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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
23rd
Ranking in Server Monitoring
12th
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
No ranking in other categories
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
24th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
15th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
19th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (26th), Configuration Management (20th), Log Management (35th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 2.4%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.3%, 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 Gold2.3%
Other95.3%
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

"Since this is an open source technology, if we are capable of writing the plugins in any scripting language, this product allows us to monitor anything we want."
"In my view this product is very good value for money when compared with other commercially provided monitoring solutions."
"This solution has improved our ability to determine the source of a connection failure in our network, and now we are able to monitor the service provider's router and make that determination."
"Though I downplayed the administrative NCC GUI, this is by far the strongest aspect of the Nagios XI product."
"It provides an easy and powerful solution to network monitoring so I can pay attention to other concerns."
"Nagios XI is an outstanding network Monitoring tool, which can be tweaked to suit any environment and it is a good solution for business looking for remarkable features at zero cost."
"Nagios XI is stable."
"The overall performance of the product is superb."
"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."
"Auto scanning is most valuable. It looks for rogue devices on your network."
"There is a flow monitor option, so we can trace the source IP, the destination IP, and top talker feature in this."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the visibility it offers of everything in the network and infrastructure."
"The most valuable features are network bandwidth monitoring and monitoring device health."
"It is stable."
"It's a good product, and if one has the expertise to use it, it will be a good investment and it will help IT to save and plan for the future."
"WhatsUp Gold is very easy to deploy."
 

Cons

"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."
"There are stability issues if you have a large number of hosts and services."
"I would like to see support for notification via SMS."
"The Configuration Wizard needs improvement, because not all vendors are present."
"I would like to see more customization in the network map because it is a bit tricky to use it."
"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."
"The scalability of Nagios XI is scalable. However, it is not easy to do."
"Initially, we encountered problems during the setup as some errors were noted due to a few prerequisites not being fulfilled and having some configuration files to edit and plugins to add."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."
"The price could be improved. When we first started using this product, the company was new. The prices were very low then, in comparison with HP OpenView or IBM, but now the policy is too high, relative to the number of devices we have."
"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."
"The product is old and not updated."
"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."
"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user. All the monitoring is from inside out, we need something that also can give us from outside in."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
"The pricing is really cost efficient. The licensing is perpetual and can be renewed very easily."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"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 pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"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."
"This is a well priced solution."
"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
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 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...
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.
 

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: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.