We compared Nagios Core and SolarWinds NPM across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Nagios Core is an adaptable solution praised for its integration, customizability, and ability to effectively monitor server availability and network connectivity. SolarWinds NPM is commended for its adaptability and extensive network surveillance functionalities.
Room for Improvement: Nagios Core users have requested better documentation, improved scalability, and a more user-friendly configuration process. SolarWinds NPM needs improvement in edge computing capabilities and data reporting. Users also said the performance could be better and that they would like to see expanded IPAM functionality.
Service and Support: Nagios Core lacks direct customer service, but users can generally find help from a supportive open-source community and large knowledge base. While some customers described SolarWinds support as helpful and responsive, others reported delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: Nagios Core's setup is generally seen as well-documented and straightforward. Some users said SolarWinds NPM was straightforward to set up, while others perceived it as complex.
Pricing: Nagios Core is free, but users may incur costs for installation and configuration. The cost of SolarWinds NPM varies depending on the customer’s size and requirements. Some users find it costly.
ROI: Nagios Core users say they have saved money by replacing paid monitoring tools with this open-source solution. Some users reported immediate benefits from using SolarWinds NPM in terms of security and business outcomes, while others have not.
Comparison Results: Nagios Core is a flexible open-source solution that is highly customizable and offers robust functionality commonly found in paid enterprise solutions. However, some users have said that Nagios Core becomes unwieldy when used at a large scale and that the documentation could be more thorough. SolarWinds NPM is a customizable solution that’s easy to deploy and features comprehensive network monitoring capabilities. However, some users consider it costly and voiced concerns about technical support and user experience.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"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."
"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."
"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."
"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."
"The most important feature is reporting. The reports that are generated are useful and they save a lot of time with respect to monitoring."
"The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
"What I've found most valuable about the solution is that it's scalable."
"I like SolarWinds support because it's 24/7. You describe your issues, your situation and maybe two or three hours later you can discuss a solution with a technical engineer."
"The most valuable features are language support and technical support."
"The SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products."
"SolarWinds NPM provides an overview of network monitoring, extending its capabilities to cover other aspects, such as virtual machines and servers. The platform has features like NetPath, which is particularly beneficial for end-users, offering insights into issues like latency, packet loss, and connectivity problems with routers, switches, or servers."
"There are a lot of valuable features with SolarWinds NPM. We can receive a lot of detailed data from the monitoring that can use useful for investigations, especially when you are troubleshooting. It is very helpful. Overall it was a very good experience."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."
"I would like to see more training videos."
"It is a bit slow due to latency."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients."
"It would be nice if SolarWinds could have a polling engine on the site that would collect the reporting and then manage everything itself."
"Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution."
"A feature I would ask for is for them to have this solution available for Linux systems instead of Windows."
"There needs to be more integration of widgets, especially for reporting purposes."
Nagios Core is ranked 7th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 46 reviews while SolarWinds NPM is ranked 4th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 147 reviews. Nagios Core is rated 8.0, while SolarWinds NPM is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nagios Core writes "An Open Source Fully Featured Data Centre Monitoring Tool". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds NPM writes "High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface". Nagios Core is most compared with Zabbix, Nagios XI, Icinga, Centreon and OP5 Monitor, whereas SolarWinds NPM is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, ManageEngine OpManager, ThousandEyes and Entuity. See our Nagios Core vs. SolarWinds NPM report.
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