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Pivot3 vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 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

Pivot3
Ranking in HCI
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Pivot3 is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

JW
One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter
The primary use case was for a persistent VDI solution using vSphere as the hypervisor software and using Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop as the provisioning software in an enterprise Windows server domain infrastructure It greatly streamlined the time it took to scale out the enterprise and it…
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactive support with improved speed and resilience
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We"
"Their service is top-notch and if a node goes down they immediately are following up with us to make sure that everything is working smoothly."
"Being able to log on to the GUI to see specific data and usage statistics, executing clones, starting and stopping VMs, etc., is great."
"The most valuable aspect of StarWind is the all-in-one solution that they provide."
"Customer service has been excellent. Any questions we have had have been answered quickly."
"The setup was easy to deploy, and management is simplified compared with traditional SAN solutions."
"StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature."
"The redundancy of two identical nodes that can run alone allows us to have truly "no single point of failure" in our computing and primary storage infrastructure."
 

Cons

"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources"
"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"The only critique I might have is that the support is overseas in Eastern Europe and, on occasion, there has been a language issue. But in general, they're as good as can be..."
"I think that the pre-installation questionnaire was a little confusing and ambiguous."
"If I had to pick something to add to the product, it would be nice if you could have more than one user account on their command center VM."
"The only thing I have run into is that I did want to add more hard drives into the host, so that we could look at doing a RAID 10, and the hard drive prices were pretty expensive... that's pretty nit-picky and I don't think it has anything to do with StarWind itself. I think it's more on whomever they work with for their hardware."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."
"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"Its cost was reasonable."
"We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
17%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our inf...
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtual machines and two old SANs. All of this was running on 10+ year-old refurbished...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SNHMC, HPD Software, The Hurlingham Club, NHS, Rochester Police Department, The Doe Run Company, 101 Casino, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
Sears Home and Franchise Business
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivot3 vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.