Amazon CloudWatch vs Pandora FMS comparison

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2,639 views|2,119 comparisons
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195 views|139 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Aug 14, 2023

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.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon CloudWatch vs. Pandora FMS Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is reliability.""The solution is easy to use.""We can set CPU thresholds using the solution.""The detection is the most valuable feature.""The alarms are one thing I love about AWS CloudWatch. It has alerts that notify us when resource use is approaching the limit.""The solution effectively monitors golden signals like CPU, page requests, and queues.""Most of it's around optimizing utilization, their cloud utilization. They're making sure that they're getting the most out of their in-cloud environments and their instances. Making sure that there's no strange behavior in the environment.""The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is its ease of use and logs. You do not have to go to each separate system to see the logs, such as Syslog and they are located in one dashboard GUI."

More Amazon CloudWatch Pros →

"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.""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 monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable.""The solution has good dashboards and graphics.""The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage.""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.""We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool.""The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."

More Pandora FMS Pros →

Cons
"The product should provide more features.""There could be further enhancements through CloudWatch's partnerships.""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.""Incorporating a straightforward method or a plug-and-play solution for integrating these databases with our systems, facilitating smooth data transfer, and enabling the creation of dashboards for monitoring and analysis would be beneficial.""I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing.""I think something that can be improved are the alerts and alerting mechanism based on no rejects. We want to have it more flexible and that is one of the key things that is required.""Better reporting is always something needed. That could be an answer to just about anything. But you always want better reporting, better dashboards, things that are just more dynamic and more accessible.""There is room for improvement in terms of stability."

More Amazon CloudWatch Cons →

"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions.""The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems.""Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products.""Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios.""I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring.""Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery.""An update to the Android app would be appreciated.""We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."

More Pandora FMS Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."
  • "Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
  • "What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us."
  • "The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
  • "Amazon CloudWatch has very cheap pricing, and it hardly costs my company $25-$30 a month for fifty systems, so it's pretty affordable."
  • "The solution is expensive."
  • "The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."
  • "The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."
  • More Amazon CloudWatch Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
  • "Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
  • "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."
  • "In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
  • "The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
  • "Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
  • "The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
  • More Pandora FMS Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The monitoring features are valuable.
    Top Answer:CloudWatch doesn’t monitor disk throughput by default. It is part of EC2. If EC2 forwards the logs, then we can do it.
    Top Answer:Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data.
    Top Answer:Pandora is reasonably priced, and the cost depends on the environment.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
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    Average Words per Review
    440
    Rating
    8.2
    22nd
    out of 94 in Log Management
    Views
    195
    Comparisons
    139
    Reviews
    7
    Average Words per Review
    396
    Rating
    8.7
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

    Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows users to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, and set alarms. With CloudWatch, users can gain insights into their applications, infrastructure, and services, enabling them to make informed decisions and take necessary actions. 

    It provides a unified view of AWS resources and applications, making it easier to troubleshoot issues and optimize performance. CloudWatch offers a range of features including customizable dashboards, automated actions, and integration with other AWS services. 

    The product is a scalable and reliable solution that helps businesses ensure the availability and performance of their applications and infrastructure.

    Pandora FMS is a monitoring as a service (MaaS) solution that is ideal for companies with at least 100 or more devices. Instead of multiple, difficult-to-integrate monitoring systems, Pandora FMS is an all-in-one solution that is easy to use. The software is able to untangle complicated technology infrastructures to easily identify the root cause of issues in order to find the most efficient solution. It does so by analyzing everything in your system, from databases and applications to services and desktops, as well as communications.

    Pandora FMS Features

    Pandora FMS has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Application Monitoring (APM)
    • IoT monitoring
    • Log collection
    • Inventory
    • Issue management / ITSM
    • Mainframe monitoring
    • Network monitoring
    • Remote control
    • Synthetic monitoring
    • Service oriented monitoring
    • Server monitoring
    • User experience monitoring
    • Virtualization & cloud

    Pandora FMS Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Pandora FMS. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Comprehensive overview: Pandora FMS provides a comprehensive overview of your system to make troubleshooting easy. It also provides all the tools to monitor and analyze an extensive range of data, from traffic to connectivity.
    • Easy forecasting: With Pandora FMS, you can use your network diagram for forecasting solutions, which gives you the necessary info you need to perform maintenance. 
    • Proactive solutions: Issues are proactively addressed. Pandora FMS provides alerts 24/7 so you can deal with problems before they grow even bigger. This also helps your organization eliminate any down time. 
    • Solve future problems: Another benefit of implementing Pandora FMS is that it enables you to optimize your services to ensure that future issues are minimized. In addition, they offer around-the-clock monitoring and automated solutions. As a result, the solution enables you to operate your organization with maximum efficiency all the time, saving you money and time. 
    • Personalized service maps: Pandora FMS allows you to create detailed, personalized service maps that can help you identify any shortcomings in your system and address them as soon as possible. 
    • SLA and availability reports: With Pandora FMS, you receive critical alerts when SLA levels aren’t met, which also helps you understand when your applications and systems are not meeting your business goals.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Pandora FMS solution.

    PeerSpot user Marc C., Systems Analyst at a university, says, "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. It is really flexible. It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."

    Another reviewer, Alexandre J., comments, “What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it. The speed of locating problems and to be able to solve them quickly, so that it affects our client's network infrastructure as little as possible, is very valuable.

    Thanks to Pandora FMS we have everything unified in the same point and it is highly efficient.”

    Sample Customers
    AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
    Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm31%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Healthcare Company15%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Educational Organization9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business35%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise64%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business61%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise17%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise50%
    Buyer's Guide
    Amazon CloudWatch vs. Pandora FMS
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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), SolarWinds NPM and Nagios XI, whereas Pandora FMS is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Wazuh, SolarWinds NPM and ServiceNow Discovery. 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.