Zabbix is a well known, enterprise-class, open-source distributed monitoring solution. It’s designed to be an easily-accessible infrastructure monitoring and tracking tool for servers, networks, applications, and other IT infrastructure systems.
That being said, it is not perfect. In fact, it’s quite complicated to use, configure, and maintain. Although the price tag from Zabbix is zero, the cost of ownership, training, and maintenance can go as high as your imagination lets it.
Because of these factors, and despite the free use of the open-source software, many people have turned towards Zabbix alternatives.
If you’re here, you’re probably one of those people. Don’t panic, you’re not alone in this boat at all. To make this transition even easier for you, we’ve put together a short but comprehensive list of 10 of the best Zabbix alternatives on the market today.
Zabbix Features
Zabbix provides the foundation you need to monitor your entire infrastructure. Its feature set is fairly rich, and its capabilities are decently impressive, too. Here’s what it covers:
- Network monitoring
- Server monitoring
- Cloud monitoring
- Container monitoring
- Applications monitoring
- Service monitoring
- Database monitoring
Zabbix Pricing
Zabbix is a completely open-source solution, meaning the licensing to actually use the software costs nothing. This is one of the main attractions to Zabbix, but it’s not exactly transparent.
The truth is that Zabbix is complex to use. Being open-source, you won’t have the support that other out-of-the-box solutions do. This means that you will have to have training to setup, install, maintain, and operate anything within your Zabbix system.
Zabbix itself offers these sorts of services via their “Turnkey Solution” page. They will do anything from basic setups all the way to onsite installations and training. But it comes at a big cost.
Just to give you an example, a remote server installation from Zabbix is going to run you about $1,500. If you want the all-inclusive package with on-site installation, advanced configuration, consultancy, and training, then you’ll have to fork out a staggering $21,900.
These costs would be on top of the cost of ownership that you’ll have to keep track of as time goes on. So, in reality, Zabbix is not free at all.
10 Best Zabbix Alternatives
Sematext
Sematext is a comprehensive tool that offers full-stack observability with Log Management, Synthetic Monitoring, Real User Monitoring, and Infrastructure Monitoring. You can quickly get alerted when an issue is detected, plus get all the insights you might need to visualize, locate, and resolve that issue.
You can quickly leverage Sematext to troubleshoot when they’re running slow and optimize the performance of your website and apps.
Sematext Logs allows you to centralize your log data no matter where it comes from. As the problems come across your infrastructure, you can identify and troubleshoot them, all from one dashboard.
What’s really cool is that the Logs Pipelines feature allows you to adjust or even completely eliminate log events that you don’t want. As a result, you can save your data usage for only the log events that are important to you, giving you granular control of your costs. Take it a step further and trim unwanted fields, enhance your logs, or transform them as you see fit. This is something that Zabbix doesn’t offer.
Sematext’s Synthetic Monitoring allows you to passively test the availability and performance of your websites and APIs. Essentially, Synthetics uses simulated user interactions to run tests. These tests can be run from multiple global locations and even private locations, for those instances that occur behind your firewall.
Real User Monitoring (RUM) is referred to as Sematext Experience. This solution uses data from real users that are using your website to give you insight into tracking metrics like UI interactions and page load times. This data is collected in a comprehensive overview where you can track essential User Satisfaction metrics.
Infrastructure Monitoring gives you all the insights you need for the usage of your cloud instances, servers, containers, Kubernetes, and a lot more. Stay up to date on databases, search engines, queues, and more when they’re operating within your infrastructure.
The icing on the cake with Sematext are the tailor-made integrations for specific services for Monitoring and Logs. You can get started right out of the gate without configuring these integrations because they come with out-of-the-box dashboards and alert rules.
Features
- Log Monitoring
- Full stack observability
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Real User Monitoring
- Synthetic Monitoring
- SSL Certificate Monitoring
- Status Pages
- Alerting with anomaly detection
- Correlation
- 100+ integrations
Pros
- Per-app pricing with flexible payment options
- Granular cost control with Logs Pipelines
- Seamless setup with world-class support staff according to a number of reviews on G2
- Internal and external monitoring capabilities
- Customizable alert triggers
- Smooth incorporation with Incident Management Systems
Cons
- Fewer integrations than some larger competitors
- No support for transaction tracing
Pricing
Sematext’s pricing options come with zero obligations. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel whenever you’d like.
Log Monitoring has a free plan, but the paid options start at just $50 per month. With this $50 plan, you get up to 1GB of ingested data per day and 7 days of retention.
Synthetic Monitoring has two pricing options. The first one is the pay-as-you-go plan. With this plan, you can get single HTTP Monitors for $2 each and single Browser Monitors for $7 each.
The other pricing option for Synthetics offers monitor bundles. These bundles start at just $29 per month, but you end up getting more bang for your buck. For example, the $29 plan gives you up to 40 HTTP Monitors, 5 Browser Monitors, and 30 days of retention.
Infrastructure Monitoring has a free plan just like Logs, and the paid plans start at just $3.60 per host per month. With that $3.6 price tag comes a standard 7 days of retention.
Finally, you can get started with Sematext’s Real User Monitoring for just $9 per month. $9 gets you a 25,000-page view allowance per month and 7 days of retention.
Datadog
In terms of website observability, Datadog is an industry giant. It offers an impressive number of features and solutions, including all of those that are offered by Zabbix.
But before we dive too deep, let’s just go ahead and say that Datadog is extremely expensive. If you are on a budget of any kind, Datadog should be out of the question. Just take a look at what people are saying on X.
Datadog is a full-stack monitoring solution. Some might even say that it goes a little overboard with its 20+ individually-priced solutions.
Datadog is a great Zabbix alternative, but really only if you’re looking to massively scale up your observability arsenal. One of the things that attracts people to Zabbix is the fact that they offer a free, open-source solution, but you will not get that same treatment with Datadog.
Features
- Log Management and Monitoring
- Synthetic Monitoring
- Serverless Monitoring
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Browser Monitoring
Pros
- Comprehensive monitoring features
- Extensive range of integrations
- Intuitive data visualization
- Customizable graph widget
Cons
- Only for very limitless budgets
- Overwhelming with 20+ individually priced solutions
- Poor customer service according to user reports
- Steep learning curve according to user reports
Pricing
Datadog has 20+ solutions. All of them come with their own, individual costs and add-ons, so we won’t get into all of them. But, here are some honorable mentions:
- Synthetic Monitoring is $7.20 per 10,000 API tests and $18 per 1,000 browser tests.
- Real User Monitoring starts at $2.20 per 1,000 sessions per month
- Log management starts at $0.10 per ingested GB and $1.70 per million log events
- Infrastructure monitoring starts at $18 per month per host
Even if you’re not great at math, you can probably see how expensive Datadog can be at the end of the month.
If you want to see how expensive Datadog really is, then take a look at our page on Sematext vs Datadog. We created a very comprehensive pricing slider to compare their costs vs ours. It’s a great visualization of how much money you’ll have to sync into Datadog just to get the same service that Sematext offers, just at a fraction of the cost.
New Relic
New Relic is another full-stack observability tool that has a lot to offer. But, just like Datadog, it can get expensive.
In the middle of 2023, New Relic was bought out by Francisco Partners for $6.5 billion and went private. This enormous price tag is a pretty good indicator that it is not really marketed toward anyone other than massive corporations with equally massive bank accounts.
New Relic is known very well for its Performance and Infrastructure Monitoring capabilities, but it’s extremely powerful in just about every other area of observability, too. Real user monitoring, server monitoring, and log management are all highly capable solutions in New Relic, making it a decent Zabbix alternative. If you don’t like money, that is.
Features
- Serverless monitoring
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Browser monitoring
- Synthetic Monitoring
- Log management and monitoring
- APM
- Uptime Monitoring
Pros
- Full-stack observability
- Preconfigured dashboards
- Agents that are easy to deploy
- 600+ integrations
Cons
- They charge per-seat, which can get excessive
- Unexpected upcharges
- Users report memory issues
- Users report navigation difficulties
Pricing
New Relic claims to be transparent with their pricing, but it is actually quite complicated with all the upcharges and per-seat pricing they hit you with.
Here’s the breakdown:
There’s a $49 monthly charge for what they call “core” users with all plans.
If you want full access seats to the platform, the cost goes up to $99 for Standard plans, $349 for Pro plans, and an insane $549 for Enterprise plans, per seat!
Not only are these prices per user, but they are only if you opt for a yearly pricing plan. The prices can actually get worse if you opt for monthly plans. Either way, you’re forced into spending a lot of money.
They offer a 100GB allowance, but if you go over, you’ll have to pay extra. This comes out to $0.30 per GB for “Original” data and $0.50 per GB for “Plus” data. They really don’t explain very well what the differences are between the two options.
If you’re looking for a synthetic monitoring solution, there’s also an allowance for the number of runs every month. If you go over that allowance, you’re charged $0.005 per check. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you have a decent number of runs, it’ll add up.
But as we talked about above, New Relic isn’t for everyone. Sematext offers a lot more reasonable pricing plans and very similar functionality. Check out Sematext vs New Relic for more details.
Splunk
Splunk is well-known in the log management space, as it’s been around forever. It does, however, offer a lot more in terms of observability solutions, making it an ideal Zabbix alternative. In addition to log management, Splunk offers infrastructure monitoring, synthetic monitoring, APM, security monitoring, and more.
Splunk is an active contributor and founding member to OpenTelemetry, meaning that Splunk APM supports open and neutral instrumentation.
As good as it sounds, Splunk is unfortunately another pricey solution. Their sales personnel are usually after larger organizations with deep pockets that can afford to chuck a ton of cash and sign a big contract up front.
Features
- Log aggregation and monitoring tool
- Application monitoring
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Real User Monitoring
- Automated anomaly detection
- Synthetic Monitoring
Pros
- Ability to install add-ons
- On-premise or cloud-based
- Supports multiple formats
- Works well with unstructured data from various sources
Cons
- Expensive – not for small to medium sized businesses
- Runs on SPL (Splunk Processing Language) – requiring users to be experts in it
- Pretty outdated UI
- Limited in data modeling and machine learning capabilities
Pricing
Not only is Splunk expensive, but for some reason, they only offer prices for a handful of their solutions online. Even the ones that are present on their website are kind of buried behind a few pages.
Synthetic monitoring seems cheap at just $1, but that only gets you 10,000 uptime requests. Then you have incident response, which starts at $5 per user per month. Next is real user monitoring (RUM) starts at $14, but it only covers 10,000 sessions. Infrastructure Cloud Monitoring starts at $15 per month per host. Finally, APM starts at $55 per month per host.
Keep in mind that these prices are only available if you opt for annual billing, meaning you have to commit to Splunk for an entire year.
Want to see how Sematext stacks up to Splunk? Check out our page on Sematext vs Splunk.
Site24x7
Like others on this list, Site24x7 is a full-stack monitoring software that makes a great Zabbix alternative. They don’t offer some of the really niche features like Datadog, for example, but they still have some decently comprehensive Website Monitoring tools, including Infrastructure Monitoring.
Site24x7 also offers an APM tool that’s nothing to shake a stick at. It’s also great for Real User and Synthetic Monitoring as well as monitoring apps and microservices, but they do come in heavy with upcharges and hidden fees.
Features
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Website Monitoring
- Uptime Monitoring
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
Pros
- Easy agent installation
- Multiple webhooks
- 1-minute polling
- Monitors from multiple locations
Cons
- Price is not transparent – loads of upcharges and hidden fees
- Some solutions cannot be purchased individually
- The tool can be heavy and difficult to use according to user reviews
- Dashboards are difficult to set up according to user reviews
Pricing
Site24x7 pricing is complicated to say the least. There are so many add-ons that can go with each plan, often causing the price to skyrocket above what’s advertised. That said, here’s what they advertise:
Uptime monitoring comes in at $10 per month, but what they call “Enterprise Plus Web” starts at $999 per month. The only real difference between the two is the number of monitors.
Infrastructure monitoring starts at $10 per month, too, but it is frustratingly limited without tacking on a handful of add-ons. For instance, they charge $15 extra per month for 10 additional monitors and another $10 per month for every 10GB of Logs.
APM starts at $39 per month, but, just like all the other tools, has a list of add-ons that will increase the price far beyond what’s advertised. Here is where you can add RUM to your toolset, meaning you have to pay for APM if you want RUM. This will cost you an extra $24 per month, and it covers 500k pageviews, but those can only be spread across 4 websites.
Their All-in-one solution, which includes bits of everything above, has 4 individual prices. It starts at a simple $39 per month, but it doesn’t come with much, and goes all the way up to $499 per month.
Their last solution, MSP starts at $49 per month. But again, they have a long list of add-ons that will leave your pockets feeling empty.
Want to see how Site24x7 compares to Sematext? We went over some key differences between the two in our Sematext vs Site24x7 page.
Dynatrace
Let’s continue with the trend of full-stack platforms and mention Dynatrace. It has a big focus on Application Performance Monitoring (APM), but offers basically the same infrastructure monitoring capabilities that Zabbix does.
Dynatrace is a great tool for big-budgeted businesses looking for enterprise-level monitoring that stretches a bit beyond the capabilities of Zabbix alone. It’s awesome at providing business metrics across numerous platforms. One of the things that sets it apart is that it implements casual AI to help automate complex workflows.
Features
- Full-stack Monitoring
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Real User Monitoring
- Synthetic Monitoring
- Log management
- Application Security
Pros
- Huge platform – Lots of observability options
- Priced based on data that you use
- Quick and powerful alerting
- Powered by casual AI
Cons
- Very expensive – See breakdown below
- The tool is complex to use according to user reviews
- User reviews report bad customer service and support
- Poor documentation according to user reviews
Pricing
Dynatrace advertises their pricing in low numbers and volumes so as to seem cheap. But when you start attaching real numbers and scenarios to their pricing, it gets expensive.
Take their log management, for example. The prices start at a mere $0.20 per ingested and processed GiB and to retain that GiB only costs you about $0.0007 per month. Seems cheap, but they charge additional fees just to query that logging data. If you pay close attention, you have to pay $0.0035 per GiB!
So let’s run the numbers on that. For 1GiB of ingested data and 7 days retention, that’s $6 ingestion + $0.0049 retention = $6.0049 per month. Cheap, but since Dynatrace also charges $0.0035 per GiB for queries, it won’t stay cheap. With 7GB stored and a single query every 10 minutes, that’s an extra $3.5 per day. Adding everything up, you’re paying $111 per month total.
How about synthetics? A single synthetic request is $0.001. Again, this might sound like a deal, but let’s run the numbers again. If you set up one HTTP monitor from one location with 1-minute intervals, that equation looks like this: 0.001 * 1440 * 30 = $43. In this equation, 1440 is the number of runs in a month and 30 is the number of days in a month on average. That’s $43 per month for a single HTTP monitor.
Now with Infrastructure Monitoring, they charge $0.04 per hour, which looks cheap. But with 24 hours in a day and using that average 30 days again, the monthly charge is 0.04 * 24 * 30, which totals $28.8 per host.
Then you have Real User Monitoring, which is charged based on sessions. Each session will cost you $0.00225. Basic math shows us that 50,000,000 sessions would cost you $112.50 per month.
Want to see how Sematext stacks up? Check out our page on Sematext vs Dynatrace.
ManageEngine Applications Manager
Applications Manager from ManageEngine provides an integrated network management solution and offers compatibility with Java, .Net Core, Node.js, PHP, and Ruby apps. It also has synthetic transaction monitoring that uses Selenium-based scripting, authentic browser assessments for Chrome and Firefox, and offers multiple test locations.
ManageEngine’s Real User Monitoring (RUM) offers network awareness and performance metrics employed in browser, site, device, and ISP specifics. It even grants deep visibility into transactions, sessions, JavaScript errors, and loads of other useful metrics. Even better, ManageEngine offers multi-cloud supervision, which includes servers, databases, container monitoring, and more.
Features
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
- Synthetic Monitoring
- Real User monitoring (RUM)
Pros
- Centralized view
- Real-time performance monitoring
- Multi-cloud visibility
Cons
- Limited customization options
- The tool is complex according to user reviews
- Data is not always accurate according to user reviews
- User reviews also report scalability issues
Pricing
Unfortunately, ManageEngine doesn’t publicly list their prices. If you’re interested in the platform, you’ll have to reach out to their sales team for a quote.
Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic is another tool aimed at large corporations, but it also offers decent infrastructure monitoring capabilities. All-in-all, so it’s a decent choice if you’re looking at Zabbix alternatives.
What makes Sumo Logic unique as a Zabbix alternative is the cloud-based machine learning that it implements. This machine learning helps when processing a lot of data at once, hence why it’s so good for large corporations.
If you’re looking for something more than basic infrastructure monitoring, Sumo Logic is a decent option for end-to-end monitoring. It comes with root cause analysis, anomaly detection, and pre-set alerts.
Features
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Log analytics
- Cloud SOAR
- Cloud SIEM
- Cloud security analytics
- Application observability
Pros
- Decent selection of observability tools
- Decent set of security tools
- Real-time data collection and insight
- Powered by AI
- Pre-set dashboards and alerts
Cons
- Expensive – Not budget-friendly at all
- The tool is complex to use according to user reviews
- Data collection can lag according to user reviews
- Search can be slow for large data ranges according to user reviews
Pricing
Sumo Logic is all about big data, big companies, and big budgets. This is not a solution that you should consider using if you’re limited in funds.
If you want Sumo Logic for their 3 security solutions: Cloud SOAR, Cloud SIEM, and Cloud Security Analytics, you will unfortunately have to contact their sales team for a quote.
Other than tha, application observability starts at $2.31 per GB.
Infrastructure Monitoring’s price is more complicated than it needs to be to calculate, but it starts at $0.50/1000 data points per minute (DPM) per day. DPM is essentially the per-minute rate at which metric values are sent to Sumo Logic.
It’s complicated because you likely aren’t sure about how many DPMs your server, VM, Kubernetes pod, or container send in general, much less the per-minute rate.
Lastly, you have log analytics, which starts at a staggering $3.30 per ingested GB. So if you set a 1GB per day limit, you’re looking at $99 per month.
AppDynamics
AppDynamics is a well-known Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tool. However, like Zabbix, it also works well for infrastructure monitoring. It’s not open-source, but the platform allows users to ingest structured and unstructured data to gain visibility into cloud, virtual, and physical infrastructures in real-time.
AppDynamics is a useful Zabbix alternative because it supports multi-cloud capabilities. AppDynamics’ cloud provides visibility and insight via AIOps-focused alerts and notifications. It provides easy-to-understand views for application performance and health, IT infrastructure, and cloud-based services.
Features
- Infrastructure Monitoring
- Synthetic Monitoring
- Real User Monitoring
- Application performance management
- Business performance monitoring
- Log Analytics
Pros
- New application deployment is easy
- Code-level visibility option
- Intuitive workflow monitoring within application tracking
- Predictive intelligence
- High transaction visibility
Cons
- Very expensive – Not for small or medium sized businesses
- User reviews complain of various difficulties across the entire platform
- Challenges with integrating with different event sources
- 3rd-party tools required to start/stop instances being monitored according to user reviews
Pricing
AppDynamics offers a variety of different pricing options, starting as low as $6 per month per CPU core for basic infrastructure monitoring. Then, synthetic monitoring plans start at $60 per month per CPU core. An Enterprise Edition is also available for $90 per month per CPU core.
If you’re confused by the CPU-based pricing, you’re not alone. It is a bit strange that they chose to do it this way instead of by usage or host. It;’s made even more difficult by the fact that they don’t really explain what’s included in a single CPI core.
On that same sort of note, they charge $0.06 per month for 1,000 “tokens” for Real User Monitoring. They do not explain what a token is or what it covers.
Want to see how Sematext stacks up? Check out our page on Sematext vs AppDynamics.
Prometheus
Like Zabbix, Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit. It delivers a scalable and flexible solution for overseeing infrastructure and applications, making it a great Zabbix alternative.
Using time-series data that Prometheus collects, including metrics and logs, users gain visibility into their systems’ health and performance. It offers a query language that’s quite robust, making the extraction of insights from data seamless. It also offers a range of integrations with diverse tools and systems, including a seamless integration with Kubernetes, facilitating the monitoring of containerized applications and infrastructure.
Prometheus is efficient with real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities which enable quick issue detection and response. Customization is easy with its adaptable architecture, making it a solid choice for complex environments.
Features
- Query language choices for time series database collection
- Visualization layer integrated with a built-in expression browser
- Multidimensional data model
- Convenient alert manager
Pros
- Open-source
- Streamlined deployment process with straightforward installation
- Focused on metrics, encompassing data collection and definition
- Provides diverse data sources for Grafana dashboards
Cons
- Query language is complex according to user reviews
- Lacks native support for long-term data storage
- Customer reviews also complain about ineffective/inefficient visualizations
- Needs manual setup, management, ongoing maintenance, upgrades, etc. leading to a high cost of ownership
Pricing
Prometheus is open-source just like Zabbix. This means that, while simple and lacking many functionalities, it is completely free to use. However, because it’s not a SaaS, it needs to be self-managed. Because of this, the total cost of ownership will add up when you take into account the time of all people involved in installing and maintaining Prometheus.
Zabbix Alternatives Comparison Table
| Tool | Vs Zabbix | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Sematext |
|
Infrastructure Monitoring, Log Analysis, Performance Monitoring, Synthetic Monitoring, and anomaly detection. |
| Datadog |
|
Full stack observability for large organizations with a large budget. |
| New Relic |
|
Application performance monitoring (APM) and Infrastructure Monitoring. |
| Splunk |
|
Log analysis and data analytics. |
| Site24x7 |
|
Website Monitoring, Infrastructure Monitoring, and Application Performance Monitoring (APM) |
| Dynatrace |
|
Full-stack monitoring and observability for large enterprises with large budgets. |
| ManageEngine Applications Manager |
|
Application Performance Monitoring (APM), Infrastructure Monitoring, Synthetic Monitoring, Real User Monitoring (RUM) |
| Sumo Logic |
|
Log analysis, operational intelligence, and security analysis. |
| AppDynamics |
|
Enterprises and large-scale APM (Application Performance Monitoring). |
| Prometheus |
|
Open-source monitoring |
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a Zabbix alternative, then I hope this article helps you on your journey. Feel free to come back and reference it if you ever have any questions. Tha said, make sure you do all the research you need to make a well-informed decision that suits your specific needs and the needs of your company/team.
And, if you want to see more of what Sematext has to offer, you have lots of options. Schedule a demo, sign up for a free trial, or check out our interactive demo today.