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Pandora FMS vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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
74th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
54th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
40th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (23rd), Log Management (57th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.4%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds NPM4.4%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other95.0%
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…
Tochukwu Uzomba - PeerSpot reviewer
Rich modular monitoring capabilities offer tailored monitoring needs with good support
SolarWinds NPM is used for monitoring different solutions like database, infrastructure, and network performance. Each of these requires separate solutions, and SolarWinds provides modular options for monitoring Based on my experiences, SolarWinds NPM can handle large network infrastructures…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to control our business with this all-in-one monitoring tool."
"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 administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."
"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 SolarWinds NPM framework, upon which most of their flagship products are built, empowers a wide variety of admins and users to quickly find value in their installed products."
"Can easily be interconnected with other management systems."
"SolarWinds NPM has a colorful UI and many easy-to-use features. It does not need to be configured as much and is also easy to install."
"Being able to easily, and quickly obtain disc space statistics from servers and determine how much was free or used on various volumes."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up."
"With just three modules, I can monitor server performance (whether it’s a VM, in the cloud, or an on-premises server."
"I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization."
 

Cons

"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"I think some improvements to the Android app would be good."
"The reporting module that got integrated into the system itself, used to be a standalone solution and I preferred that."
"They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"It is not that stable. As a Windows software, I have seen issues with SolarWinds. The performance is slow."
"Time: A worldwide deployment can be confusing for dispersed users with non-local times. Each node should have a local time (with summer offset if appropriate) & each user should view & report in their local time."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds."
"The solution could be more secure."
"The aesthetic widgets should be dynamic widgets, so the customization can be even more customizable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"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."
"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."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"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 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."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"SolarWinds NPM has different pricing models available. The cost of the solution is less than some competitors."
"The price points are more than competitive when compared to other vendors."
"The price is more expensive than some other products, such as ManageEngine."
"Most of the licenses are perpetual, and the annual maintenance charges are not high."
"The licensing model is such that you can purchase only what you need; and then grow into the next level by paying only the difference in price and the associated maintenance costs."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"It's expensive and there are costs in addition to the standard licensing."
"The NPM component of the system costs approximately $1,000 USD per year."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
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 Business59
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise84
 

Questions from the Community

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What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: October 2025.
871,358 professionals have used our research since 2012.