Nagios vs Uptime Robot

Overview

Nagios

Stacks811

Followers1.1K

Votes102

GitHub Stars57

Forks38

UptimeRobot

Stacks325

Followers249

Votes84

Nagios vs Uptime Robot: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare and discuss the key differences between Nagios and Uptime Robot, two popular monitoring tools used to track the availability and performance of websites and servers.

1. Architecture and Scalability: Nagios follows a distributed architecture, allowing the use of multiple servers to monitor a large number of hosts and services. It offers excellent scalability and can handle complex setups. On the other hand, Uptime Robot uses a simple cloud-based architecture, which is easy to set up and requires less maintenance. However, it may not be as suitable for handling large-scale monitoring requirements.

2. Ease of Use and Setup: Nagios can be complex to set up and configure, requiring knowledge of scripting, command-line interfaces, and specific configuration files. It may not be ideal for beginners or users without advanced technical skills. Uptime Robot, on the other hand, is designed with simplicity in mind, providing a user-friendly web interface and easy setup process. It is well-suited for beginners and users who prefer a quick and straightforward monitoring solution.

3. Monitor Types and Flexibility: Nagios offers a wide range of monitoring options, including active and passive checks, event handlers, and custom plugins. It provides extensive flexibility to monitor various aspects of systems and applications. In contrast, Uptime Robot offers a simpler monitoring approach focused on basic uptime monitoring and response time checks. It may not have the same level of flexibility as Nagios in terms of monitoring different metrics and performing advanced checks.

4. Alerting and Notifications: Nagios provides extensive alerting capabilities, allowing users to define multiple notification methods, escalation rules, and dependencies. It supports various notification channels such as email, SMS, and custom scripts. Uptime Robot, on the other hand, offers basic alerting features, primarily through email and SMS notifications. It may not have the same level of customization and flexibility as Nagios when it comes to defining complex notification rules.

5. Community and Support: Nagios has a robust community of users, a vast collection of plugins, and active development, making it a popular choice for many users. It has a large number of third-party integrations and extensive documentation available. Uptime Robot also has a supportive community, but it may not have the same level of ecosystem and resources as Nagios. It may be challenging to find specific plugins or community-driven solutions for Uptime Robot.

6. Pricing and Cost: Nagios is an open-source tool, offering a free version with core features and functionality. However, it can involve additional costs for advanced features and enterprise support. Uptime Robot offers a free plan with basic monitoring options, and it also provides paid plans with additional features and higher monitoring frequencies. Depending on the specific requirements and budget, the pricing and cost structure of both tools can be a deciding factor.

In summary, Nagios provides a scalable and complex monitoring solution with extensive customization options, while Uptime Robot offers a simpler and user-friendly approach focused on basic uptime monitoring. The choice between these tools depends on the specific needs, technical skills, scalability requirements, and budget considerations.

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Advice on Nagios, UptimeRobot

Matthias

Teamlead IT at NanoTemper Technologies

Jun 11, 2020

Decided

free open source
modern interface and architecture
large community
extendable I knew Nagios for decades but it was really outdated (by its architecture) at some point. That's why Icinga started first as a fork, not with Icinga2 it is completely built from scratch but backward-compatible with Nagios plugins. Now it has reached a state with which I am confident.

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Detailed Comparison

Nagios	UptimeRobot
Nagios is a host/service/network monitoring program written in C and released under the GNU General Public License.	It is all about helping you to keep your websites up. It monitors your websites every 5 minutes and alerts you if your sites are down.
Monitor your entire IT infrastructure;Spot problems before they occur;Know immediately when problems arise;Share availability data with stakeholders;Detect security breaches;Plan and budget for IT upgrades;Reduce downtime and business losses	Event tree analysis; Support for Let's Encrypt; Public Status Page; SMS Reminders; Uptime Monitoring; User Profiles with Location
Statistics
GitHub Stars 57	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 38	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 811	Stacks 325
Followers 1.1K	Followers 249
Votes 102	Votes 84
Pros & Cons
Pros 53 It just works 28 The standard 12 Customizable 8 The Most flexible monitoring system 1 Huge stack of free checks/plugins to choose from	Pros 22 Free tier 18 Easy to understand 14 Instant notifications 8 Simpler than Pingdom 5 Free public status pages Cons 4 False-Positives 3 Consistently bad UI 2 Confusing UI 0 Extremely bad UI experience
Integrations
No integrations available	Slack PagerDuty Telegram Microsoft Teams VictorOps OpsGenie

What are some alternatives to Nagios, UptimeRobot?

Pingdom

Pingdom is an uptime monitoring service. When problems happen with a site that Pingdom monitors, it immediately alerts the owner so the problem can be taken care of.

Grafana

Grafana is a general purpose dashboard and graph composer. It's focused on providing rich ways to visualize time series metrics, mainly though graphs but supports other ways to visualize data through a pluggable panel architecture. It currently has rich support for for Graphite, InfluxDB and OpenTSDB. But supports other data sources via plugins.

Better Stack

Better Stack is a radically better infrastructure monitoring platform that calls the right person on your team if anything goes wrong. Schedule on-call duties, receive helpful alerts, and collaborate on solving incidents faster than ever.

Kibana

Kibana is an open source (Apache Licensed), browser based analytics and search dashboard for Elasticsearch. Kibana is a snap to setup and start using. Kibana strives to be easy to get started with, while also being flexible and powerful, just like Elasticsearch.

Prometheus

Prometheus is a systems and service monitoring system. It collects metrics from configured targets at given intervals, evaluates rule expressions, displays the results, and can trigger alerts if some condition is observed to be true.

Netdata

Netdata collects metrics per second & presents them in low-latency dashboards. It's designed to run on all of your physical & virtual servers, cloud deployments, Kubernetes clusters & edge/IoT devices, to monitor systems, containers & apps

Zabbix

Zabbix is a mature and effortless enterprise-class open source monitoring solution for network monitoring and application monitoring of millions of metrics.

Sensu

Sensu is the future-proof solution for multi-cloud monitoring at scale. The Sensu monitoring event pipeline empowers businesses to automate their monitoring workflows and gain deep visibility into their multi-cloud environments.

StatusCake

Monitoring a website is one thing – finding the best way to alert you to downtime another. At StatusCake we give you as many options as possible to decide when & how often you’re contacted. Whether it’s by email, SMS, push notifications for iOS & Android or integration with third party apps including Zapier and PagerDuty – you decide how you want to be alerted and when!

updown.io

updown is an online service that checks your website's status by periodically sending an HTTP HEAD request to the URL of your choice. It then notifies you by email or sms when your website is not responding correctly.

Related Comparisons

Nagios vs Uptime Robot: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare and discuss the key differences between Nagios and Uptime Robot, two popular monitoring tools used to track the availability and performance of websites and servers.

1. Architecture and Scalability: Nagios follows a distributed architecture, allowing the use of multiple servers to monitor a large number of hosts and services. It offers excellent scalability and can handle complex setups. On the other hand, Uptime Robot uses a simple cloud-based architecture, which is easy to set up and requires less maintenance. However, it may not be as suitable for handling large-scale monitoring requirements.

2. Ease of Use and Setup: Nagios can be complex to set up and configure, requiring knowledge of scripting, command-line interfaces, and specific configuration files. It may not be ideal for beginners or users without advanced technical skills. Uptime Robot, on the other hand, is designed with simplicity in mind, providing a user-friendly web interface and easy setup process. It is well-suited for beginners and users who prefer a quick and straightforward monitoring solution.

3. Monitor Types and Flexibility: Nagios offers a wide range of monitoring options, including active and passive checks, event handlers, and custom plugins. It provides extensive flexibility to monitor various aspects of systems and applications. In contrast, Uptime Robot offers a simpler monitoring approach focused on basic uptime monitoring and response time checks. It may not have the same level of flexibility as Nagios in terms of monitoring different metrics and performing advanced checks.

4. Alerting and Notifications: Nagios provides extensive alerting capabilities, allowing users to define multiple notification methods, escalation rules, and dependencies. It supports various notification channels such as email, SMS, and custom scripts. Uptime Robot, on the other hand, offers basic alerting features, primarily through email and SMS notifications. It may not have the same level of customization and flexibility as Nagios when it comes to defining complex notification rules.

5. Community and Support: Nagios has a robust community of users, a vast collection of plugins, and active development, making it a popular choice for many users. It has a large number of third-party integrations and extensive documentation available. Uptime Robot also has a supportive community, but it may not have the same level of ecosystem and resources as Nagios. It may be challenging to find specific plugins or community-driven solutions for Uptime Robot.

6. Pricing and Cost: Nagios is an open-source tool, offering a free version with core features and functionality. However, it can involve additional costs for advanced features and enterprise support. Uptime Robot offers a free plan with basic monitoring options, and it also provides paid plans with additional features and higher monitoring frequencies. Depending on the specific requirements and budget, the pricing and cost structure of both tools can be a deciding factor.

Nagios vs Uptime Robot

Overview

Nagios vs Uptime Robot: What are the differences?