We compared Amazon CloudWatch and Pandora FMS based on our users' reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Amazon CloudWatch users liked the solution’s simplicity, intuitive interface, and ability to handle large workloads. Users also praised CloudWatch’s comprehensive monitoring and alerts. Pandora FMS is highly regarded for its straightforward management process, effective dashboards, and efficient network monitoring capabilities.
Room for improvement: Some reviews mentioned that Amazon CloudWatch could improve performance and dashboard visualization. Others noted that the solution lacked compatibility with some databases. Users say Pandora FMS could make its dashboards more customizable and improve its integration with other systems. Many also said they would like Pandora to add APIs for integration and offer better out-of-the-box analytics.
Service and Support: Customers generally have positive opinions about Amazon's customer service. They commended the support team for its availability and timely issue resolution. Pandora FMS support received high praise for their expertise, kindness, and fast response time.
Ease of Deployment: Amazon CloudWatch is generally described as easy to set up. Most users found Pandora FMS’s initial setup to be relatively easy.
Pricing: Amazon CloudWatch offers a flexible pricing structure based on usage and processing, without any separate licensing cost. Some users said that scaling up can be costly due to the need for additional storage space. Pandora FMS is considered reasonably priced, and the total cost depends on the environment.
ROI: Amazon CloudWatch offers a return on investment by minimizing the need for manual monitoring. Pandora FMS has also demonstrated advantages in terms of return on investment.
Comparison Results: Reviewers say that Amazon CloudWatch is a simple, intuitive solution that can handle large workloads, but some mentioned dashboard visualization and customizability as areas for improvement. Users like Pandora FMS’s management and monitoring capabilities as well as its dashboards, but the solution has been criticized for its compatibility issues, limited customization options, and slower performance.
"Every time we get an alarm or have an incident, CloudWatch is always there. We use it not only for resources we've spun up in the cloud, but also for some of our on-premises resources."
"The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily."
"The initial setup is easy."
"We use Amazon CloudWatch for logging."
"It offers direct integrations with various storage providers, making it convenient to push logs from CloudWatch to these external platforms."
"CloudWatch immediately hooks up and connects to the KPIs and all the metrics."
"What my company likes best about Amazon CloudWatch is that it's on AWS. My team also likes it for its log feature. As the solution is on AWS, it also has good pricing and resource availability, plus it's what clients choose. My company also chose AWS for Forge ECS, and at the time, there was a need for the log features provided by Amazon CloudWatch, so it's the solution my team went with."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is intrusion prevention."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."
"Pandora's architecture is interesting. It's open so you can easily extend and enhance it. It's simpler to customize Pandora compared to other solutions. It's also scalable enough to support large environments."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"The monitoring part and GUI are areas in Amazon CloudWatch that have shortcomings currently and can be considered for improvements in the future."
"The graphical interface has room for improvement. CloudWatch only gives you a breakdown of what's wrong. However, it would be nice if it could automatically remedy the problems it identifies. You should be able to configure it so that when a specific condition arises, it will take a predefined action."
"The drill-down aspect on the dashboard of the solution needs improvement. We get a very good high-level overview, but when we drill down, it becomes a little less clear. We have given this feedback to AWS as well and hope they will improve this in the future."
"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."
"There's a learning curve with Amazon CloudWatch since we have to learn to write the queries to extract the keys and logs."
"For monitoring applications or for APM, CloudWatch has some limitations. You cannot monitor application performance from CloudWatch, and you have to go for a third-party tool."
"The dashboard of Amazon CloudWatch is not very customizable right now."
"The product's configuration has some challenges. The solution needs to be more user-friendly."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"It would be useful if Pandora FMS included an ISO image (or «software appliance») for each big company that leases virtual private machines (VPS), just like in AWS."
"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"I think some improvements to the Android app would be good."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
Amazon CloudWatch is ranked 12th in Log Management with 40 reviews while Pandora FMS is ranked 22nd in Log Management with 22 reviews. Amazon CloudWatch is rated 8.0, while Pandora FMS is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Amazon CloudWatch writes "Instantaneous response when monitoring logs and KPIs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pandora FMS writes "The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance". Amazon CloudWatch is most compared with Zabbix, Datadog, Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver), Dynatrace and SolarWinds NPM, whereas Pandora FMS is most compared with Zabbix, Wazuh, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios XI and SolarWinds NPM. See our Amazon CloudWatch vs. Pandora FMS report.
See our list of best Log Management vendors and best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.
We monitor all Log Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
