We compared Zabbix and Pandora FMS across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Zabbix is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, scalability, and reliable performance. It provides customizable dashboards, trigger dependencies, SNMP monitoring, and problem tracking. Pandora FMS is highly regarded for its straightforward management process, effective dashboards, and efficient network monitoring capabilities.
Room for Improvement: Zabbix could reduce false positives and improve integration, cloud monitoring, and reporting. Users say Pandora FMS could make its dashboards more customizable and improve its integration with other systems. Many also said they would like Pandora to add APIs for integration and offer better out-of-the-box analytics.
Service and Support: Users had mixed opinions about Zabbix customer service. Some found it helpful, while others feel it needs improvement. Customers generally rely on online documentation and community forums for assistance. Pandora FMS support received high praise for their expertise, kindness, and fast response time.
Ease of Deployment: The complexity of Zabbix's initial setup varies, and it may require an experienced group of administrators and engineers. Most users found Pandora FMS’s initial setup to be relatively easy.
Pricing: Zabbix is a free, open-source solution, but users can purchase support services and additional features. Pandora FMS is considered reasonably priced, and the total cost depends on the environment.
ROI: Users say that Zabbix provides a cost-effective solution. Pandora FMS has also demonstrated advantages in terms of return on investment. Users say Pandora FMS has also demonstrated a return on investment.
Comparison Results: Zabbix is a highly customizable open-source solution with a wide range of monitoring capabilities, including the ability to monitor virtual machines and databases. However, Zabbix’s setup can be complex and may require technical expertise. Users like Pandora FMS’s management and monitoring capabilities as well as its dashboards, but the solution has been criticized for its compatibility issues, limited customization options, and slower performance
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"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 solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"The solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console."
"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."
"It has improved our server performance monitoring overall. We know right away when there are problems. It has built-in statistics, so we can go back and see if there's spiking. We can check what's happening every day around the same time and check the configuration to see if there's something that's running and needs to be fixed."
"The best thing about Zabbix is the integration and the APIs that are included are very fast"
"The most valuable features of Zabbix are flexibility and a single interface for different types of monitoring."
"The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good. The monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great. The information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed."
"SNMP monitoring, source discovery, and alert triggering are most valuable."
"There is less computing power needed for scaling."
"The solution's design has recently changed and it is visually pleasing with more color, for example, there is blue, black, and white."
"The most valuable feature is monitoring."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"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."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"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."
"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."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"When it comes to the definition of local Software Agents for the first time in the open-source version, it can become very tedious."
"It would be useful if Pandora FMS included an ISO image (or «software appliance») for each big company that leases virtual private machines (VPS), just like in AWS."
"Zabbix isn't a great tool for cloud-specific monitoring - its connection to public clouds needs to be improved. Other areas for improvement would be the lack of dashboards and integrations."
"The product delivers false positives during reporting because of flapping. Other reasonably priced alternatives may have better performance."
"In an upcoming release, there should be automated reports which we are currently doing manually. For example, if we collect a report file every day and want to send it to a moderator for review. We are expecting this feature to come out soon but it would be valuable to have now."
"One of the things we don't like is that Zabbix has a license structure with a price that is high compared to the competition. It's very high, for example, compared to something like Microsoft Teams."
"Implementing Zabbix is difficult. I've deployed many solutions over the years, and Zabbix is the hardest to implement. You have to do some development to get it to work with IBM, Micro Focus, or HP products."
"We would like to monitor other touchpoints such as ATM machines. It would be great if it can provide monitoring of ATM machines. Compatibility with other products would also be great."
"The GUI could be more intuitive. Also, we'd like streaming telemetry. Zabbix might have this feature, but I haven't seen it yet. It took us a long time to get started because the documentation isn't very descriptive. We had to go through various sources like YouTube and forums to get this solution working."
"Improvement is needed as per customer requirements."
Pandora FMS is ranked 28th in Network Monitoring Software with 22 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in Network Monitoring Software with 101 reviews. Pandora FMS is rated 9.2, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Pandora FMS writes "The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Pandora FMS is most compared with Wazuh, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios XI, SolarWinds NPM and Netdata, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios Core and Nagios XI. See our Pandora FMS vs. Zabbix report.
See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors, best Server Monitoring vendors, and best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors.
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