No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Nagios XI vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

 

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
9th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
16th
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
22nd
Ranking in Server Monitoring
14th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
18th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
23rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (29th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (39th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 2.4%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.2%, 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 Gold2.2%
Other95.4%
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 installation is no problem. I've installed Nagios several times."
"Nagios is stable and it's easy to use the monitoring software, which is why we chose this product."
"Our infrastructure is now under monitoring proactively and we don't have to wait for complaints from the customers or internal operation team to inform regarding any issue with the service."
"Nagios XI is a simple monitoring tool with performance management and everything a standard monitoring tool provides."
"For anyone who is interested in using this solution, I would recommend it."
"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."
"The dashboard allows you to see what's going on in the overall system."
"It is a very stable solution and the best solution for monitoring any IT infrastructure for all companies."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."
"It handles the basics of monitoring."
"This product has aided us in procurement and is overall a well-priced solution."
"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."
"The user interface is good enough."
"One thing good about WhatsUp Gold is that it is fairly stable."
"The new version has a lot of improved features."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
 

Cons

"The reporting part should be made simpler. While we can obtain all the reports we need, we always have to create work-arounds to get them."
"Nagios XI isn't really good for scaling, in my experience."
"I would like to be able to extend it to all of our data centers, whether they are in the cloud or not. It would be helpful if I could connect everywhere."
"Business services monitoring is still really basic."
"The product uses the backend as Perl and could be modified to a more lightweight solution like what's being offered by other vendors."
"While the UI is functional, I have always thought there was room for improvement here."
"The tool's AI model needs to be fixed."
"There are stability issues if you have a large number of hosts and services."
"I might like to see a better interface in the future. It's not necessarily easy to integrate the product with other vendors."
"My understanding is that there are better products out there that do a better job."
"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."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."
"Honestly, I do not particularly like WhatsUp Gold. I think we should get rid of it."
"The tool should focus on increasing its market share, as it is the only area of concern where improvements are needed."
"The technical support does not bother to respond."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"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."
"We are using the free version of this solution."
"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."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"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 pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"This is a well priced solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
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 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: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.