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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
78th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (25th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (55th), Log Management (63rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (45th)
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 (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, 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 SCOM is 1.5%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SCOM1.5%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Asociado/ at Infraestructura Informática
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…
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

"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"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."
"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."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the extensibility, as there are really no limits as to what you can do with it."
"The stability has been great."
"This solution allows us to standardize all of the reports for monitoring the network, so it helps a lot for auditing purposes."
"The solution is scalable. If you want to monitor more you have to buy more licenses, but you can add on. We don't plan to increase usage."
"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."
"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"The solution's reporting engine has given me detailed information on which applications or services I've either failed or about to fail in terms of the predictive makeup on Azure cloud."
"The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool."
 

Cons

"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"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 FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"The initial setup should be easier to complete."
"In future releases, I would like to see APM solutions and dashboards like Grafana."
"The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult."
"We didn't know the solution enough, and therefore, it took a while to set everything up correctly. There was a learning curve."
"SCOM's feature that notifies us when a server is down is not present in recent updates, which has weakened the product."
"SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure."
"SCOM is not as straightforward in terms of user interface or general experience, which could be improved."
"They could provide better dashboards, detailed logs, and reports crucial for monitoring services in real-time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"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."
"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."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"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 enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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
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What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
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...
 

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: December 2025.
881,346 professionals have used our research since 2012.