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Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Pandora FMS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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

Microsoft Configuration Man...
Ranking in Server Monitoring
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (3rd), Patch Management (1st)
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Server Monitoring
16th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (42nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (40th), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Server Monitoring category, the mindshare of Microsoft Configuration Manager is 5.7%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 1.1%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

MikeNelson2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements
While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.
Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboards have information about our assets."
"The scalability to deploy the package."
"The main, clear valuable feature is updating the latest, patches and updates from Windows. This is the main feature we really utilize a lot."
"The ease of usability is the most valuable feature. It's user-friendly."
"We are happy with the collaboration of SCCM with Patch My PC, which allows us to do patch work."
"It saves a lot of money when you can install things automatically and they are installed the exact same way on every computer."
"I manage software updates and operating systems for devices, and within seconds, we can remotely deploy a system for, say, 2,000 devices. Not only that, but we can also deploy scripts and create comprehensive compliance rules."
"It works well for the endpoints for the customer I'm consulting. It has a bunch of knobs, and you can tune it to do lots of things."
"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."
"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"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 features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."
"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
 

Cons

"The configuration of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager could be improved, it is a bit complicated."
"Troubleshooting in general needs improvement. There's just a ton of logs to go through, and so finding the error log that corresponds with that you're doing can sometimes be difficult."
"There's no way to say, "I want this maintenance window to be on the second Tuesday of the month." It's strict. This window is this and that's it. You can't fluctuate."
"On some hardware, we'd like an easier way to get peripherals attached."
"There should probably be better remote support. They should also continue to improve on patch management, patching, and creating or turning products in software into deployable apps."
"The solution could improve the functionality for automating, license management. Additionally, more and better-looking reports are needed."
"The reports are too busy. They could be simpler. I'm a technician, so I don't care how pretty the reports look. They should be easy to read. I'm designing this for production folks. They need to read the reports quickly when they're patching in the middle of the night."
"There is a reboot issue with the patching. Sometimes, if patching runs into any issue whatsoever, it doesn't reboot but it doesn't tell you it errored out. It just sits there and we don't find out until the next day whether it patched or not. That was a big issue for us. We're working through that. They added some stuff in there now where you can actually tell reboot is pending. But we still need some kind of notification that if something fails or is pending, we know. We shouldn't have to go in and look. They don't have anything for that right now."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"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."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the price of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager an eight out of ten."
"There is not a license needed to use the solution."
"The price could be better."
"The licensing is good because they have various options, depending on what you are looking for."
"For enterprises, there is an annual license required to use this solution. The price of the solution could be cheaper. However, this is mostly because of the exchange rate from the dollar to the Nigerian currency."
"The solution is expensive. Microsoft Configuration Manager would likely be considered high-priced for small businesses because they may not fully utilize all of its features and capabilities."
"Presently, I am using a free trial version."
"The price of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is expensive."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"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."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Media Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?
ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. What I like most about ManageEngine is that I can log on to every PC very easily a...
What do you like most about SCCM?
One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages efficiently and deploy them to specific groups within our network. This streamlined ...
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Also Known As

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Configuration Manager vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.