Netdata is great when you want something lightweight that just works out of the box, but eventually a lot of teams hit limits – scaling, deeper integrations, better alerting, or simply prettier graphs. Below are 14 tools that regularly show up when folks look for the next step. Some are massive all-in-one platforms, some are hyper-focused, and a few are pure visualization layers. Pick whichever matches the gap you’re feeling.
1. AppFirst
AppFirst is a newer platform that tries to let developers deploy applications without having to write any Terraform or cloud-specific code themselves. You basically tell it what your app needs – CPU, database, networking, container image – and it spins up the underlying infrastructure across AWS, Azure, or GCP with all the security defaults already applied.
It’s aimed at teams that want developers to own the full lifecycle of their service but don’t want them spending days learning VPC layouts or writing IAM policies. The idea is that the platform handles the repeatable infra bits so engineers can stay focused on the actual product code.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Provisions full application environments from simple declarations
- Works across major cloud providers
- Applies security and compliance settings automatically
- Provides built-in logging, monitoring, and cost tracking
- SaaS or self-hosted deployment options
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: www.appfirst.dev
2. Zabbix
Zabbix serves as an open-source observability solution designed for monitoring IT and OT environments, including cloud infrastructure, networks, services, and IoT devices. It provides a unified view of systems through a single pane of glass, enabling integration with existing infrastructure components. Deployable on-premise or in the cloud, it supports monitoring across data centers, edge devices, and hybrid setups.
The solution focuses on collecting and processing data for visibility into performance and availability, with capabilities for automated discovery and real-time tracking. It emphasizes scalability and stability to maintain operational efficiency in diverse environments.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Open-source with no licensing fees or per-device charges.
- Supports on-premise deployment for full control and data privacy.
- Offers integrations with existing systems for comprehensive monitoring.
- Provides 24/7 support through a global partner network.
- Enables multitenant operations suitable for managed service providers.
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: www.zabbix.com
- E-Mail: sales@zabbix.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/zabbix
- Twitter: x.com/zabbix
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/zabbix
- Anschrift: 211 E 43rd Street, Suite 7-100, New York, NY 10017, USA
- Phone: +18774922249
3. Prometheus
Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system and time series database that utilizes a dimensional data model to identify time series through metric names and key-value pairs. It features the PromQL query language, which enables querying, correlating, and transforming time series data for purposes such as visualizations and alerts. Alerting rules, defined using PromQL and leveraging the dimensional model, are managed by a separate Alertmanager component for notifications and silencing. The system operates with independent servers that rely on local storage, and its binaries, developed in Go, facilitate deployment across environments.
This setup allows for handling metrics from applications and services in a way that’s geared toward cloud-native setups, though it keeps things modular enough for other contexts. It’s all about pulling in data reliably and making it queryable without too much overhead.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Flexible dimensional data model for time series identification via metric names and key-value pairs.
- PromQL query language for querying, correlating, and transforming time series data.
- Alerting rules based on PromQL, with Alertmanager handling notifications and silencing.
- Independent servers using local storage, with statically linked Go binaries for deployment.
- Instrumentation libraries and integrations for extracting metrics from systems.
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: prometheus.io
- E-mail: prometheus.io
- App Store: apps.apple.com/ru/app/prometheus-metrics-reader/id6448750573
4. Grafana IRM
Grafana is an open and composable observability platform that enables users to query, visualize, and alert on data from various sources. It supports monitoring of applications, infrastructure, and other systems through dashboards and pre-built solutions. Grafana integrates with telemetry data such as metrics, logs, traces, and profiles, allowing for the creation of visualizations and alerts based on data from multiple backends.
What stands out is how it acts as a front-end layer, connecting dots between different tools rather than trying to do everything itself. You end up with customizable views that make sense of mixed data sources, which can feel less chaotic when you’re juggling multiple systems.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Grafana provides visualization capabilities for data from various sources, including support for logs, metrics, traces, and profiles.
- It offers monitoring solutions for applications, infrastructure, and specific technologies like Kubernetes and databases.
- Grafana includes alerting features that trigger notifications from any connected data source.
- The platform supports plugins to connect with additional data sources, applications, and tools.
- Grafana facilitates incident response management with workflows for on-call management and incident handling.
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: grafana.com
- E-mail: info@grafana.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/grafana
- Twitter: x.com/grafana
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/grafana-labs
- App Store: apps.apple.com/ru/app/grafana-irm
- Google Play: play.google.com/store/Grafana
5. Checkmk
Checkmk started out as a fork of Nagios years back but has grown into its own thing with a much faster core and way less manual hassle. People use it when they want to watch everything from physical servers to cloud instances and containers without writing a ton of custom scripts. The system automatically finds new devices, figures out what services are running, and applies the right checks, so you’re not stuck clicking through menus all day to add a single host.
A lot of teams like that it has a proper open-source edition you can run forever without paying, but also paid versions that add things like distributed monitoring sites or tighter cloud integrations. If you enjoy tweaking plug-ins or writing your own, the platform doesn’t fight you – everything is scriptable and the API is decent.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Automatic host discovery and service configuration
- Raw edition is completely open-source and free
- Paid editions for distributed setups and cloud workloads
- REST API for automation and custom integrations
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: checkmk.com
- E-Mail: sales@checkmk.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/checkmk
- Twitter: x.com/checkmk
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/checkmk
- Google Play: play.google.com/store/Checkmk
- Anschrift: Checkmk GmbH Kellerstraße 27 81667 München Deutschland
- Phone: +44 20 3966 1150
6. Datadog
Datadog is one of those tools that shows up everywhere once companies start living in the cloud. You drop a small agent on your boxes (or skip it entirely for serverless), and suddenly you’ve got metrics, traces, and logs flowing into one place. The dashboards are clean, and the tagging system makes it easy to slice data however you want – by team, environment, customer, whatever.
It leans hard into modern stacks: Kubernetes, Docker, AWS Lambda, all the usual suspects. If you’re already paying for a cloud bill the size of a car payment, Datadog feels pretty natural because it speaks the same language as the rest of your infrastructure.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Single agent collects metrics, traces, and logs
- Strong Kubernetes and serverless coverage out of the box
- Tagging and filtering system for organizing big environments
- Real-time security monitoring alongside performance data
- Hundreds of turnkey integrations with cloud services
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: www.datadoghq.com
- E-Mail: info@datadoghq.com
- Twitter: x.com/datadoghq
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/datadog
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/datadoghq
- App Store: apps.apple.com/us/app/datadog
- Google Play: play.google.com/store/apps/datadog.app
- Address: 620 8th Ave 45th Floor New York, NY 10018 USA
- Telefon: 866 329-4466
7. New Relic
New Relic has been around long enough that half the internet probably still has their Java agent installed somewhere. These days it’s trying to be the one dashboard that covers hosts, containers, applications, and even the browser side of things. You get metrics, distributed tracing, error tracking, and logs without juggling five different tools.
Teams that already have a mix of old-school servers and newer cloud-native apps seem to land here a lot. The pricing is usage-based, so you only pay for what actually sends data, which keeps the finance people from having a heart attack when traffic spikes.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Full-stack view from infrastructure to browser
- Distributed tracing across services
- Usage-based pricing with a generous free tier
- Built-in anomaly detection and alerting
- Mobile and browser performance monitoring included
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: newrelic.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/NewRelic
- Twitter: x.com/newrelic
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/new-relic-inc-
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/newrelic
- App Store: apps.apple.com/ru/app/new-relic
- Google Play: play.google.com/store/newrelic
- Anschrift: 1100 Peachtree Street NE, Suite 2000, Atlanta, GA 30309, USA
- Phone: (585) 632-6563
8. Dynatrace
Dynatrace runs as a single-agent platform that watches everything from infrastructure and applications to user sessions and security signals. It pulls in metrics, traces, logs, and events, then tries to connect the dots automatically so people spend less time figuring out why something broke. The system leans on its own AI engine to spot patterns and suggest what might be wrong before alerts flood in.
A lot of bigger teams pick it when they want one tool that covers the whole stack without stitching together separate products. You install the agent, point it at your clusters or hosts, and it starts mapping dependencies on its own.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Single agent for full-stack data collection
- Automatic dependency mapping across services
- Built-in AI for anomaly detection and root cause suggestions
- Covers applications, infrastructure, logs, and user experience
- Supports cloud-native and traditional environments
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: www.dynatrace.com
- E-Mail: sales@dynatrace.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/Dynatrace
- Twitter: x.com/Dynatrace
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/dynatrace
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/dynatrace
- App Store: apps.apple.com/ru/app/dynatrace-4-0
- Google Play: play.google.com/store/Dynatrace
- Address: 280 Congress Street, 11th Floor Boston, MA 02210 United States of America
- Phone: 18888333652
9. Icinga
Icinga came out of the old Nagios world but cleaned up a lot of the rough edges and added its own web interface and configuration tools. People still use it for classic server and network checks, but it also handles Kubernetes and cloud stuff without too much extra work. The setup stays pretty flexible – you can keep everything in text files or use the Director module if you prefer a GUI.
It’s one of those tools that never really went away because a ton of sysadmins already know how it works, and the community keeps the plug-ins coming. If you’re comfortable with check scripts and a bit of command-line work, it just keeps running.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Classic host and service checking with plug-ins
- Web interface and configuration database option
- Supports distributed setups with multiple zones
- Handles servers, networks, and containers
- Fully open-source core
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: icinga.com
- E-Mail: info@icinga.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/icinga
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/icinga
- Address: Icinga GmbH Deutschherrnstr. 15-19 90429 Nuremberg, Germany
- Telefon: +49 911 9288555
10. OpenNMS
OpenNMS has been around forever as a pure network-focused monitoring system that grew into something bigger. It started with polling devices via SNMP but now does flow analysis, event correlation, and even some application-layer checks. The whole thing stays completely open-source, and the company behind it makes money on support subscriptions for the stable Meridian releases.
Teams that manage large or distributed networks seem to end up here a lot because it scales out horizontally and doesn’t choke on thousands of interfaces. You drop it in, let it discover your network, and it starts graphing whatever it finds.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Strong SNMP polling and flow collection
- Event-driven architecture with correlation rules
- Distributed minion setup for large environments
- Built-in traffic analysis tools
- 100 % open-source with optional paid support
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: www.opennms.com
- E-mail: contactus@opennms.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/OpenNMS
- Twitter: x.com/opennms
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/the-opennms-group
- Address: 2871 Lake Vista Drive Lewisville, TX 75067
- Phone: +1 919-533-0160
11. SigNoz
SigNoz shows up as a newer open-source tool that tries to keep logs, metrics, and traces in one place instead of running separate systems. Teams that already use OpenTelemetry tend to give it a look because it speaks that language natively and stores everything in ClickHouse, which handles big volumes without complaining too much. You can run it yourself on a few servers or let them host it if you don’t want the ops overhead.
Most people who switch to it seem to come from the paid big-name platforms and just want something they can actually control and extend without getting surprise invoices. It’s still growing, but the basics are there – dashboards, alerts, exception tracking, the usual stuff you expect once you’re past toy projects.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Built around OpenTelemetry for logs, traces, and metrics
- Uses ClickHouse as the backend storage
- Self-host or managed cloud options
- Single UI for all signals with correlation between them
- No pricing tied to users or hosts
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: signoz.io
- Twitter: x.com/SigNozHQ
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/signozio
12. Cacti
Cacti has been the go-to graphing tool for anyone who lives in SNMP land since forever. You point it at switches, routers, servers, whatever speaks SNMP, and it starts drawing pretty round-robin graphs using RRDTool underneath. The interface looks like it hasn’t changed much in fifteen years, and that’s actually fine for a lot of network folks who just want reliable long-term graphs without drama.
People still run it because it does one thing really well and doesn’t try to be everything to everyone. If your job is keeping an eye on interface counters and bandwidth trends across a campus or data center, Cacti still gets dropped into new setups more often than you’d think.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Classic SNMP polling and RRDTool graphing
- Template system for devices and graphs
- Plugin architecture to add extra features
- Role-based user management
- Works on everything from small LANs to large networks
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: www.cacti.net
13. LibreNMS
LibreNMS grew out of the old Observium fork and turned into its own thing with a cleaner look and more community-driven development. It auto-discovers your network using the usual protocols, builds maps, tracks ports, and throws alerts when something goes down or gets weird. The web UI feels modern enough that you don’t cringe when you open it on a phone.
A decent chunk of ISPs and companies with big layer-2/3 setups still swear by it because it just works and doesn’t cost anything unless you want official support. You install it, let it scan, and suddenly you can see which customer is hammering the link at 3 a.m.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Automatic discovery via SNMP, CDP, LLDP, OSPF, BGP
- Bandwidth billing based on port usage
- Distributed polling for larger networks
- Integrations with Oxidized, RANCID, and other tools
- Full REST API for scripting
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: www.librenms.org
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/LibreNMS
- Twitter: x.com/LibreNMS
14. Pandora FMS
Pandora FMS handles a pretty wide range of monitoring tasks from one console – networks, servers, applications, logs, even some user-experience checks and remote control features. Teams that want to keep an eye on both old-school hardware and newer cloud stuff without switching between five different tools sometimes land on it. The agent works on pretty much every operating system you can think of, and they also have an enterprise version if you need official support or extra modules.
It’s one of those platforms that started years ago and just kept adding pieces over time, so you end up with things like inventory, ticketing, and satellite servers for remote sites all in the same package. Some places run the open-source community edition, others pay for the full thing with the fancy reporting and 24/7 help.
Wichtigste Highlights:
- Covers networks, servers, applications, and log collection
- Agent supports Windows, Linux, Unix, mainframes, and more
- Includes remote control and inventory features
- Satellite servers for monitoring remote locations
- Open-source community version and paid enterprise releases
Informationen zu Kontakt und sozialen Medien:
- Website: pandorafms.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/pandorafms
- Twitter: x.com/pandorafms
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/pandora-pfms
- App Store: apps.apple.com/ru/app/pandora-fms
- Google Play: play.google.com/store/apps/pandorafmsmobile
- Address: C/ José Echegaray 8, Alvia, Edificio I, planta 2, Oficina 12. 28232 Las Rozas de Madrid, Madrid, España
- Telefon: +34 91 559 72 22
Einpacken
At the end of the day, there’s no single winner that magically fits every team. Netdata nails that instant, no-fuss view of one machine, but the second you have more than a handful of boxes, or you need real alerting, retention that doesn’t eat your disk alive, or dashboards that don’t make your eyes bleed, you’re shopping for something else.
Some people go for the big all-in-one platforms because they’re tired of running five different tools and just want everything in one place. Others stick to the lightweight metrics collector plus a separate visualization layer because that combo scales exactly how they need it in container land. Then there’s the crowd that finally throws in the towel and picks one of the paid SaaS options because getting paged at midnight stops being fun real quick.
Truth is, a ridiculous number of setups I’ve seen are actually hybrids maybe one of these for infrastructure, another for traces and logs, and something on top just to make the graphs look decent. And that’s totally fine. Monitoring always ends up a bit messy because your infrastructure is messy.
So grab whichever one fixes the thing that’s annoying you today. You can bolt on or swap out the rest later when the next pain shows up. Just don’t let yourself get stuck chasing the “perfect” stack forever good enough and stable beats theoretically perfect every single time. Your on-call rotation will thank you.
