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Pandora FMS vs SCOM 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 (40th)
SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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 SCOM is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM1.5%
Pandora FMS0.7%
Other97.8%
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.
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

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."
"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."
"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"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."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"The support from Pandora FMS is legendary."
"It takes a lot of the headache out of managing your data centers and software in other places."
"The System Center 2012 R2 is really powerful, all products work great together, is not so expensive anymore, easy to license, and can cover from end to end (Networking, Hardware layer, OS, App and services, ports, etc.)."
"SCOM is capable of providing full-featured infrastructure monitoring, alerting and reporting, especially for Windows-centric production environments."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is real-time alerts."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of Windows and Linux servers."
"Ticket Automation has taken a considerable load from the NOC."
"We are able to do problem determination on runaway processes."
"SCOM features object-based monitoring based on classes and discoveries and it gives you a lot of power and flexibility when you design and implement monitoring."
 

Cons

"I think some improvements to the Android app would be good."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"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."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products such as Universal CMDB."
"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."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"Microsoft SCOM is an old fashion beast of a monitoring solution that offers basic monitoring out of the box and for a dime because it comes with licenses they forced on us anyway."
"The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult."
"SCOM needs to improve its usability."
"Third-party tools have had to be created to make SCOM management pack creation more efficient and effective. However, this weighs down the application as it just adds a resource requirement, which is ballooning the size of the necessary storage and all that for essentially substandard components."
"In some ways, SCOM is a double-edged sword."
"Too small of a scope in reports, need to improve a lot."
"The dashboard features are not user-friendly for our management team, only for the technical department."
"Documentation is poor, but the community makes up for it with good blogs and lots of how-to examples."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are 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 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."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"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."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
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 Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
What is your primary use case for SCOM?
My usual use case for SCOM is as an administrator role where I create reports and provide system configuration for Linux and installation of the SCOM agent. I handle deploying and upgrading the age...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
906,852 professionals have used our research since 2012.