Nagios XI vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

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4,709 views|3,597 comparisons
86% willing to recommend
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1,677 views|1,085 comparisons
87% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Nagios XI and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Server Monitoring solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Nagios XI vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The dashboard allows you to see what's going on in the overall system.""BPI: It allows defining peripherals to map business criticality for efficient monitoring, as required.""The ability to set up templates and groups of checks, as well as customize the checks themselves.""The installation is no problem. I've installed Nagios several times.""Nagios allows us to configure any device so that we can send pager alerts when people don't have access to emails. It also allows us to schedule downtime and maintenance.""The most valuable feature of Nagios XI is customization. We can customize based on our requirements. We can do modifications and implement a lot of scripts. Additionally, it is easy to use.""Nagios XI is a simple monitoring tool with performance management.""The most valuable features of Nagios XI are you can customize it based on your use case and requirements. It is flexible and easy to integrate with our systems. You can customize the solution by adding additional features using code."

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"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services.""It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops.""The most valuable feature is application monitoring.""I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users.""We use the solution as a central monitoring tool. We use it to monitor every transaction that has a relation to the organization’s infrastructure.""The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly.""One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset.""AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

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Cons
"Open-source software is usually not user-friendly.""The product does not have SAP monitoring.""The pricing has recently risen. I know they've changed what is covered under the license, however, it doesn't change the way we use it and adds nothing to our experience, and yet we now have to pay more.""The reporting structure could be more streamlined.""The product uses the backend as Perl and could be modified to a more lightweight solution like what's being offered by other vendors.""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.""They need more documentation for the plugins.""The installation and monitoring need improvement."

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"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis.""One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance""I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers.""The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool.""The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts.""It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window.""Mapping interactions between systems.""Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The pricing is really cost efficient. The licensing is perpetual and can be renewed very easily."
  • "You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
  • "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."
  • "We are using the free version of this solution."
  • "This solution is very expensive, at approximately $5,000 USD when I purchased it, which is why I haven't upgraded my version in several years."
  • "The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
  • "The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
  • "Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
  • More Nagios XI Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
  • "When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
  • "Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
  • "I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
  • "Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
  • "SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
  • "Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
  • "The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
  • More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    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 using these, but they require quite some expertise before you can use them. Then there are the ones that are not open source, the enterprise softwares and cost you some money, but on the other hand, they are extremely easy to set-up and learn. You can have them up and running in a matter of minutes. And then there are those which are completely cloud based. They can be free of cost or charge some money depending on the software. The good thing about these is that you don’t have to install any extra software, and it can be managed completely online but then again these have limited features and you cannot exploit them to the full extent as you can do with the open-source and to some extent the enterprise software, so I won’t suggest you to use these, because these are generally not the complete solutions and require other support software to achieve the same. Below I have listed the outstanding pros and cons of the various Network analyzers that you can look into Nagios Pros: Nagios offers an extensive set of collector plug-ins that allows users to gather performance and availability data from a broad range of operating systems, including  Windows and Netware Nagios… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability.
    Top Answer:I don't deal with the licensing aspect of the product.
    Top Answer:The product's stability could be even better.
    Top Answer:The price is too high. The tool is overpriced. We don't need all the features. The product must minimize the features and reduce the price. It all comes down to pricing. The customers find it pretty… more »
    Top Answer:The biggest pain point is root cause analysis. It is difficult to analyze, assess, and warn my IT department about what will happen in the next five hours. It is also difficult to use AIOps to reduce… more »
    Ranking
    5th
    out of 42 in Server Monitoring
    Views
    4,709
    Comparisons
    3,597
    Reviews
    9
    Average Words per Review
    343
    Rating
    8.3
    10th
    out of 42 in Server Monitoring
    Views
    1,677
    Comparisons
    1,085
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    443
    Rating
    7.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SolarWinds SAM
    Learn More
    Overview

    Nagios XI provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components, including applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, systems metrics, and network infrastructure. Third-party add-ons provide tools for monitoring virtually all in-house and external applications, services, and systems.

    Nagios XI uses a powerful Core 4 monitoring engine that provides users with the highest levels of server monitoring performance. This high degree of performance enables nearly limitless scalability and monitoring powers.

    With Nagios XI, stakeholders can check up on their infrastructure status using the role-based web interface. Sophisticated dashboards enable access to monitoring information and third-party data. Administrators can easily set up permissions so users can only access the infrastructure they are authorized to view.

    Nagios XI Benefits and Features

    Some of the benefits and top features of using Nagios XI include:

    • Extensive IT infrastructure monitoring: Comprehensively monitor all of your organization’s infrastructure’s components. Hundreds of third-party add-ons let you monitor virtually any internal application, service, or system.

    • Proactivity: With built-in, automated trend analysis and capacity planning charts, organizations can plan infrastructure upgrades before legacy systems encounter unexpected issues. IT staff, business stakeholders, and end users are notified via email or SMS with details of the outage so they can begin handling the issue immediately.

    • Multiple integration options: Numerous available APIs allow seamless integration with in-house and third-party applications. Thousands of community-developed add-ons that extend monitoring and native alerting capabilities as well as custom interfaces are available, allowing you to customize Nagios XI to your company's needs.

    • Complete visibility: Get a single view of your entire IT operations network and business processes. The Nagios XI dashboards provide at-a-glance access to monitoring information and third-party data. Views give users quick access to the most useful information.

    • User-friendly interface: Customize the layout, design, and settings for each user’s GUI, providing clients and team members with the flexibility they need. Administrators can easily delegate control over monitoring configuration management, system settings, and more to end users and team members using the built-in web-based configuration interface. A configuration wizard guides users through the process of monitoring new devices, services, and applications without understanding complex monitoring concepts.

    • Configuration snapshots: Snapshots allow you to save and archive your most recent configurations. Later on, you can revert back to them whenever you like.

    • Advanced user management: Ensure a secure infrastructure environment by easily setting up and managing user accounts and assigning custom roles with just a few mouse clicks.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Nagios XI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its integration options and monitoring abilities, as well as its alerting features.

    David P., a senior DevOps engineer at EML Payments Ltd, writes, “We use Nagios as a network discovery tool. We use Nagios to maintain our uptime statistics and to monitor our services. It has allowed us to be much more sophisticated in our monitoring and alerting.”

    An IT-OSS manager at a comms service provider notes, “Nagios XI has a custom API feature, and we can expose custom APIs for our integration. This is a great feature.”

    SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

    Sample Customers
    Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
    Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider32%
    Manufacturing Company24%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Retailer8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization50%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Construction Company13%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization41%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise55%
    Large Enterprise33%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business11%
    Midsize Enterprise48%
    Large Enterprise41%
    Buyer's Guide
    Nagios XI vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios XI vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Nagios XI is ranked 5th in Server Monitoring with 54 reviews while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is ranked 10th in Server Monitoring with 38 reviews. Nagios XI is rated 8.2, while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Nagios XI writes "Great for monitoring IT services infrastructure with nice tools and helpful notifications". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor writes "We use this product for base and application monitoring. ". Nagios XI is most compared with Nagios Core, Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Wireshark and SolarWinds NPM, whereas SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus and ServiceNow Discovery. See our Nagios XI vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report.

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    We monitor all Server 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.