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Nagios Core 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

Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
12th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
42nd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
42nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (17th), Log Management (37th), Cloud Monitoring Software (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.9%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Nishith-Vyas - PeerSpot reviewer
Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements
The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.
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 most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
"Nagios Core integrates with tools like Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace. It is usually used as a feed to provide more technical information about devices or hosts to another system."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."
"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."
"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."
"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"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 official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
 

Cons

"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."
"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"It is a bit slow due to latency."
"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."
"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"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."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"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."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's free."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"We are using the free version."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"Most the plugin features are free."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"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."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"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."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Media Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nagios Core?
What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?
Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.
What needs improvement with Nagios Core?
The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Core vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.