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Elastic Security vs Pandora FMS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

Elastic Security
Ranking in Log Management
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (7th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (11th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (12th)
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Log Management
61st
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (66th), Server Monitoring (27th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (58th), Cloud Monitoring Software (39th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.5%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.5%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other95.9%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
MM
Independent Consultant at Maack Consulting
The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance
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. They could improve their management console's ability to monitor large environments could be improved. For example, SNMP management is only partially integrated into the management console.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can handle millions of loads at a time, and you can always use the filters to find exactly what you are looking for and detect errors in every log message you are searching for, basically."
"It's a good platform and the very best in the current market. We looked at the Forester report from December 2022 where it was said to be a leader."
"The indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash."
"We've found the initial setup to be quite straightforward."
"We chose the product based on the ability to scan for malware using a malware behavioral model as opposed to just a traditional hash-based antivirus. Therefore, it's not as intensive."
"All of the features on the solution are useful due to the fact that I have the full Stack, therefore I can collect and then visualize."
"What customers found most valuable in Elastic Security feature-wise is the search capability, in particular, the way of writing the search query and the speed of searching for results."
"It's very stable and reliable."
"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, and it's also scalable enough to support large environments."
"The support from Pandora FMS is legendary."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."
"The support is excellent for this product; their response time is very fast, and they are very knowledgeable."
"This tool has been of great help because we can manage faster solutions with the problems in our network and it helped us reduce our response time."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the Kibana dashboard and in the asset management for the program."
"They don't provide user authentication and authorisation features (Shield) as a part of their open-source version."
"The documentation for this solution is very important, and more needs to be developed."
"An area for improvement in Elastic Security is the pricing. It could be better. Right now, when you increase the volume of logs to be collected, the price also increases a lot."
"I want to find an automatic security system in the tool, like a SOAR solution. I am looking forward to seeing a SOAR system in the tool."
"There should be a simulation environment to check whether my Elastic implementation is functioning perfectly fine. Other solutions have their own Android and iOS applications that I can install on my mobile so that I am continuously connected to the SIEM."
"I would like the process of retrieving archived data and viewing it in Kibana to be simplified."
"Upgrades currently released as stacks when it should be a plugin or an extension to save removal and reinstallation."
"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."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"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 and we have issues with monitoring."
"Pandora could deliver better analytics out of the box."
"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."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free."
"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."
"It is easy to deploy, easy to use, and you get everything you need to become operational with it, and have nothing further to pay unless you want the OLED plugin."
"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
"The solution is not expensive and costs around ten dollars a month."
"The product offers an amazing pricing structure. Price-wise, the product is very competitive."
"There is no charge for using the open-source version."
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"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."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"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."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
What needs improvement with Elastic Security?
I do not have any specific recommendations for improvements in Elastic Security, but I feel that the AI module should get more mature. These machine learning algorithms become better with time; as ...
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Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,948 professionals have used our research since 2012.