Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Zabbix VS Ossec

Compare Zabbix VS Ossec and see what are their differences

Zabbix logo Zabbix

Track, record, alert and visualize performance and availability of IT resources

Ossec logo Ossec

OSSEC is an Open Source Host-based Intrusion Detection System.
  • Zabbix Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-10-02
  • Ossec Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-23

Zabbix features and specs

  • Open-source
    Zabbix is free and open-source, allowing for extensive customization and modification to meet specific needs without licensing costs.
  • Scalability
    Zabbix can handle a large number of devices and data points, making it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring
    Zabbix offers a wide range of monitoring capabilities including servers, networks, cloud services, and applications.
  • Alerting and Notification
    It provides robust alerting mechanisms, allowing notifications via email, SMS, and other methods.
  • Flexible Configuration
    The system allows for detailed and flexible configuration, accommodating various specific monitoring requirements.
  • Extensive API
    Zabbix comes with a comprehensive API that allows for integration with third-party tools and custom automation scripts.
  • Strong Community Support
    As an open-source project, Zabbix has a strong community that can provide support and share best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Zabbix

  • Complex Setup and Configuration
    Initial setup and configuration can be complicated and time-consuming, often requiring a steep learning curve.
  • Resource Intensive
    Zabbix can be resource-intensive, particularly on the database side, which might require substantial hardware resources for large deployments.
  • User Interface
    The user interface is considered less modern and user-friendly compared to some commercial alternatives.
  • Documentation
    While comprehensive, the documentation can sometimes be difficult to navigate for new users.
  • Maintenance Effort
    Ongoing maintenance, such as updates and troubleshooting, can be labor-intensive.
  • Dependency on MySQL
    The heavy reliance on MySQL databases can be a disadvantage for users preferring other database technologies.
  • Initial Costs for Large Scale Deployments
    Although the software is free, the costs associated with setting up and maintaining the necessary infrastructure and hardware can be significant, especially for larger deployments.

Ossec features and specs

  • Open Source
    OSSEC is open-source, allowing users to access, modify, and distribute the source code. This flexibility enables customization and adaptability to fit various security needs.
  • Multi-Platform Support
    It supports multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, and others, providing versatile security monitoring across different environments.
  • Active Community
    OSSEC has a strong, active community that contributes to continuous improvement, providing plugins, guides, and forums for support.
  • Comprehensive Security Features
    Offers features such as rootkit detection, real-time alerting, and compliance auditing, providing a robust security suite for intrusion detection.
  • Scalability
    Capable of handling large-scale deployments, making it suitable for both small and enterprise-level networks.

Possible disadvantages of Ossec

  • Complex Setup
    Initial setup and configuration of OSSEC can be complex, requiring a certain level of expertise and time to tailor effectively.
  • Limited GUI
    OSSEC lacks a native graphical user interface, which may pose challenges for users who prefer visual tools over command-line interfaces.
  • Performance Overhead
    High resource consumption can occur in large deployments, which may affect performance if the infrastructure is not adequately scaled.
  • Dependency on Security Knowledge
    Effective use of OSSEC requires a good understanding of security principles, meaning it's less accessible for beginners or IT staff without security expertise.
  • Alert Overwhelm
    Can generate a high volume of alerts, leading to potential alert fatigue or difficulty in distinguishing between critical and non-critical notifications.

Zabbix videos

An overview of Zabbix 4.0 and how we are using it.

More videos:

  • Review - Zabbix Monitoring Solution - Overview
  • Review - ZABBIX Network Discovery For Dynamic Deployments

Ossec videos

Intrusion Detection System OSSEC | One Stop Cyber Security

More videos:

  • Review - OSSEC - Installation and configuration Step-By-Step

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Zabbix and Ossec)
Monitoring Tools
96 96%
4% 4
Log Management
100 100%
0% 0
Security & Privacy
0 0%
100% 100
Performance Monitoring
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Zabbix and Ossec

Zabbix Reviews

  1. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    Indispensable

    Zabbix has been part of my toolbox for quite some time. I can easily say it's an indispensable tool for me now.

    Managing a dozen servers without Zabbix would be unimaginable. I'm monitoring all of this: CPU, Memory, Hard-drives, website response times, downtime. The UI might be a bit "old school", but everything works flawlessly.

    With regards to hard-drive monitoring, I love the machine learning option that allows you to "predict" the number of days before running out of space. That's quite helpful, as I've got some of my servers down due to running out of space multiple times in the past (before I was using Zabbix).

    👍 Pros:    Open-source|It can monitor everything
    👎 Cons:    The ui is a bit unintuitive in some cases

Self Hosting Like Its 2025
If you’re looking for straightforward monitoring and the thought of setting up a full Zabbix or Grafana stack seems daunting, this software is a real lifesaver. With just one deployment, you can monitor your services and receive notifications through a wide variety of channels including…
Source: kiranet.org
11 Best Nagios Alternatives (Free & Open Source) in 2024
Unlimited scaling: Zabbix is a flexible software that lets you monitor anything you want. It is highly scalable as it helps you manage both multi-tenant enterprise environments and your home.
Source: www.guru99.com
The Best Nagios Alternatives for Server, Application and Network Monitoring
Zabbix is a very strong competitor to Nagios and its development is very encouraging. Zabbix is completely free to use, which makes it a competitor to Nagios Core. Zabbix beats Nagios in the free monitoring market because it has a good frontend, which Nagios Core lacks and it also provides NetFlow monitoring, which isn’t present in Nagios Core – that is a separate paid...
The 10 Best Nagios Alternatives in 2024 (Paid and Open-source)
Zabbix, a widely adopted open-source monitoring tool, offers a range of practical features. It allows you to monitor various aspects of your system, including transactions, application performance, and real browser monitoring. With ready-to-use templates for different servers and operating systems, Zabbix simplifies the monitoring process.
Source: betterstack.com
Top 11 Grafana Alternatives & Competitors [2024]
Zabbix offers a unified view of the entire IT infrastructure through its user-friendly web-based interface. It delivers potent visualization capabilities through customizable dashboards, complemented by robust alerting mechanisms and comprehensive support for alert escalations.
Source: signoz.io

Ossec Reviews

7 Best Free Open Source SIEM Tools
The OSSEC project is currently maintained by Atomicorp who stewards the free and open-source version and also offers an enhanced commercial version. However, the main pain point of this tool is that it lacks some of the core log management and analysis components of a typical SIEM. This limitation motivated other HIDS solutions like Wazuh to fork OSSEC in order to extend and...
8 Best Open Source SIEM Tools
Wazuh is an open-source SIEM system born from the OSSEC project that you can use for threat detection, prevention, and response. You can also use Wazuh to comply with industry standards and regulations such as PCI DSS, GPG 13, and GDPR. Wazuh ships with an integration with Kibana that makes for an excellent UI for data visualization and analytics. It also ships with an agent...
Source: www.logiq.ai
The Top 14 Free and Open Source SIEM Tools For 2022
Prelude is a universal SIEM system and it collects, normalizes, sorts, aggregates, correlates and reports all security-related events independent of the product brand or licence giving rise to such events. Third-party agents to this tool include Auditd, OSSEC, Suricata, Kismet and ClamAV.
Source: logit.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Zabbix should be more popular than Ossec. It has been mentiond 5 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Zabbix mentions (5)

  • Learning Resources
    Official Zabbix trainings, documentation on zabbix.com ? Source: over 2 years ago
  • zabbix installation
    Hallo, do you know a howto to install zabbix on an ubuntu 20.04 ? I tried the manuals from zabbix.com for MySQL Apache but it didn't work. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • How I am getting experience as a linux admistrator (Follow Up)
    He suggested that I indeed should set up a home-lab. To be specific he said that I should create a minimal install of Centos 8 and install zabbix server on it (https://zabbix.com) and monitor a whole bunch of other VMs, services and stuff.. He said that I should set up a variety of VMs and also maybe host a website on one of them. And then if I was able to do that, I could help to share a load of zabbix related... Source: about 3 years ago
  • Ubuntu Impish 21.10 / Zabbix 6.0 LTS
    This is a fresh 21.10 install, using the install repo as detailed on the zabbix.com download page. Source: about 3 years ago
  • One dev conference speaker's family member died, need your help to fill the speaking slot on Nov 27/28
    Well, if you can't find anyone, I am more than happy to fill the slot with something regarding Zabbix - just let me know ;). Source: over 3 years ago

Ossec mentions (1)

  • Securing a Linux server. What else to do?
    I'd take it one step further and install OSSEC as well. It can be configured to run as a local daemon and report suspicious activity, and also intervene. So if somebody is brute-forcing the login on your web page, it'll create a burst of 401s which OSSEC will detect in the logs and block the offender for X minutes/hours. Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Zabbix and Ossec, you can also consider the following products

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.

snort - Snort is a free and open source network intrusion prevention system.

Nagios - Complete monitoring and alerting for servers, switches, applications, and services

McAfee Network Security Platform - McAfee Network Security Platform guards all your network-connected devices from zero-day and other attacks, with a cost-effective network intrusion prevention system.

Dynatrace - Cloud-based quality testing, performance monitoring and analytics for mobile apps and websites. Get started with Keynote today!

Wazuh - Open Source Host and Endpoint Security