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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
68th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (26th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (58th), Log Management (60th), Cloud Monitoring Software (41st)
SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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

"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"Network monitoring is fun again with Pandora FMS."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"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."
"This tool has been of great help because we can manage faster solutions with the problems in our network and it helped us reduce our response time."
"We've had outages at two am and three am that was automatically resolved by SCOM saving us time and money."
"If you are a large Microsoft shop then this product excels in monitoring Microsoft services."
"This solution allows us to standardize all of the reports for monitoring the network, so it helps a lot for auditing purposes."
"The product’s auto-remediation feature helps with automation."
"Let me first say that I would be delighted if Citrix would extend the Edgesight functionality in their product so that it really monitors all of the Citrix components."
"We have found the scalability capabilities to be okay."
"Setting up SCOM is straightforward and takes about an hour as long as you have all your firewalls and DNS settings in place."
"This is a product that does more generally than any of the competing solutions."
 

Cons

"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"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."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems and we have issues with monitoring."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"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."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"Reporting could be improved, you get many reports out-of-box but they can be difficult to interpret and drill down into."
"The dashboard is still not so great and, most of the time, a third-party tool is required for presentation."
"SCOM is not a flexible product. The initial setup should be easier to complete."
"Overall, support is not great but it's not bad."
"The configurations could be better. There are multiple tests where you can do something, but they can be a trigger as well. The overriding methodologies are not that easy. The configurations are difficult. The configuration and thorough day-to-day operations to get them to the level you want takes some time. It's very difficult."
"The configuration, especially for alerts, are somewhat lengthy."
"Direct integration with third-party tools, like ticketing systems, is lacking but would be beneficial."
"SCOM server needs periodic maintenance to make sure the disk/database has enough space and a lot of alerts across a big environment might come fairly quickly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"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."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"SCOM is very cheap because it's included in the license for the System Center suite, which is around $8,400 per CAL."
"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."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"I don't know the exact cost because it's managed by our sales team, but Microsoft is on the higher side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Construction Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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.
902,495 professionals have used our research since 2012.