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Nagios Core vs Pandora FMS 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

Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
10th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
77th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
56th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (26th), Log Management (62nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (45th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nagios Core1.9%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other97.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

HY
Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group
Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure
The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything. Everything in the IT domain, you can monitor anything. You can even monitor printers, the ports of printers, Core workstations, and storage. You can monitor the workflow Core and the utilization of computes. If you want to grasp everything of your IT equipment on a single interface, you can use Nagios. It's the best one. It provides dashboards, and you can also configure your emails and alerts with it. If something is critical, you can configure it to notify via emails. It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.
Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Asociado/ at Infraestructura Informática
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate the overall solution ten points out of ten."
"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."
"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"The most valuable features are auto-discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring."
"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 network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
 

Cons

"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."
"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
"The mapping is a little hard."
"I find that this software is resource heavy, and demands a lot of processing capacity."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"We would like to see improvement in the mainframe integration that this solution is capable of."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Most the plugin features are free."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"We are using the free version."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"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."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Government
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?
Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.
What needs improvement with Nagios Core?
The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.
What is your primary use case for Nagios Core?
I was a senior system administrator. I've been using Nagios Core for more than ten years now. It can be used to monitor hosts, such as machines, and monitor services of any kind. I'm using it to mo...
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Core vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.