Pandora FMS vs. Nagios
Tired of fighting with Nagios?
Pandora FMS is the natural evolution:
more powerful, simpler, without absurd limits or eternal patches.
Migrate your environment in days and forget about manual maintenance and lack of support. Companies around the world have already done it.
Price comparison
How much can you save?
Save more with Pandora FMS: no hidden costs or sensor restrictions.
Pay only for what you need, with no limitations on the scalability of your monitoring.
version
PANDORA FMS
Up to 50 nodes
year
Up to 7 nodes
devices
PANDORA FMS
2.352€
year
5.046€
year
devices
PANDORA FMS
9.144€
year
15.174€
year
devices
PANDORA FMS
16.033€
year
21.237€
year
Nagios XI prices according to their website as of 2 Apr 2025. Prices converted to euros.
Comparison with Pandora ONE vs Nagios XI + Fusion + Log Server (for 500 and 1000 disp), only Nagios XI + Fusion in 100 devices).
Subscription license in both cases.
Which solution is best suited to your company?
Pandora FMS vs Nagios: Two approaches, one clear decision.
Pandora FMS
Pandora FMS is a platform for comprehensive monitoring ranging from network, server, and application management to ITSMremote control and inventory. Its approach is flexible and allows it to adapt to large and heterogeneous infrastructures. Pandora FMS is known for its customizability and scalability, although the initial configuration can be more complex for non-technical users.
Nagios
Nagios is a monitoring tool focused on IT infrastructures, especially networks and servers. networks and servers. Unlike Pandora FMS, Nagios is based on an add-on system to extend its functionalities. It is highly configurable, but requires deep technical knowledge for proper implementation and customization. Despite being robust and flexible, its user interface is more basic and can be less intuitive.
Advantages and limitations of each solution
Pandora FMS
- Real monitoring of services (BPM).
- Event management with correlation.
- Advanced multiplatform agents.
- Customizable and useful reports for business.
- Real scalability for +10,000 nodes.
- Modern and unified visual consoles.
- Full integration in a single interface.
- Licenses and costs more transparent.
Nagios
- Large community and plugin ecosystem.
- Modular independence. You can easily integrate it with other external tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, Icinga, Centreon or Graylog.
- There are more technical staff with knowledge of Nagios than of Pandora FMS, although most of them only know the free version of Nagios.
Pandora FMS
- Initial learning curve: Requires familiarization with your ecosystem to realize its full potential.
- Specific compatibility: Fewer preconfigured templates for very specialized hardware.
- Lower visibility in the US compared to Nagios, although its presence in Europe (including Spain) is solid.
- Less open source community compared to Nagios Core (although there is a free version of Pandora FMS).
Nagios
- Plugin dependency: Many key functionalities require additional configuration or third-party plugins.
- Maintenance complexity: Advanced customization often requires technical expertise and time.
- Per-node licensing: Price scales quickly in large environments.
- Visual limitations compared to more modern solutions such as Pandora FMS.
- Does not include RMM, remote control, or inventory: Need additional tools to cover other IT areas.
Comparative Licensing
Transparent licensing, specialized support and a platform that adapts to you.
Pandora FMS license by devices (agents). It includes in the same license all the functionalities.
Nagios (Free Core, XI with per node licenses). It incorporates different licenses (Nagios XI, Log Server, Network Analyzer, Fusion, Premium support plans on the base (limited to 10 tickets per year).
This makes it more difficult to calculate the final long-term costs with Nagios than with Pandora FMS. For medium-sized customers, the final implementation costs are around 25% less with Pandora FMS than with Nagios XI.
Comparative ratings
(G2 – March 2025)
| Criteria | ||
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| Overall rating | ||
| Compliance with requirements | ||
| Ease of use | ||
| Ease of configuration | ||
| Ease of administration | ||
| Quality of assistance | ||
| Product address |
Typical use cases
Pandora FMS
- Enterprises with heterogeneous IT infrastructures: Unified monitoring of mixed environments (Windows, Linux, Mac, IoT) with agents, SNMP and NetFlow.
- Industrial / IoT environments: Integration with industrial protocols such as SNMP/MQTT, visual alarms and sensor visibility.
- Government agencies / compliance: Automated audits, change management, inventory and ENS support, ISO 27001, NIS2.
- MSPs or Managed Service Providers: Multitenant, separate roles, customer control and isolated panels.
- Monitoring of complex applications: Processes, logs, business metrics and availability without additional tools.
Nagios
- Traditional network monitoring: Basic monitoring of network devices via SNMP and ping checks.
- Linux/Unix server monitoring: Availability and load monitoring with plugins such as NRPE and SNMP.
- IT teams with technical expertise: Basic monitoring of network devices using SNMP and ping checks.
- Labs or test environments: Nagios Core as a free and highly configurable option.
- Integration with legacy tools: Leverage compatibility with Nagios plugins and avoid costly migrations.
Real cases
User feedback
“Pandora FMS offers multiple tools that allow us to effectively monitor and manage our technological structure. Its platform is easy to use and adapts to our needs. In addition, the software works with a wide variety of devices and services (including servers, networks, applications and web services), making it perfect for us as internet providers, thus ensuring the availability and performance of our servers.”
Christian N. – Occupational Safety Supervisor
“A good comprehensive monitoring tool for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). I love the simplicity of the tool and one of the key things I personally like is the “Eagle Eye” view. Mass import of hosts, auto-detection, automatic decommissioning, and mass recon are some of the interesting aspects as well.”
Aswani K. – Business Account Manager
“Although it is relatively easy to use, it requires a certain level of knowledge to be able to take full advantage of it.”
Christian N. – Occupational Safety Supervisor
“The pricing structure is a subscription model, however, the price increases at a very high margin every year. And being a Nagios reseller, I hate to see the overall TAM, and Nagios doesn’t want to expand, unlike its competitors.”
Aswani K. – Business Account Manager
Pandora FMS is a modern, complete and scalable alternative already used by hundreds of companies to overcome growth barriers. You can read all the reviews that G2 users post about Pandora FMS right here →
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Are you still spending time maintaining patches and scripts?
Most professionals do not think about the paid version of Nagios, but about the free solution. But… Is it worth to keep adapting a free tool with hours of manual work?
