We compared Auvik and Pandora FMS across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Auvik excels in SNMP and WMI communication, syslog centralization, and live topology mapping. The solution offers NetFlow monitoring as well as backup and configuration management. Pandora FMS is highly regarded for its straightforward management process, effective dashboards, and efficient network monitoring capabilities.
Room for Improvement: Auvik users would like more flexibility to customize reporting and dashboards. Reviews also suggested improvements in probe deployment and integration with third-party products. 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: Auvik's customer service is highly rated. Users said it’s convenient to contact support through the platform, and responses are fast. Some noted that problems are typically resolved in a single phone call without the need to escalate. Pandora FMS support received high praise for their expertise, kindness, and fast response time.
Ease of Deployment: Auvik's setup is simple, fast, and customizable, with clear instructions. Most users found Pandora FMS’s initial setup to be relatively easy.
Pricing: Auvik’s pricing structure is considered reasonable and competitive. Licensing is based on the number of billable devices, and users have control over which devices are billed. Pandora FMS is considered reasonably priced, and the total cost depends on the environment.
ROI: Auvik users said the solution saves time, improves efficiency, and reduces costs through automation and better insights. Pandora FMS has also demonstrated advantages in terms of return on investment.
Comparison Results: Auvik is a user-friendly option for network monitoring and troubleshooting. The solution stands out for its support and ease of navigation. Users like its topology maps and centralized log information. Some users noted that Auvik’s dashboard could be more customizable and suggested that it could improve probe deployment. 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."
"The network mapping, the logical layout, is the part that I love the most, showing what switch is connected to what switch. I couldn't live without it. That is the big selling point for me."
"Among the most valuable features are the hardware life cycle and configuration backups, when applicable... When it does show you the hardware life cycle for, say, a Cisco device and the configuration backup, that's the most useful aspect for me as a network engineer."
"My favorite feature so far is the alerts section. We've got our main company at the top, and then all of our customers are underneath that. We can either filter by a single customer or one of their sites specifically, or look at it from the top down and see the whole picture. It's an easy way for me to be able to have a high-level overview. I can see the status of all of our sites simultaneously without having to really dig in and get super granular, unless I want to."
"I've found the topology mesh graph helpful, and I like the other features that factor into my work with Kubernetes."
"Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution. It's easier to find the devices on the network and pull out the information. Of course, the SNMP is also good to get the logs. It helps in the network debugging or if we have to find any problems."
"I like the information Auvik provides you about switches that helps you troubleshoot connectivity issues between clients and switches. It's much easier to locate where the problem is on the network. We were using N-central for our RMM. Unfortunately, that doesn't map out the switches. It tells us what is up or down but doesn't do a good job of network troubleshooting like Auvik does."
"The ability to trace cables is the most valuable feature. The solution provides link detection and port detection features with the switches. It's invaluable to have the ability to see where one device is connected and identify the exact port without having to trace any cables."
"Auvik's features for monitoring device availability and bandwidth utilization have greatly helped us. From a cybersecurity perspective, bandwidth utilization tells us if we have a potential data exfiltration incident. It also helps us decide whether to increase the bandwidth for one of the links or if the current bandwidth is sufficient."
"Thanks to this software and to the work of the support team, we have everything under control."
"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."
"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."
"This solution has screens that are easy to understand and provide a wealth of information."
"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."
"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."
"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"It needs flexibility for the pooling of information. Because it is fully automated, it is pooling everything from the device from a given category. There is no way to exclude things that are not important or if you want to temporarily remove them to see statistics of other things. For example, we get about 100 MB from Auvik. We are unable to limit this. We would rather stop monitoring something, since some features will always give you alerts, because they shouldn't be monitored. However, it is impossible to exclude them, e.g., the internal interface. If somebody disconnects the device from the internal interface, we get an alert. So, this is something that is really painful for us. More flexibility would solve most of our issues."
"The training is not intuitive."
"Auvik mostly supports large vendors such as the Cisco Aruba networks, Meraki, and Extreme Networks."
"The map would be the first thing I would like to see improved because sometimes the maps get really odd-looking and the automated placement of things on the map, devices on the map is sometimes not right. In fact, I was just looking at the map and something got moved. I'm sure it didn't get moved, it's just that Auvik realized it was supposed to go somewhere else. So the map could be better if there was a little bit of manual manipulation that you could do."
"The visualization of network mapping is good. The only complaint would be that VLANs don't necessarily show up as a regular LAN does. They do show up, but there is some manual tuning you have to do to make that look perfect."
"Sometimes it's a little bit slow to load, but I can't think of anything else that could be improved."
"Most of the issues that I have had are related to the dashboard and wanting a bit more customization available through the dashboard because that's where you'll spend most of your time. Auvik is on the dashboard, and you can create and save these filters, which is great, but if I were to filter the map by all switches, the information below doesn't reflect the filter. I have to select the device within the filter, and then it starts to show the results. I can then see the dashboard of that device. If I were to filter by switches, I would like my top device utilization to only show me switches from my alerts and anything related to my map filter."
"They can improve its monitoring capabilities for the physical servers or operating systems. At the moment, they do have some visibility. Even though you don't buy Auvik for monitoring your servers, and it is more for network monitoring, it would be nice if they can do end-to-end monitoring so that you don't have to use a different tool for operating system monitoring. You can get all the information from Auvik."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
More Auvik Network Management (ANM) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Auvik Network Management (ANM) is ranked 3rd in Network Monitoring Software with 131 reviews while Pandora FMS is ranked 29th in Network Monitoring Software with 22 reviews. Auvik Network Management (ANM) is rated 8.8, while Pandora FMS is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Auvik Network Management (ANM) writes "Enables us to get on top of issues before they become an outage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pandora FMS writes "The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance". Auvik Network Management (ANM) is most compared with PRTG Network Monitor, LogicMonitor, Meraki Dashboard, SolarWinds NPM and Zabbix, whereas Pandora FMS is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Wazuh, Nagios XI and SolarWinds NPM. See our Auvik Network Management (ANM) vs. Pandora FMS report.
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