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Pandora FMS vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Pandora FMS
Ranking in Server Monitoring
17th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (47th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (38th), Log Management (42nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (30th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (24th), Active Directory Management (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 1.7%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 4.9%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 9, 2023
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…
Subhajit Nag - PeerSpot reviewer
May 19, 2022
The component and cable monitoring features are good, but the interface is slow
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"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."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"The solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"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."
"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."
"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."
"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."
 

Cons

"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."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"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 helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."
"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"The product needs to reduce its price."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"The price is too high."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Educational Organization
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
44%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pandora FMS?
Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data.
What needs improvement with Pandora FMS?
I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control. In the next release, I'd like to see, when it comes to monitoring, the ...
What is your primary use case for Pandora FMS?
My primary use case for Pandora is monitoring.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,763 professionals have used our research since 2012.