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Nagios XI vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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 Network Monitoring Software
15th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
7th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
25th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
14th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
20th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (37th), Configuration Management (21st), Log Management (41st), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 2.4%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.1%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios XI2.4%
WhatsUp Gold2.1%
Other95.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

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.
EC
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support is good."
"Though I downplayed the administrative NCC GUI, this is by far the strongest aspect of the Nagios XI product."
"Nagios XI is stable."
"It's great for monitoring IT services infrastructure."
"Nagios is the best software of its kind if you have time for configure any host and network, and you can do quite everything with a bit of scripting."
"Nagios has good scalability."
"The Script Module in Nagios is really easy to use and is really cost efficient."
"They have very accurate and fast support."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the application monitors that allow for discreet roaming on network devices."
"It handles the basics of monitoring."
"We primarily use the solution to check the state of the network, monitoring thousands of devices and all of the internal network, and it is the first tool we use to see the state of the network for real-time monitoring."
"The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless."
"The documentation is very good."
"The new version has a lot of improved features."
"NetFlow monitoring, real-time monitoring, and surveys have been the most valuable features for our business."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
 

Cons

"It can be quite difficult to know which drivers and agents to use when setting up."
"It's in need of more standard plug-ins."
"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."
"The user interface needs improvement."
"I would like to see more customization in the network map because it is a bit tricky to use it."
"I would like to see support for notification via SMS."
"As it is open-source, it is not user-friendly. Open-source software is usually not user-friendly."
"The product uses the backend as Perl and could be modified to a more lightweight solution like what's being offered by other vendors."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"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."
"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."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
"The new release cadence needs to be improved. It takes a while for them to add new features and functionality. There should be a quicker turnaround with new versions."
"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"It is good to contact experts for advice about what is the best solution for your specific infrastructure and enterprise."
"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."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"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."
"For the cost of the commercial product and support, and taking into account the open source characteristics of it, I believe it is difficult to a better value."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"This is a well priced solution."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
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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
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

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...
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 ...
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.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios XI vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.