We compared Nagios XI and Nagios Core across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Nagios XI received positive feedback for its versatility and adaptability. It offers a diverse selection of plugins and scripts for monitoring needs. Nagios Core is an adaptable solution praised for its integration, customizability, and ability to effectively monitor server availability and network connectivity.
Room for Improvement: Users have suggested Nagios XI could improve integration, simplify configuration, and make the platform more user-friendly. Nagios XI users also suggest improvements to network visibility and cloud discovery. Nagios Core users have requested better documentation, improved scalability, and a more user-friendly configuration process.
Service and Support: Some Nagios XI customers complained about the lack of chat or phone support options. Nagios Core lacks direct customer service, but users can generally find help from a supportive open-source community and large knowledge base.
Ease of Deployment: Some Nagios XI users found the setup to be relatively simple, while others considered it challenging. Deployment can take a few months to complete, and there’s a steep learning curve. Nagios Core's setup is generally seen as well-documented and straightforward.
Pricing: Nagios XI’s pricing is considered reasonable and transparent, with no extra charges. Nagios Core is free, but users may incur costs for installation and configuration.
ROI: Nagios XI users reported positive outcomes overall, but some said visibility limitations lower the solution’s ROI. Nagios Core users say they have saved money by replacing paid monitoring tools with this open-source solution.
Comparison Results: Nagios XI is an affordable, flexible solution with a broad feature set and a selection of helpful plugins. At the same time, users say the setup can be complex, and some expressed a desire for more convenient ways to contact support. 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.
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The solution is quite efficient."
"Provides timely notifications."
"What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services."
"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"It is fairly easy to set up, and we can monitor pretty much everything we want to."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."
"Nagios is a custom API manager, and we can expose custom APIs for our integration. This is a great feature."
"It's great for monitoring IT services infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of processes."
"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."
"The most useful aspect of this solution is the ability to customize it for the client agent."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard, where I can have a single screen that provides a summary for hundreds of servers."
"It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability."
"Nagios XI helped me to draw the network and check for system failures."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."
"The user interface could be more interactive because it is pretty basic."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"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."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly."
"The tool needs to improve the integrations."
"There's room for improvement in the visibility, and in the ability to extract information. Stuff like this should be more simple."
"We often need to develop custom plugins to get Nagios to work the way we want it to work because the features we need are not always available in Nagios."
"The installation and monitoring need improvement."
"The reporting structure could be more streamlined."
"I would like a much easier GUI so that I can delete events and logs, which will free up a lot of space."
"Open-source software is usually not user-friendly."
"The way Nagios displays information isn't easy for a new user to understand. It's not intuitive enough. You need to read some tutorials or be trained to understand what it's displaying. Also, I think it needs more features to improve network visibility because there are some things you can't detect."
"The technical support is variable - sometimes I get answers, but most of my tickets go unanswered."
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Nagios Core is ranked 7th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 46 reviews while Nagios XI is ranked 9th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 54 reviews. Nagios Core is rated 8.0, while Nagios XI 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 Nagios XI writes "Great for monitoring IT services infrastructure with nice tools and helpful notifications". Nagios Core is most compared with Zabbix, Icinga, Centreon, OP5 Monitor and LogicMonitor, whereas Nagios XI is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Wireshark, Icinga and ManageEngine OpManager. See our Nagios Core vs. Nagios XI report.
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We monitor all IT Infrastructure Monitoring 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.
Ultimately NagiosXI is the better solution than Core but shortlisting NagiosXI also definitely depends on the infra landscape, technology, network devices, and other scopes of activities in monitoring.
The biggest difference I see between Nagios Core and XI is the user interface, reporting, and onboarding any element for monitoring, and that onboarding is much easier in NagiosXI than Core. Nagios Core is little complicated where you have to use console called Nconf or editing conf files in Linux needs more technical knowledge than using NagiosXI.