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Pandora FMS vs SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Cloud Monitoring Software
28th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (42nd), Server Monitoring (17th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (42nd), Log Management (37th)
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Obs...
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
34th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
A unified platform designed to monitor the entire infrastructure
The tool's escalation process needs improvement. More support is needed for the new generation of solutions, particularly SD-WAN support and newer storage components. Additionally, as more vendors move towards API-based monitoring, we anticipate SolarWinds HCO will increase integrations with other solutions. Another area for improvement is reporting. With infrastructure becoming increasingly diverse, the static infrastructures of the past are evolving into dynamic setups. Traditionally, we had wireless in the office, a backend Internet connection, and connections to head offices and data centers. With the advent of SD-WAN, multiple service providers, and cloud-based options, infrastructure is more dynamic. Today, most customers are not using on-premise solutions exclusively; they are opting for Office 365, G Suite, or similar services. Therefore, monitoring requirements are no longer limited to on-premise infrastructure but span diverse environments—some on-premise, some in the cloud. This is why SolarWinds is moving towards hybrid cloud observability. We would like to see more integrations and support for third-party vendors. For example, current support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is limited, and expanding this support would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"It allows me to quickly see the status of all of my printers, switches, computers, and virtual machines to determine if any system has fallen."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"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'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."
"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."
"I rate my satisfaction with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability at nine out of ten."
"SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability offers very good community support with many documents and best cases for various situations."
"The primary use cases are for customers who require complete infrastructure monitoring. I mean IT infrastructure, which includes network devices, security devices, and server environments, whether physical, virtual, or cloud-based. The platform can manage any infrastructure component that needs monitoring."
"The initial setup is straightforward and quick if prerequisites are met, taking only a couple of days."
 

Cons

"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"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."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"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."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"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."
"The solution could improve in areas such as on-premises container monitoring, CICD observability, and providing additional documentation and support files in languages other than English."
"SolarWinds HCO platform offers various features spanning components, such as network, security, server, virtual, and application components. Common features include dashboarding, reporting, and alerting. These features provide comprehensive visibility, allowing you to see how one area's issues affect others. For instance, if a network issue impacts server performance, this visibility is crucial."
"The solution could improve in areas such as on-premises container monitoring, CICD observability, and providing additional documentation and support files in languages other than English."
"Event management features can be added as it has limited capability to ingest events from external sources."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"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."
"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."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is quite reasonable. It has moved to node-based licensing, simplifying the process. They don't distinguish between different types of nodes, such as server nodes, physical routers, or switches. One node equals one license, making it easy to manage. If you have 500 devices, you need five hundred licenses to get all the features of this unified monitoring platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Media Company
9%
Government
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability?
Event management features can be added as it has limited capability to ingest events from external sources.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability?
I work day-to-day on SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability ( /products/solarwinds-hybrid-cloud-observability-reviews ). It covers network, server, storage, and networking.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
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Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.