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Nagios XI vs Pandora FMS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

Nagios XI
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
26th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
14th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
28th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
78th
Ranking in Server Monitoring
25th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
55th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
45th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (63rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 2.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nagios XI2.3%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other97.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Emmanuel Appiah Boateng - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simplifies setup and requires user interface enhancement
Nagios XI is easy to install, which sets it apart from other open-source solutions I've tried. Typically, setting up a monitoring system on Linux involves cloning files from GitHub, building it, and installing many dependencies, but with Nagios XI, it wasn't like that. Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Asociado/ at Infraestructura Informática
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

"The features I've found the most useful are the plug-ins, the fact that you can connect almost everything to it. That's very useful."
"The most useful aspect of this solution is the ability to customize it for the client agent."
"The dashboard allows you to see what's going on in the overall system."
"It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability."
"Though I downplayed the administrative NCC GUI, this is by far the strongest aspect of the Nagios XI product."
"Nagios XI helps us monitor the bandwidth of the internet connection, HTTP, DNS, active directory services, and exchange data availability. We have multiple servers to monitor databases, availability of servers, and ping."
"The Script Module in Nagios is really easy to use and is really cost efficient."
"I can monitor a phone on a desk to very big servers of any company."
"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."
"It allows me to quickly see the status of all of my printers, switches, computers, and virtual machines to determine if any system has fallen."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"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."
"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."
 

Cons

"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"Open-source software is usually not user-friendly."
"There's room for improvement in the visibility, and in the ability to extract information. Stuff like this should be more simple."
"It can be quite difficult to know which drivers and agents to use when setting up."
"The reporting part should be made simpler. While we can obtain all the reports we need, we always have to create work-arounds to get them."
"Nagios XI can improve its GUI for users with a new look."
"We'd like to see more integration capabilities."
"The installation and monitoring need improvement."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"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."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can grow into the higher-priced scale as they learn how to utilize the features for Nagios XI."
"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"For our country in North Africa, it's expensive and we could purchase another solution for that price. But it's a reasonable price if we're speaking in international terms."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $3,000 USD per year."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"For the cost of the commercial product and support, and taking into account the open source characteristics of it, I believe it is difficult to a better value."
"This solution is very expensive, at approximately $5,000 USD when I purchased it, which is why I haven't upgraded my version in several years."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios XI vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,036 professionals have used our research since 2012.