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NetWitness Platform 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

NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
35th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (31st)
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Log Management
34th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (46th), Server Monitoring (18th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (44th), Cloud Monitoring Software (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as 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 most valuable feature is the security that it provides."
"The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult."
"Offers a good wireless feature."
"It's quite economical compared to other solutions in the market."
"What we are mainly using are the RSA concentrator, RSA Decoder, Archiver, Broker, and Log Decoder."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to write rules and triggers for network communication, and then being able to investigate based on that."
"Performance and reporting are very good."
"Incident management is its most valuable feature."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
"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. It's also scalable enough to support large environments."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
 

Cons

"The documentation is not as structured as I would like, personally, and I think that it can be improved and made much more user-friendly."
"The system looks like it is a mix of a bunch of different systems, and nothing looked like it was quite together."
"The initial setup is complex. There are other solutions that are easier to implement."
"There are instances where you try to run the reports and then it does not give you the desired outcome."
"The initial setup was complex because it takes a lot of time to complete the implementation."
"More customizability is required, which is something that they need to improve on."
"Security needs improvement."
"The product's licensing models are complex to understand. This particular area needs improvement."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"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."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
"The product is expensive."
"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."
"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
"There is a licensing fee and the customer can choose whether he wishes this to be subscription-based or perpetual."
"The product price was reasonable for my region and the market."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"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."
"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."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
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Comparison Review

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Feb 26, 2015
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We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Media Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
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Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about NetWitness Platform vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.