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Pandora FMS vs Pulseway vs Zabbix comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pulseway is 0.2%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 11.4%, up from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Zabbix11.4%
Pulseway0.2%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other87.8%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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…
Naman Bali - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent monitoring features and great workflow
The solution has great workflow and server modules. From there, you can monitor your active directory, exchange server, Windows roles, and even Linux-based solutions. They provide a lot of features; it's good and easy software. I like the network feature which allows the addition of router switches and the ability to update variables. I'm able to build some SNMP OIDs to check on the monitoring status of network devices. At the time of patch management, you can also update your software for third-party softwares. You can select the application as well as customize your own application and install them on the PulseWay dashboard. Compared to other solutions, Pulseway is straightforward and easy to set up.
B Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless global client monitoring with reliable remote connectivity
I use the solution to provide a perfect environment for remote connectivity with my clients. Many tools that I require for system maintenance are included. I can easily monitor all of my clients throughout the world I did not give much thought to it, however, improvements could be made to Zabbix.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."
"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."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"It allows me to quickly see the status of all of my printers, switches, computers, and virtual machines to determine if any system has fallen."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"The solution has great workflow and server modules."
"It gives you remote control and has a mobile app."
"The setup is simple."
"We like the patching of the window updates in the client's systems. You can automatically do updates with a single click."
"It has been very helpful to get notifications about various issues with my servers and network to help me take action to resolve problems before they become major issues."
"The calculations part is the most valuable."
"Zabbix is scalable."
"The flexibility of this solution is amazing."
"Zabbix has high scalability. I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"I use the solution to provide a perfect environment for remote connectivity with my clients."
"The flexible licensing model is one of the solution's most valuable aspects. It really allows for great flexibility for companies."
"Setup was straightforward. Initial deployment took two or three months."
"Health and communication links availability."
 

Cons

"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"The solution does not allow you to make a script for just one customer."
"It would be nice if it also had a desktop application, similar to the phone app, which would allow me to monitor and control computers from my desktop."
"There are some bugs or glitches."
"GUI needs to be improved and the solution lacks a process for monitoring VOIP calls."
"They have good technical support but it's not excellent."
"There are not too much documentation or manuals. We found the tutorials very easy to understand but do not go deep enough in the use of Zabbix. We need more manuals, proper use, documentation, etc."
"I think the reporting part of Zabbix can be improved in terms of more user-friendly graphics to display the collected data. Many simple users who don't know how to use Zabbix properly might get confused by the reporting, although at the same time it is very versatile for my company."
"There are a lot of areas for improvement, specifically in the dashboards and reports functionalities."
"I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE."
"Look and feel."
"The integration of the product is not so easy, especially when it comes to the application database."
"The solution needs to add remote features."
"There is a bit of a learning curve during installation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"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."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
Information not available
"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"It is freeware. We still use the free version of Zabbix."
"There is a license required for this solution and we pay annually for our license."
"It is worth every cent to pay or even study to do your own installation."
"This is an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"Zabbix and Grafana are both open source products, we only needed to go to their website and download the application and we began to use them. The solutions are free."
"The tool's licensing is good."
"We pay the subscription for support by year."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Media Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Zabbix?
The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
The reporting is lacking because this is an open-source tool, and nowadays, management's expectation is that the repo...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Dell, Canon, Siemens, Harvard University, Northwestern University
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: September 2025.
869,513 professionals have used our research since 2012.