No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Purview Audit 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

Microsoft Purview Audit
Ranking in Log Management
35th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (31st)
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Log Management
60th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (66th), Server Monitoring (26th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (58th), Cloud Monitoring Software (39th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Purview Audit is 1.1%, up from 0.4% 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 (%)
Microsoft Purview Audit1.1%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other98.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

OK
Cloud Solution Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Integrated auditing has strengthened data retention and improved incident investigations
I have seen areas for improvement, specifically in Microsoft Purview Audit or in general about Microsoft. I have had a situation with documentation. I had a customer who wanted to create alerts and they had Microsoft 365 Business Premium. In the documentation, it was noted that this license is enough for creating alerts. When we tried to make them, we noticed they cannot do it with Microsoft 365 E3 because the customer had limited features to manage alerts. The customer had to buy E3. We created Microsoft support requests, and they confirmed that the documentation displayed not the real situation and they have been going to update documentation. The same situation occurred now with implementing Microsoft Purview Audit in the last autumn. eDiscovery was combined with search and content search, and the documentation was not clear at the beginning. It was a little difficult to describe to customers that now it is a part of eDiscovery. Content search is a very simple functionality, while eDiscovery is a little difficult. I am not entirely sure why Microsoft is going in the way of combining these services because they are the same. However, for a customer who has never seen these services, it is difficult to understand quickly. The same situation occurs with litigation holds and some other holds. For any mail, I am trying to keep data. For example, emails are held for a year or two years, ten years, it does not matter. It is difficult to understand where to find this data and where these emails are being held. I need to use eDiscovery to find out all deleted data that was kept somewhere in some hidden folders of the mailbox. Regular customers and regular administrators know that on-premises Exchange, for example, allows them to find the data in some repository and review the list of kept data. However, with this hold, we do not have any functionality to review the list of kept data. It is difficult to understand for customers how to work with this. I had a case where I spent three or four hours working deeply with a customer to explain how to work with eDiscovery, why Content Search is not there when it was before, what is an eDiscovery case, and why we are talking about all of this just to review a list of kept emails. This is difficult.
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

"The main Microsoft feature is that it offers common integration of services, of data, of identity, meaning user accounts, user access, and privileged access."
"The platform has significantly enhanced our operational insight into the overall Microsoft 365 environment."
"We're easily saving at least one hour per day using this solution."
"The overall user experience with Microsoft Purview Audit is of higher quality than when it was branded as Compliance Center, and Microsoft consistently updates and evolves functionalities and the overall experience."
"Network monitoring is fun again with Pandora FMS."
"In comparison with most monitoring software, this software is incredibly easy to use."
"Thanks to Pandora FMS, we've been able to adapt to every new monitoring challenge over the past seven years."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"Pandora FMS (the Flexible Monitoring System) is an all-in-one package solution, and we can monitor our whole system with Service perspective."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"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."
 

Cons

"We are still in the early stages of leveraging Microsoft Purview Audit. Currently, it's primarily used for the audit function."
"I had a case where I spent three or four hours working deeply with a customer to explain how to work with eDiscovery, why Content Search is not there when it was before, what is an eDiscovery case, and why we are talking about all of this just to review a list of kept emails."
"Areas for product improvement include enhancing customization options and integrating more comprehensive compliance features."
"We do have a Denial of Access happening."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems and we have issues with monitoring."
"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."
"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 would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"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."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"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."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Construction Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Audit?
It is not so expensive in comparison with other products, but I can tell you about an example.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Audit?
I have seen areas for improvement, specifically in Microsoft Purview Audit or in general about Microsoft. I have had a situation with documentation. I had a customer who wanted to create alerts and...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Audit?
I work with Defender for IoT by chance because I see that we have enough reviews for Defender for Office 365 today, and we need reviews for some Azure products. I work with Azure products such as L...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Purview Audit vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.