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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
76th
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 (61st), Cloud Monitoring Software (44th)
SCOM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 1.6%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM1.6%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other97.8%
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

"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"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."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"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 solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console."
"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."
"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."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications."
"They have great integration with the active directory."
"This solution saves us a lot of work because it reduces the effort that is required in order to start monitoring."
"It works better than other products I’ve used – namely SolarWinds, which is cumbersome and error prone for web app monitoring. SCOM is not."
"The most valuable features for us are the monitoring, the health explorer, and the console."
"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'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 monitoring features are the most valuable. We have seen a major benefit from that so far."
 

Cons

"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"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."
"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."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"I think some improvements to the Android app would be good."
"In terms of features that could be improved, I would say the agent integration into the operating system. We are having difficulties integrating Linux into some of the networking devices."
"The end-user components, including the dashboards, the administration console, and the web console, need to be improved."
"The management of the servers could be better."
"In future releases, I would like to see APM solutions and dashboards like Grafana."
"I would like to see more standard libraries for the market solutions, out of the box, that you don't need to do a lot of work on."
"We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting."
"Non Windows monitoring is fairly weak. Network device monitoring is not reliable."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
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
Earn 20 points
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: March 2026.
883,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.