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Pandora FMS vs SolarWinds ipMonitor 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 Network Monitoring Software
46th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
44th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (18th), Log Management (34th), Cloud Monitoring Software (28th)
SolarWinds ipMonitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
76th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
56th
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds ipMonitor is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network 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…
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
IP address management improves network efficiency but licensing cost could decrease
We are using SolarWinds for NPM and NCM, and we use IP address management for IP address monitoring. It helps us track which IP address is live and which is not. It also provides DHCP reservation and allows us to declare IP addresses for our integration. We have been using it for IP address…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."
"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"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."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"IPAM is used for IP address reservation and tracking, helping us easily identify live IP addresses."
"The most valuable feature is the availability of end devices."
"IPAM is used for IP address reservation and tracking, helping us easily identify live IP addresses."
 

Cons

"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I think some improvements to the Android app would be good."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools."
"The solution does not include enough features and has some performance issues."
"The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"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."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"The solution is a bit expensive because the annual license does not include new features that are priced as add-ons."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Media Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds ipMonitor?
The licensing cost is high compared to other open-source tools. Being a corporate client, we require corporate licensing, which adds to the cost.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds ipMonitor?
The licensing cost is high compared to open source tools. The state monitoring tools could be improved with AI integration to track IP usage history. There is no local support; we must contact thei...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds ipMonitor?
We are using SolarWinds for NPM and NCM, and we use IP address management for IP address monitoring. It helps us track which IP address is live and which is not. It also provides DHCP reservation a...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
ipMonitor
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. SolarWinds ipMonitor and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.