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Pandora FMS vs SolarWinds AppOptics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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 IT Infrastructure Monitoring
58th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
39th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (66th), Server Monitoring (27th), Log Management (61st)
SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
62nd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
44th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (56th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pandora FMS0.9%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.8%
Other98.3%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

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.
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

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."
"Stability is where they shine. It has been super stable. We have high-end monitoring for our data centers. We monitor all kinds of metrics in our two data centers. We monitor maybe over 2,500 checks, and the product that has been successful and always alerting us is Pandora."
"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."
"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."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"The support is excellent for this product; their response time is very fast, and they are very knowledgeable."
"Customer service is exceptional, as they are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction."
"SolarWinds AppOptics does far more than what an individual may realize; it is not just a SIEM tool."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"It's a solid application."
"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."
"AppNeta provides a range of products, all based around intelligent network testing algorithms."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
 

Cons

"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products such as Universal CMDB."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"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."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"We had a stability issue with a portion of the installation (Sequencer) when it was first introduced and have chosen not to install that specific function."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"Because of its inability to monitor mobile solutions, I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten."
"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
17%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Also Known As

No data available
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. SolarWinds AppOptics and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.