ControlUp vs Pandora FMS comparison

ControlUp and Pandora FMS are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. ControlUp is ranked #31 with an average rating of 8.0, while Pandora FMS is ranked #54. ControlUp holds a 1.1% mindshare in IM, compared to Pandora FMS’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ControlUp users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Pandora FMS users who would recommend it.

ControlUp

Read 12 ControlUp reviews

2,373 Views
1,234 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Pandora FMS

Read 22 Pandora FMS reviews

1,347 Views
674 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ControlUp

Pandora FMS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Pandora FMS and ControlUp compete in the monitoring solutions category. Pandora FMS has the upper hand in network and infrastructure monitoring due to its simplicity and efficiency, while ControlUp leads in end-to-end analysis with real-time insights and automation.

Features: Pandora FMS offers an all-in-one monitoring system for servers, network devices, and platforms, supporting agent and agentless setups. It is valued for diverse integrations and strong community support. ControlUp is noted for detailed real-time analytics, user-centric features, and script-based automation.

Room for Improvement: Pandora FMS could enhance its monitoring features, cloud deployment support, and integration scalability. ControlUp users express a desire for better integration, improved network monitoring, and enhanced support for custom workflows and analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pandora FMS offers hybrid cloud and on-premises flexibility with responsive technical support though its initial setup requires expertise. ControlUp provides straightforward deployment and proactive support, yet some find integration challenging.

Pricing and ROI: Pandora FMS is praised for competitive pricing with flexible open-source and enterprise options. ControlUp is seen as pricier but valuable with a rich feature set. Both systems report significant ROI with customizable plans.

To learn more, read our detailed ControlUp vs. Pandora FMS Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. Pandora FMS

September 2025

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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

ControlUp

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

31st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)

Pandora FMS

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

54th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (74th), Server Monitoring (23rd), Log Management (57th), Cloud Monitoring Software (40th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of ControlUp is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ControlUp	1.1%
Pandora FMS	0.7%
Other	98.2%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Richasvi Tripathi

Solutions Developer at HCL Technologies

Used to monitor several devices, but most reports do not give information of all the devices

We have approximately 10 to 20 feature requests pending on the vendor side. Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices. In our case, we are monitoring 200000 devices. So, we need details for all those devices, but that is limited to 100, which they have improved to an extent in some reports. I'm thinking of one feature request for ISPs because the dashboard does not provide a detailed list of ISPs, and it provides the wrong list. I feel some firewall issues are blocking that, and the team cannot send that detail. That may be the case. One feature request pending on the vendor side is the data format change. Once you see a detail in the report, it is mentioned in some other format, which is hard to analyze sometimes.

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Gabriel Glusgold

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…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The visual look of the interface is very easy to understand what is happening and somewhat why it's happening."

"It shows you so many details of what's going on in that log-on that, if there's a problem, you can identify it in five minutes."

"ControlUp has some good functionalities, such as remotely pushing scripts in the device through the tool."

"Integration with Netscaler and Scoutbees can provide a proper end-to-end analysis of the user's experience and give us a real ROI."

"The most valuable feature is the granularity of visibility into the resources that are in use by our applications."

"It has a great career time monitoring tool."

"The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities."

"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."

More ControlUp pros

"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."

"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."

"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."

"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."

"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."

"The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."

"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."

"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."

More Pandora FMS pros

Cons

"Solve is a quick and intuitive tool for quickly mapping data together, however, once you have the view of the data that you like, it is difficult to share this with colleagues."

"We'd like to see the mobile app working again so that we can get alerts 24/7. This is especially useful for the person on call."

"Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices."

"There was some lag earlier, and reports pulled from the dashboard would sometimes be half an hour old. But now, the information provides real-time status, which is greatly appreciated. Overall, I've seen improvement in the product."

"It can be improved by including script-based scheduling."

"The graphical user interface needs to be improved from version to version."

"ControlUp could improve the integration. Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring has better integration."

"Integration is always a problem, and we feel that we are doing our best and the service provider thinks they are doing their best. I guess if ControlUp's system could be more capable or if people could understand the integration part, that would be better."

More ControlUp cons

"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."

"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."

"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."

"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."

"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."

"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."

More Pandora FMS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."

"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."

"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."

"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."

"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."

"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."

"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."

"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."

"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."

"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."

More Pandora FMS pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Healthcare Company

11%

Insurance Company

Government

13%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Computer Software Company

Media Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ControlUp Real-time?

Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive. It is a cheap tool because it is deployed to many devices where I work.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ControlUp Real-time?

There is area for improvement, maybe in the reporting. It could use some work in reporting.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?

My use cases include everything, and I don't mean that facetiously. I mean everything. We manage the servers, manage user sessions, manage everything. We monitor monitoring and take actual actions,...

See all answers

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Comparisons

Nexthink vs ControlUp

Compared 25% of the time

Citrix uberAgent Monitoring vs ControlUp

Compared 21% of the time

Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) vs ControlUp

Compared 9% of the time

SysTrack vs ControlUp

Compared 7% of the time

eG Enterprise vs ControlUp

Compared 7% of the time

More ControlUp Competitors

Zabbix vs Pandora FMS

Compared 20% of the time

Wazuh vs Pandora FMS

Compared 15% of the time

LibreNMS vs Pandora FMS

Compared 11% of the time

Checkmk vs Pandora FMS

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Pandora FMS

Compared 7% of the time

More Pandora FMS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp

October 2025

Download ControlUp product report

Buyer's Guide

Pandora FMS

September 2025

Download Pandora FMS product report

Overview

ControlUp is a digital experience monitoring management platform that makes it possible for IT teams to deliver a work-from-anywhere experience for employees. The solution makes fixing and preventing issues easy, enabling IT teams to make smarter decisions. It also provides monitoring performance, availability, and useful productivity metrics.

The ControlUp platform supports:

Any digital workstyle
Physical endpoints
Virtual desktops
Apps
SaaS
Web apps
Unified communications tools

ControlUp Features

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

Out-of-the-box device and performance metrics
Custom metric and device data collection
Non-intrusive, secure agents with offline mode
Custom reporting
Easy-to-use dashboards
Scalable SaaS infrastructure
Built-in troubleshooting & remediation actions
Remote assist
Custom script actions
Multiple scripting languages
Automation and alerting

ControlUp Benefits

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

Wide range of platform options: ControlUp offers multiple platform options including Windows, macOS, Linux, and IGE, independent of device location.

Powerful analytics: With ControlUp, you can analyze across your entire infrastructure or you can collect detailed individual device performance.

Optimizes performance: The solution enables you to remediate issues and optimize performance with its support of both manual and automated actions.

Minimize user downtime: ControlUp helps you catch common issues that lead to workflow interruptions. Self-correcting capabilities and comprehensive early-warning systems address issues before they impact employee productivity.

Resolve issues faster: The solution enables you to spend less time on support calls and more time driving value via its real-time troubleshooting and remediation solutions.

Increased visibility of remote environments: Gain real-time visibility across your entire network and find new ways to deliver the best end-user experience possible.

Reviews from Real Users

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

A Chair, IEEE Consumer Technology Society - Dallas,Texas, USA at a non-profit says, “In terms of the public cloud, ControlUp's features make us feel very secure. Security, uptime, and reduced capital expenditures are the main reasons we use ControlUp. So basically, the money that we consume is based on the amount of time we are using a service. ControlUp offers a return-on-investment type of approach that helps us.”

A VP Virtualisation and Citrix Engineer at BlackRock mentions, “Solve is quickly becoming one of the most-used features. Its interface allows us to connect to all 54,000 monitored endpoints in real-time. The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities. Combined with the triggers, we have been growing their usage to fix things before they become an issue. Lastly, the controller view allows us to compare the configurations of settings side-by-side which is extremely helpful when tracking down the RCA of an issue.”

A Senior Citrix Remote Access Engineer at Rabobank comments, “The high-level view of the estate coupled with powerful administration tools has been great. We can see real-time performance and trends and can create triggers for common issues with associated scripts that can automate a lot of the previous manual remediation steps.”

ControlUp

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.”

Pandora FMS

Sample Customers

B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes

Buyer's Guide

ControlUp vs. Pandora FMS

September 2025

Free Report: ControlUp vs. Pandora FMS

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