We compared New Relic and Zabbix across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: New Relic offers reliable monitoring capabilities and advanced traceability features. Zabbix is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, scalability, and reliable performance. It provides customizable dashboards, trigger dependencies, SNMP monitoring, and problem tracking.
Room for Improvement: New Relic could improve by simplifying server removal and offering more detailed troubleshooting information. Reviewers also said the user experience could be smoother and that the documentation should be more detailed. Zabbix could reduce false positives and improve integration, cloud monitoring, and reporting.
Service and Support: Some New Relic customers commended the prompt and knowledgeable support, while others expressed dissatisfaction with slow response times and delayed resolutions. Users had mixed opinions about Zabbix customer service. Some found it helpful, while others feel it needs improvement. Customers generally rely on online documentation and community forums for assistance.
Ease of Deployment: New Relic's setup is perceived as relatively easy, and professional services are available if needed. The complexity of Zabbix's initial setup varies, and it may require an experienced group of administrators and engineers.
Pricing: New Relic's pricing is considered a pain point for many customers, but others said it is reasonable for the features provided. There are additional costs for extra features and historical information. Zabbix is a free, open-source solution, but users can purchase support services and additional features.
ROI: Some New Relic users reported a positive return on investment, but others were uncertain or have not observed any ROI. Users say that Zabbix provides a cost-effective solution.
Comparison Results: New Relic is praised for its robust monitoring capabilities, stellar customer service, and painless setup, but some users say the solution is too pricey and that the user experience could be better. Zabbix is a highly customizable open-source solution with a wide range of monitoring capabilities, including the ability to monitor virtual machines and databases. However, Zabbix’s setup can be complex and may require technical expertise.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The synthetic alert is the most valuable feature in New Relic APM. I also like the time travel feature and find traceability useful in the solution. New Relic APM also has good response times."
"The initial setup is straightforward. It is easy to track and easy to follow."
"The most important thing is that it tells us where the latency in throughput and response time are."
"What I like best about New Relic APM is its user interface because it's simple. The most valuable feature of New Relic APM is end-to-end monitoring."
"It is easier to create new dashboards in the New Relic interface, and it is also easier to query if when I want to monitor a different parameter or time duration on my dashboard."
"The solution offers good documentation."
"The best feature of New Relic is its simple look and feel, making it easier to use than other tools."
"The most valuable features of New Relic are the reports and ease of use."
"The solution is open-source, easy to manage, and user-friendly making it easy for anyone to use."
"I have found that the reporting feature in Zabbix is most valuable. Additionally, the solution has given us bandwidth options, we are able to see where problems are. For example, we noticed a problem that occurred because of a bad interface going in the wireless VLAN."
"Setup was straightforward. Initial deployment took two or three months."
"The solution is quite mature and very stable."
"The flexibility of this solution is amazing."
"The most valuable feature is service assurance."
"The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good. The monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great. The information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed."
"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"It would help customers if there were an on-premises version available."
"They should bring the pricing down to be more competitive."
"I haven't come across any features that are lacking."
"They could improve the education process and how people understand that these tools are very technical. Right now, if someone was to pick it up from day one, it is a very steep learning curve."
"The solution should include more detailed reports for SQL database requests."
"There are times when you restart the engines and the servers have a unique ID for the host and you need to remove the server. It is difficult because some are on-premise and others are production hosts. Having downtime is not very good when updating. However, it is not a constant issue."
"There are certain features that are not supported in New Relic, such as CATSEARCH, which allows you to do a full-text search."
"I would like if it could have predictive analysis. Today, we only have the option to configure thresholds."
"The documentation could be improved."
"The System Center Operations Manager can be improved."
"The reporting features need improvement, especially detailed inventory reporting. Since it's freeware, reporting may not be a major focus."
"It could be more stable."
"In an upcoming release, there should be automated reports which we are currently doing manually. For example, if we collect a report file every day and want to send it to a moderator for review. We are expecting this feature to come out soon but it would be valuable to have now."
"When using this solution in enterprise monitoring, you are able to see that there are some issues with equipment that could be causing a problem. Sometimes you want to make a root command that you do not want to be executed automatically. What we have tried to do is open an SSH session directly from the solution's interface but it is not possible."
"My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement."
"Its UI needs to be improved a little bit more so that an end-user is also able to handle it. I can handle it, but others should also be able to handle it in a better way. It becomes complex when we are growing and need to add proxies. We need more scalability features and documentation for different use cases. A lot of articles are available, but they need to be in proper documentation. For example, when you have thousands of servers that have to be monitored in different regions of the world, there should be some kind of documentation to describe how you can create proxies and add them. Sometimes, when you are using the database, it can get overloaded. When the network is growing, the number of transactions becomes very high, and the database gets overloaded. There should be information about how to reduce the load on the MySQL database, which is what Zabbix is using. The market is growing a lot, and it should be enhanced for a lot more things. We are currently bringing enhancements at our end for different use cases. For example, when dockerization is going on, how can we check the logs inside the Dockers. We should also be able to monitor and check the number of logins and add features such as SSO login and two-factor authentication as a protocol. These are the security features and concerns that we have to deal with. Currently, we are developing modules to add features to Zabbix, but they should also work on these features."
New Relic is ranked 3rd in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 152 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 10th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 100 reviews. New Relic is rated 8.6, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of New Relic writes "Has a simple user interface and end-to-end monitoring and self-healing features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". New Relic is most compared with Dynatrace, Datadog, Elastic Observability, Grafana and Instana Dynamic APM, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios Core and Nagios XI. See our New Relic vs. Zabbix report.
See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors, best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors, and best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.
We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
(1) Can we design the Zabbix dashboard to look like New Relic’s rich dashboard?
You’d have to develop an agent that plugs into New Relic to get all their data 1st and then a dashboard to assimilate both as Big Panda has already done.
(2) Can we see all New Relic features with Zabbix, like End-to-end Web transaction analysis, Database Transaction analysis and reports on usability and error rate?
Not without significant development work. Zabbix does not have application (function-level) monitoring for the End-trend Web transaction analysis and Database Transaction analysis. Zabbix does externals like disk usage, CPU percentages, database statistics, etc. So, again, you’d have to develop and agent that plugs into New Relice to get all their data 1st and then the analysis tools provided by New Relic.
(3) How much development/customization effort is required to introduce the above features with Zabbix?
Significant.
(4) Does anyone have a comparison of features offered by New Relic and Zabbix?
New Relic has both the application (function-level) monitoring for the End-trend Web transaction analysis and Database Transaction analysis as well as all the external device/system monitoring statics of Zabbix. Again, for an integrated solution, it would probably be cheaper to use a product like BigPanda than to redevelop an untried in-house solution which could take 12 months to evolve a subset of the functionality.
From looking briefly over Zabbix I noticed that it's on-prem system that requires attention. It didn't seem like an easy to use system either. Although, I am not experienced enough to make those claims. New Relic is a SaaS solution, ideal for large organizations. The time it takes to create dashboards is fairly short and learning curve was minimal. They use NRql language to make system calls based on cached data in the cloud. Metrix are kept off-prem and can be traced back a year, depending on the retention subscription. Deployment is easy, consists of two agents, APM and server agent, second is free for all. In any case, putting aside that NR is one of top 3 on Gartner's magic quadrant, it is easy to use/maintain and create all kinds of dashboards.
I can agree with Carlos. The question is - what do you need? We use saymon.info to cover different systems with a common UI with drill-downs & schemas.
1) As far as I know no. The main question here is Zabbix continuous monitoring is far from NR Higher OSI layer capabilities, the graphical feeling can be emulated -agreed- but the drill-down functionality NR offers is far from any Open Source monitoring program I've seen. Sorry for that, NR is worth in some aspects.
2) Yes, NR can be exported to a Hadoop DB and exploded using BI or Zabbix sources, of course NR tries you to do exactly the opposite ..
3) A lot
4) Not me, basically they do different things , from my point of view Zabbix is a layer below New Relic. We face HW monitoring with NR wasn't usable as we had our servers dinamically managed in the cloud, so they are created and destroyed, this made NR Server monitoring to create each instance with the results of having hundreds of non-existing servers. We decided to monitor servers with the cloud apps (MS... and Zabbix) and app performance with NR.