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Pandora FMS vs Spiceworks 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
40th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (41st), Server Monitoring (16th), Log Management (40th), Cloud Monitoring Software (28th)
Spiceworks
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
44th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (17th), IT Asset Management (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.5%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spiceworks is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

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…
Jeetendar Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Customizable, easy to use, easy to manage, and provides multiple features
I have used many software, but Spiceworks is the best. The tool provides multiple features. It is a valuable product for inventory. It is also useful as a ticketing system. The solution is easy to use and easy to manage. Many people can use it very easily. The features are not complicated. It is very easy to run, install, and understand. That is why my organization decided to use it. The solution’s asset management capabilities have benefitted us in many ways. We are able to manage all the inventory. We have a complete database. We have a record of everything. It is very valuable. I rate the usability of the user interface and dashboard a nine out of ten. The tool is easy to learn compared to other software.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"It provides us with proactive monitoring and is very easy to configure and maintain."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"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."
"Helpdesk and inventory are both equally valuable, and they form the true core of the product."
"The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally."
"If you're in the market for a low-cost service desk system, Spiceworks is a good software solution to start out with, especially when it comes to startups and those organizations that don't currently have any existing service desk software in place."
"The most valuable features are the inventory and personalization."
"The nice thing about Spiceworks is always it's free. Monitoring of printers for low toner. Finding machines that have low memory or low hard disk space."
"It shows the users that are currently logged in, which is not something that Active Directory by default will ever let you know up front."
"The software is cloud-based, so I do not need to store any data locally."
"Spiceworks is generic and free."
 

Cons

"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"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."
"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."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"I would like to see more information when drilling down into access permissions, assignments management, or tagging. When I click a note or a device, I should be able to see more details about the router and modem. For example, I want to see the version, downtime, availability, latency, etc. I should have easy access to everything about our assets at a glance."
"The customer service is okay, however, I would appreciate much more clarity on what I want to know exactly."
"The network mapping could be improved. Putting together an actual bonafide network map would be really nice."
"Having an integrated asset management tool, where I can plug in things that are offline, would be good."
"I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment."
"Once a device was recognized on the network, Spiceworks never got rid of it even after you took it off the network. You had to go in and manually remove it."
"Since Spiceworks is a free tool, it's not very scriptable or customizable."
"I would like the solution to allow for more direct interaction with computers. I can open tickets and I can see their status, but I can't interact directly with the computers themselves."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Seeing that it is a low-cost solution, I would advise you to go ahead with Spiceworks and experiment with it to see if you can get things working properly, especially if you currently don't have any existing service desk software in place."
"It might be about $300 annually for a bigger company. If you pay annually, it's better and cheaper."
"The tool is cheap."
"The product is free! Get it now."
"It's free."
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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
9%
Media Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Spiceworks?
The solution is easy to use and easy to manage.
What needs improvement with Spiceworks?
I am unable to provide suggestions for improvement at this moment, however, I can provide feedback later. Currently, there do not seem to be any issues.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Symantec, Webroot, EMC, Pertino
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. Spiceworks and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.