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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 (39th)
SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
25th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (5th)
 

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 SCOM is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM1.4%
Pandora FMS0.7%
Other97.9%
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

"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."
"Pandora FMS is a powerful monitoring system that has enabled us to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes."
"Pandora FMS (the Flexible Monitoring System) is an all-in-one package solution, and we can monitor our whole system with Service perspective."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
"We are consultants and thanks to Pandora can detect a lot of disasters that other companies can't, and we can offer high availability of the system to the client."
"Each of these points I think represents the keys as to why this software works in my jewelry stores, as it gives me greater control over all of the devices, the best performance, and I can interpret the data easily and much faster, with excellent results."
"SCOM will allow you to go from firefighting mode to a more proactive stance when finding issues."
"We've had outages at two am and three am that was automatically resolved by SCOM saving us time and money."
"Anything that can be accessed via SNMP commands, SCOM can retrieve via SNMP Gets."
"This product is really easy to use and has best monitoring capabilities when used to monitor Microsoft products."
"In every case so far we managed to move from a slow reactive type of non-monitoring toward a proactive monitoring for different layers within the organization and real insights into their IT environment from different angles."
"The stability has been great."
"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"If you are a large Microsoft shop then this product excels in monitoring Microsoft services."
 

Cons

"Pandora could deliver better analytics out of the box."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"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."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems and we have issues with monitoring."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"This product is not easy to use."
"Reporting could be improved, you get many reports out-of-box but they can be difficult to interpret and drill down into."
"There were some deployment and configuration problems with the gateway server and overall this feature works a bit sloppy with other monitoring."
"Non Windows monitoring is fairly weak. Network device monitoring is not reliable."
"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."
"Very expensive now that you are forced to buy entire System Center suite, although comparable to other monitoring solutions that include basic APM."
"This product has room for improvement in the way that it is administered."
"In some ways, SCOM is a double-edged sword."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"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."
"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."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"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."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"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."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
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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
14%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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: August 2026.
910,437 professionals have used our research since 2012.