We compared Zabbix and Pandora FMS across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Zabbix is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, scalability, and reliable performance. It provides customizable dashboards, trigger dependencies, SNMP monitoring, and problem tracking. Pandora FMS is highly regarded for its straightforward management process, effective dashboards, and efficient network monitoring capabilities.
Room for Improvement: Zabbix could reduce false positives and improve integration, cloud monitoring, and reporting. 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: Users had mixed opinions about Zabbix customer service. Some found it helpful, while others feel it needs improvement. Customers generally rely on online documentation and community forums for assistance. Pandora FMS support received high praise for their expertise, kindness, and fast response time.
Ease of Deployment: The complexity of Zabbix's initial setup varies, and it may require an experienced group of administrators and engineers. Most users found Pandora FMS’s initial setup to be relatively easy.
Pricing: Zabbix is a free, open-source solution, but users can purchase support services and additional features. Pandora FMS is considered reasonably priced, and the total cost depends on the environment.
ROI: Users say that Zabbix provides a cost-effective solution. Pandora FMS has also demonstrated advantages in terms of return on investment. Users say Pandora FMS has also demonstrated a return on investment.
Comparison Results: Zabbix is a highly customizable open-source solution with a wide range of monitoring capabilities, including the ability to monitor virtual machines and databases. However, Zabbix’s setup can be complex and may require technical expertise. 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
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"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 administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"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."
"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."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"Zabbix helps to save time."
"The level of discovery-based configuration that lets us auto-configure the monitoring for various systems is a valuable feature."
"Setup was straightforward. Initial deployment took two or three months."
"Zabbix is quite stable once it is set up. We haven't had any post-setup issues."
"The initial setup was not complex."
"There is a problems page that shows us every warning or problem that occurs on our VMs globally. The map screen is also really useful because this is something that was missing. I don't know every other tool in the market. So, I don't know if this is a good point of only Zabbix, or other tools are also doing it, but from my point of view, this is the most useful page that I use, along with the problems page that efficiently lists the problem, recovery time, ending hours, starting hours, and so on."
"Zabbix is a cost-effective solution. We're a small organization with a few dozen devices to monitor, and it was available for free. We can see what we need. We haven't done an in-depth analysis on it, but we're currently okay with the product."
"I have found that the reporting feature in Zabbix is most valuable. Additionally, the solution has given us bandwidth options, we are able to see where problems are. For example, we noticed a problem that occurred because of a bad interface going in the wireless VLAN."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"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."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"Their support is good, but it is just online communication. It would be great to be able to just call someone and talk to them instead of always writing. It works well for me because I am a decent communicator in email, but some people might find it difficult to describe in a written fashion and communicate with them that way. There is a learning curve to the interface, but once you get used to it, it is actually very powerful. They have a lot of options, but people struggle with the interface. They've improved it though, and it is getting better. They need to keep improving the learning curve to help buy-in. I'm the guy that manages it, so I'm comfortable with it. They can refine the upgrade agents to be easier. They can also do more refinement in end-user usability because not everyone is strong technically, and people who aren't strong technically might be averse to the product, even though it has come a long way. It has a complete GUI and everything."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"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."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"Implementation is always tailored to the customer and the kind of information we need from the client to carry it out can make them very uncomfortable. Sometimes the clients are not ready to share it."
"I would like for this solution to be more cloud-friendly."
"The APM monitoring has room for improvement, although I hear that the new 5.2 version has some improvements in that area, and I'd like to give that a go. I would like to see a few more templates out there for different styles of monitoring. I use the Grafana interface for reporting. I would also like it to have an out-of-the-box ability to email reports. You can create reports, but to be able to email those reports would be really helpful. I've got users who are not interested in logging in and generating a report. They want it all pre-canned and sent to an email address. It would also be really handy if we could pin certain reports up onto platforms such as Teams or SharePoint. A GUI for the proxy server would be cool to have for debugging purposes and for the support teams to have a look at, but I don't know whether that's really feasible to do. I get enough from the log files themselves."
"Even though it’s such a powerful monitoring system, it would be more helpful if it had a flexible UI."
"The System Center Operations Manager can be improved."
"The user interface could be better."
"The only improvement I would suggest, revolves around its AI and ML capabilities."
"As far as improvements, sometimes I get a bit frustrated when I move from a previous version to a new one because some configuration has changed—I need to investigate the documentation to deal with some configuration. But it doesn't take much time, so it's okay."
Pandora FMS is ranked 28th in Network Monitoring Software with 22 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in Network Monitoring Software with 101 reviews. Pandora FMS is rated 9.2, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Pandora FMS writes "The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Pandora FMS is most compared with Wazuh, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios XI, SolarWinds NPM and Netdata, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios Core and Nagios XI. See our Pandora FMS vs. Zabbix report.
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