup and requires user interface enhancement
Nagios XI is easy to install, which sets it apart from other open-source solutions I've tried. Typically, setting up a monitoring system on Linux involves cloning files from GitHub, building it, and installing many dependencies, but with Nagios XI, it wasn't like that. Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Nagios is an open source monitoring tool for monitoring network services, with easy installation, a user-friendly and configurable interface, and the ability to monitor disk space, CPU utilization, memory usage, host availability, NFS availability and many other things, making it widely used in IT markets."
"It has a wide variety of plugins in existence, but when there's no plugin available it is quite simple to integrate one's own programs and scripts."
"In my experience with Nagios, I've found that the most valuable features are the scalability and extensibility through using scripts."
"I really found Nagios a perfect fit for us and a good product to work with."
"The integration with the alerting software, automated maintenance windows, and the ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves, are very valuable features."
"Nagios XI helps us monitor the bandwidth of the internet connection, HTTP, DNS, active directory services, and exchange data availability. We have multiple servers to monitor databases, availability of servers, and ping."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard, where I can have a single screen that provides a summary for hundreds of servers."
"It's great for monitoring IT services infrastructure."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"The product has a great dashboard."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"Customer service is exceptional, as they are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction."
"AppNeta provides a range of products, all based around intelligent network testing algorithms."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
 

Cons

"I would like to see support for notification via SMS."
"The installation can get very difficult depending on what Linux flavour you are using."
"Nagios XI can improve network and hardware monitoring, these parameters should be simplified to allow usage for monitoring. Additionally, if there was automatic reporting it would be helpful."
"From an alerting point of view, some graphics and metrics don't work properly with Nagios XI as they do with Checkmk."
"Backup mechanisms and some kind of templating system for dashboards are needed."
"The product uses the backend as Perl and could be modified to a more lightweight solution like what's being offered by other vendors."
"I would like a much easier GUI so that I can delete events and logs, which will free up a lot of space."
"I think that the community needs to concentrate development to get a standard GUI (Adagios is a side project) and gives the user a better notification system."
"I'd like to see the ability to use other internal instrumented applications as filters in the overview/aggregation screen."
"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"We had a stability issue with a portion of the installation (Sequencer) when it was first introduced and have chosen not to install that specific function."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
"For our country in North Africa, it's expensive and we could purchase another solution for that price. But it's a reasonable price if we're speaking in international terms."
"As it is not an agentless tool, I think it is expensive."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"We are using the free version of this solution."
"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"This solution is very expensive, at approximately $5,000 USD when I purchased it, which is why I haven't upgraded my version in several years."
"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios XI vs. SolarWinds AppOptics and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.