BoxWatch vs Cacti
Cacti is a long-standing open-source network graphing solution built on RRDTool. It collects data primarily via SNMP polling, produces detailed time-series graphs, and is self-hosted on your own infrastructure. BoxWatch is a SaaS platform for Linux server monitoring: a lightweight push agent posts metrics every 60 seconds, and alerting, uptime checks, on-call notifications, and status pages are all included without additional plugins or server administration. The two tools share RRD-style trend charts as a concept, but differ sharply in deployment model, data collection approach, and built-in operational features.
Quick verdict
Cacti is the right pick when you need deep SNMP-based network device graphing across switches, routers, and appliances, and your team is comfortable managing a self-hosted PHP stack with plugins for each capability you need. BoxWatch is the better fit when you want server monitoring up in minutes, built-in alerting to Slack or PagerDuty, cron heartbeat checks, public status pages, and SLA reports, all without operating any monitoring infrastructure yourself. If your target hosts are Linux servers (not network gear) and you do not want to maintain Cacti's plugin ecosystem, BoxWatch covers the monitoring workflow end to end.
Pricing
| Plan | Cacti | BoxWatch |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free forever (self-hosted, unlimited hosts) | Hobby: $0/mo, 5 servers |
| Small team | Free (you pay for the server that runs Cacti) | Pro: $13/mo, 25 servers |
| Growing team | Free | Team: $29/mo, 100 servers |
| Large deployment | Free | Scale: $79/mo, unlimited servers |
| Cloud/SaaS option | None | All plans (fully managed) |
| Support | Community forums | Included |
Feature comparison
When Cacti is the better choice
- You need SNMP-based graphing of network devices such as switches, routers, or firewalls, which is Cacti's primary strength and outside BoxWatch's scope entirely.
- Your team already runs self-hosted infrastructure and wants a free, fully on-premises solution with no data leaving your network.
- You need aggregate graphs across thousands of interfaces and the RRDTool data model fits your retention and consolidation requirements.
When BoxWatch is the better choice
- You want monitoring running in under five minutes with a single bash command, no server to provision or maintain.
- You need built-in alerting to Slack, Discord, email, or PagerDuty without configuring and maintaining a separate plugin stack.
- Your workflow requires cron and heartbeat monitoring, HTTP/TCP uptime checks against internal endpoints, or public status pages, none of which Cacti provides natively.
- You want SLA tracking, uptime badges, and scheduled PDF-style reports delivered automatically each week or month.
FAQ
Does Cacti work without installing SNMP on my servers?
For Linux host metrics specifically, Cacti requires either SNMP (such as Net-SNMP) installed on each server or a custom script. There is no lightweight push agent comparable to BoxWatch's one-command bash installer. Setting up SNMP on many Linux servers adds meaningful operational overhead versus BoxWatch's agent model.
Can Cacti send alerts to Slack or PagerDuty?
Native Cacti alerting via the thold plugin supports email, syslog, and SNMP traps. Slack notifications require a third-party script (thold-slack on GitHub) that pipes emails through sendmail to a Python script. PagerDuty and Discord are not natively supported. BoxWatch includes Slack, Discord, email, and webhook/PagerDuty alerts without any extra configuration.
Is Cacti free to use for many servers?
Yes. Cacti is open-source (GPL v2) and free for any number of devices. The cost is your own server to run Cacti on, plus the time to install, configure, and maintain it and its plugins. BoxWatch charges a flat monthly fee but eliminates all infrastructure and maintenance overhead.