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Pandora FMS vs SCOM comparison

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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
65th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (26th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (59th), Log Management (59th), Cloud Monitoring Software (38th)
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 (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.7%, up from 0.6% 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

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

"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."
"In comparison with most monitoring software, this software is incredibly easy to use."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"Pandora FMS is an all-in-one solution that is cost-efficient."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"Setting up SCOM is straightforward and takes about an hour as long as you have all your firewalls and DNS settings in place."
"The solution is used for monitoring the hardware inventory. For instance, it helps with the whole operational monitoring view for the company's infrastructure."
"The solution primarily drives system information, and I believe it works fine."
"The license is very cheap compared to other products, and with SCOM license you get a license for all system center products."
"This solution helps our application teams by allowing them to drill further into issues and perform a root cause analysis."
"With Operations Manager, you have extract reporting capabilities and multiple report libraries that you can select from to customize reports to your own granular requirements."
"We can easily scale-up when we have a new global site, and it is just so easy to extend this solution to other sites, which is an advantage."
"The fact that I'm able to see all my devices and the status of them has been extremely useful."
 

Cons

"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"In the future, we may have double the number of devices, and we do not want to have any issues with performance in the data display."
"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."
"The end-user components, including the dashboards, the administration console, and the web console, need to be improved."
"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."
"The configuration, especially for alerts, are somewhat lengthy."
"It lacks certain details that other products do better, like granular access and better application monitoring."
"They could provide better dashboards, detailed logs, and reports crucial for monitoring services in real-time."
"I’d like to see cross-platform support that would make SCOM a single enterprise monitoring application."
"Microsoft needs to train more people about how to sell SCOM (and other System Center family products) because there are a lot of emerging technologies that are replacing Microsoft."
"SCOM is not as straightforward in terms of user interface or general experience, which could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"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."
"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."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
20%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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 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: September 2026.
919,003 professionals have used our research since 2012.