We compared Amazon CloudWatch and Pandora FMS based on our users' reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Amazon CloudWatch users liked the solution’s simplicity, intuitive interface, and ability to handle large workloads. Users also praised CloudWatch’s comprehensive monitoring and alerts. Pandora FMS is highly regarded for its straightforward management process, effective dashboards, and efficient network monitoring capabilities.
Room for improvement: Some reviews mentioned that Amazon CloudWatch could improve performance and dashboard visualization. Others noted that the solution lacked compatibility with some databases. 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: Customers generally have positive opinions about Amazon's customer service. They commended the support team for its availability and timely issue resolution. Pandora FMS support received high praise for their expertise, kindness, and fast response time.
Ease of Deployment: Amazon CloudWatch is generally described as easy to set up. Most users found Pandora FMS’s initial setup to be relatively easy.
Pricing: Amazon CloudWatch offers a flexible pricing structure based on usage and processing, without any separate licensing cost. Some users said that scaling up can be costly due to the need for additional storage space. Pandora FMS is considered reasonably priced, and the total cost depends on the environment.
ROI: Amazon CloudWatch offers a return on investment by minimizing the need for manual monitoring. Pandora FMS has also demonstrated advantages in terms of return on investment.
Comparison Results: Reviewers say that Amazon CloudWatch is a simple, intuitive solution that can handle large workloads, but some mentioned dashboard visualization and customizability as areas for improvement. 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.
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap and easy-to-use solution."
"What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes. Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."
"Monitoring time and ensuring ease in it is the most valuable feature."
"We use Amazon CloudWatch for logging."
"The product can be integrated with AWS very easily."
"CloudWatch immediately hooks up and connects to the KPIs and all the metrics."
"The solution offers very detailed metrics for their services."
"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."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"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 most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"Thanks to its flexibility, I have been able to adapt the tool to our servers and find out quickly how their console works."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"Some of our customers want to use Kubernetes to monitor their CICD flow but Amazon CloudWatch does not support it. We need to use another solution, such as Datadog or Dynatrace has the needed capability."
"Amazon CloudWatch's pricing needs improvement."
"The product's configuration has some challenges. The solution needs to be more user-friendly."
"It is hard to configure; it is not a straightforward tool."
"The dashboard of Amazon CloudWatch is not very customizable right now."
"This product lacks some features: real-time data stream monitoring, application performance monitoring, mobile app monitoring, and live dashboards. Its workflows also need improvement."
"I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing."
"The drill-down aspect on the dashboard of the solution needs improvement. We get a very good high-level overview, but when we drill down, it becomes a little less clear. We have given this feedback to AWS as well and hope they will improve this in the future."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"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."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
Amazon CloudWatch is ranked 12th in Log Management with 40 reviews while Pandora FMS is ranked 22nd in Log Management with 22 reviews. Amazon CloudWatch is rated 8.0, while Pandora FMS is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Amazon CloudWatch writes "Instantaneous response when monitoring logs and KPIs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pandora FMS writes "The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance". Amazon CloudWatch is most compared with Zabbix, Datadog, Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver), Dynatrace and SolarWinds NPM, whereas Pandora FMS is most compared with Zabbix, Wazuh, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios XI and SolarWinds NPM. See our Amazon CloudWatch vs. Pandora FMS report.
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We monitor all Log Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.