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Elastic Observability vs Pandora FMS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
7th
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), Container Monitoring (4th)
Pandora FMS
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
40th
Ranking in Log Management
41st
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
27th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (42nd), Server Monitoring (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 4.0%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.5%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Personalized metrics; simplicity of data
My primary use case for Pandora is monitoring This solution has helped us improve our organization by allowing us to create a lot of metrics on several platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Unix. We then use these Pandora metrics to create an interface. We then pass the interface off to the…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I found Elk to be excellent for log analytics, security analytics, application code-level analytics, collaboration with DevOps teams, CI/CD, microservices, and Kubernetes, specifically cloud-native or cloud-specific tasks."
"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."
"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Observability is the text search."
"Elastic APM has plenty of features, such as the Elastic server for Kibana and many additional plugins. It's a comprehensive tool when used as a logging platform."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."
"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"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."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
 

Cons

"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."
"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"In the future, Elastic APM needs a portfolio iTool. They can provide an easy way to develop the custom UI for Kibana."
"The cost must be made more transparent."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."
"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."
"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"Pandora could deliver better analytics out of the box. You can work around these limitations with the help of other tools like Grafana. The shortcomings are mostly on the graphical side. The built-in report generators are a bit limited in some areas."
"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."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"In the future, we may have double the number of devices, and we do not want to have any issues with performance in the data display."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"You have to pay for the number of agents and models that you are monitoring. I would rate the cost at three with one being the most expensive and five being the cheapest."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"My rule of thumb would be that if you need more than thirty agents, and you lack an automation tool such as Chef or Puppet, you will save a lot of time and money going to the Enterprise edition."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Government
9%
Media Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.