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Pandora FMS vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Pandora FMS
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
66th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (27th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (58th), Log Management (61st), Cloud Monitoring Software (39th)
Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
72nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pandora FMS0.7%
Plixer Scrutinizer0.5%
Other98.8%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Ira Mulyanti - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Director at ARGA SOLUSI
An affordable product with great integration capabilities
Plixer Core Platform is a valuable feature and a good software. Plixer Scrutinizer uses NetFlow analysis to monitor whatever is there in a network. Price-wise, Plixer Scrutinizer is not an expensive product. Basically, Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that can integrate with any other brand or product in the market, so it is not an area of concern.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"Stability is where they shine. It has been super stable. We have high-end monitoring for our data centers. We monitor all kinds of metrics in our two data centers. We monitor maybe over 2,500 checks, and the product that has been successful and always alerting us is Pandora."
"Pandora FMS (the Flexible Monitoring System) is an all-in-one package solution, and we can monitor our whole system with Service perspective."
"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."
"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."
"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."
"I really feel, after reviewing three at one time and knowing some other ones, the bang and performance for the dollars, and the capacity and the flexibility; it's really second to none in those situations."
"The ability to view the status of the top-10 at a glance is helpful. We immediately know which link is over-utilized or heavily used... and it's all in real-time."
"There are other tools out there that will do what Scrutinizer does. But what I have found with Scrutinizer is that it does it very quickly. I've taken 25 million individual data fragments from the different sensors, and it has graphed that and mapped it and presented a picture within 30 seconds. It has a very efficient database algorithm that I am really impressed with."
"Compared to other solutions, the functionality Scrutinizer delivers is better."
"One of the most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer is the reporting, particularly how easy it is to drill down into the reports. Another valuable feature of the solution is its overall visibility. It's great. I also liked Plixer Scrutinizer in terms of deployment time and that it's very simple to set up. Once you get the appliance set up and connected, the customer starts to see results immediately, versus other solutions where that could take a while."
 

Cons

"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"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."
"It would be useful if Pandora FMS included an ISO image (or «software appliance») for each big company that leases virtual private machines (VPS), just like in AWS."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day."
"It would be useful if there was a way to back up the configuration information. E.g., if you wanted to deploy a new instance or disaster recovery, you could quite easily deploy and restore the config, as opposed to having to restore all the NetFlow data. If there was just a button that said "backup config information", that would be good."
"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."
"There is room for improvement around the data that they have on the website about solutions."
"Though Plixer Scrutinizer has network detection and response, it's an area that needs just a little more rounding out. Another room for improvement in the solution is its lack of SaaS offering which some customers were looking for. My company deals in small to medium businesses, mid-market, and some customers wanted the SaaS feature which Plixer Scrutinizer doesn't offer. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for it to have a SaaS offering because my company also deals with educational spaces and smaller businesses that just don't have the staff that can implement this. If there's either a managed service or SaaS-based offering to just make it a little easier for those types of customers, it would be a great addition to Plixer Scrutinizer."
"I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples."
"Though Plixer Scrutinizer has network detection and response, it's an area that needs just a little more rounding out."
"We were trying to set up some configuration, but it just wasn't quite working properly; we couldn't get it set up properly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra."
"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."
"There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus."
"It's about €10,000 a year for initial license and yearly maintenance costs. In addition, the hardware costs are about €10,000 once every five years."
"We recently bought a license upgrade, so we will integrate more exporters. We upgraded from a 25 exporter license to a 50 exporter license. Therefore, there will be more flows, and this will be an extension. I don't know when we will purchase a faster server, because the server that we have is quite new."
"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."
"I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive."
"We pay our one-off cost for the licenses, per device, in blocks of 50. And then we pay an annual maintenance fee of about $15,000 Australian, which is, at this point in time, about $9,000 US, for those 250 devices. The upfront costs for the 250-license use, were about $50,000 Australian, which is about $32,000 US."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Oxford Networks, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, UltiSat, Wipro, West Aurora School District 129, SUNY Geneseo College, Bloomington Public Schools, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Kitsap Credit Union, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Houston Texas, Carilion Clinic, Banner Health, IDEXX Laboratories, Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Goodwill Industries, Parmalat, Armstrong Coal Company, Flybe, James Walker
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,948 professionals have used our research since 2012.