PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

Plixer and Paessler GmbH are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #54 with an average rating of 8.0, while Paessler GmbH is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.8. Plixer holds a 0.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to Paessler GmbH’s 4.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Plixer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Paessler GmbH users who would recommend it.

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

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376 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 101 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

7,245 Views
4,886 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

PRTG Network Monitor

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

PRTG Network Monitor and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in the network monitoring category. Based on feature comparisons and pricing, PRTG seems to have the upper hand due to its all-in-one licensing model and rapid deployment capabilities.

Features: PRTG Network Monitor supports rapid deployment, scalability, and accuracy in alerting systems. It is suitable for various environments with its adaptable configuration options. Plixer Scrutinizer provides detailed network traffic analysis and handles various flow monitoring standards, making it ideal for complex environments requiring detailed traffic insights.

Room for Improvement: PRTG could enhance remote monitoring capabilities, provide more customizable reports, and improve the mobile app interface while addressing its pricing structure for smaller deployments. Plixer Scrutinizer would benefit from simpler update deployments, improved graphical interfaces, and expanded SaaS offerings, needing more streamlined configuration processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PRTG supports Hybrid Cloud, Private Cloud, and On-Premises environments, though its customer service can be slow due to email-only support. Plixer Scrutinizer is primarily on-premises, valued for local problem-solving, and both solutions offer intuitive knowledge bases, although PRTG faces timing issues with support.

Pricing and ROI: PRTG is affordable with its all-in-one licensing but can be restrictive due to high entry costs for small-scale use. Plixer Scrutinizer's device-based pricing is favorable for large deployments. Both solutions promise high ROI by reducing downtime and maintenance overheads, with PRTG's simple licensing structure being advantageous for straightforward cost planning.

To learn more, read our detailed PRTG Network Monitor vs. Plixer Scrutinizer Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

March 2025

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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

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

54th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.2%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Ronald Jansen

Owner/President at Abraxax

Reporting is extensive, flexible, and can be custom-made in just a short time

In terms of additional features I'd like to see in the next release of Plixer Scrutinizer, I can't think of any because you can do some integration with other monitoring tools that are not strong in NetFlow or don't have NetFlow at all. There are also some integration possibilities in the product, plus there are alerts, too. Plixer Scrutinizer is a pretty complete product. There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point.

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Tochukwu Uzomba

Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited

Efficiently monitor networks across regions with seamless setup and robust feature set

PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational. It is an all-in-one monitoring solution without extra costs. For example, we set it up for an insurance company with branches across Africa. We are able to monitor from Lagos without installing anything in the branches, using the agentless feature. We just put in the IP address and the parameter, and we monitor from those ends. Additionally, all the sensors are very useful. Most people are interested in the bandwidth monitoring sensor to see what bandwidth the users are consuming. The pricing is affordable compared to SolarWinds.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It shows us the saturation of the network of devices. It gives us a clear view of the flows in the network to understand, for instance, planning upgrades in the network to get an idea of what's going on the network on traffic flows. It gives us insight, for instance, on what's going on on our VPN Client. There are a lot of things where it provides very helpful information. It also gives us our security reports with quite detailed information on what's going on in the network, and whether there are data exfiltrations and so on."

"One of the most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer is the reporting, particularly how easy it is to drill down into the reports. Another valuable feature of the solution is its overall visibility. It's great. I also liked Plixer Scrutinizer in terms of deployment time and that it's very simple to set up. Once you get the appliance set up and connected, the customer starts to see results immediately, versus other solutions where that could take a while."

"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."

"We didn't experience any bugs."

"One feature I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer is the very extensive reporting. Reporting is very flexible, though sometimes you need a little bit of support from Plixer Scrutinizer to create custom-made reporting in a very short time. Reporting is a very strong feature of the product."

"We have had many requests to understand in the network which devices are connected to others. Most people don't have this information or are able to establish a map of data flow everywhere around the network. Scrutinizer can really help with this. We are using it to understand who is talking to what, how, and which protocols can help us to improve security and analyze flow."

"The reporting and generating troubleshooting reports would be the best feature; our host-to-host conversation reporting."

"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"The product is easy to use and the web interface is fantastic."

"The most valuable feature is the notifications. As long as you spend time and think about what and when you want to be notified, it's always accurate. It is always there. I find things out before my Internet provider."

"The feature whereby it shows when my hard drives are moving towards thresholds that would be considered outages, before they reach that point - that is valuable."

"The scalability is good. You can improve a remote host or the clustering. This gives it the flexibility to monitor another infrastructure remotely."

"I really love the activity library. It gives the flexibility to discover data and metrics about my interface and data server."

"The up-to-date graphs and the history are very good."

"The fact that I can use custom MIB files to customize my sensors for the things that are not there as a default is a good feature."

"It is a central solution in terms of how to actually use it. It has a very easy dashboard. Everything is concise. We are able to create custom sensors. For different parts of the business, we have many products across many environments, and it works for everything."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

Cons

"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day. Every time we have the data, we are obliged to install a new server in order to integrate the old data, and every time it has a problem. Most of the time, we were obliged to scrap all the data because we couldn't transfer it to the new server. So, it would be very good if they could improve this part."

"They're working on the security areas, so it can provide more insight. What they have is still pretty much IP-concentric. If they were to make it IP and URL, they'd be a little bit ahead on that."

"We couldn't get it set up properly."

"From what I understand it is that the solution is not very scalable in a high volume traffic environment with a large number of flows."

"There is room for improvement around the data that they have on the website about solutions... they should have more templated solutions on their website. Going out and identifying how to do RTP performance with a Cisco router, or how to do application response times in an Arrista data center deployment was where most of the work was... They should spend some more time documenting solutions and putting together white papers."

"There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point."

"It would be useful if there was a way to back up the configuration information. E.g., if you wanted to deploy a new instance or disaster recovery, you could quite easily deploy and restore the config, as opposed to having to restore all the NetFlow data. If there was just a button that said "backup config information", that would be good."

"The visual acuity of how it presents data can sometimes be confusing. It takes a bit for people to spin up how to look at the graphs."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"There seems to be a big jump from the basic scan to the really thorough scan. There is a big jump in the quantity of sensors it uses for certain things. One minute you might get ten and then the next you get 200. There seems to be a big jump between the two at times."

"The solution has to evolve as an end-to-end monitoring solution. It has to do better at understanding the application at the deepest level."

"Sometimes, our PRTG Network Monitor system crashes and a lot of sensors go down."

"The desktop app is the one area where it do with some improvement. From a user's perspective, I would like to be able to get more out of the desktop app as opposed to where we are now with it."

"This product can be improved by updating the net flow interface. The one that is in place works – I can get all the information I need from it – but it is a little bit clunky."

"The licensing policy needs more flexibility."

"The dashboarding definitely needs improvement."

"The technical support from PRTG needs significant improvement."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus."

"I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive."

"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."

"Currently, the license for Plixer Scrutinizer is subscription-based and at a yearly fee. The price would depend on the amount of traffic you pull in. For example, there are several blocks from a 10K flow, a 40K flow, and a 100K flow, and based on the number of devices that you receive the flows from, that's the license, and it is not a per-interface pricing model, so that is a very strong, very competitive pricing feature of Plixer Scrutinizer. Licensing for the product is also not based on the number of storage, compared to some competing products that are priced based on the amount of storage you need, particularly based on the retention and the amount of data. Plixer Scrutinizer licensing is based on the device, and it's more in the direction of $10,000 because, with just $1,000, you don't have anything."

"We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."

"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."

"It's about €10,000 a year for initial license and yearly maintenance costs. In addition, the hardware costs are about €10,000 once every five years."

"We recently bought a license upgrade, so we will integrate more exporters. We upgraded from a 25 exporter license to a 50 exporter license. Therefore, there will be more flows, and this will be an extension. I don't know when we will purchase a faster server, because the server that we have is quite new."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"PRTG Network Monitor is not that expensive, so I like it cost-wise. There's no additional cost apart from the standard licensing fees. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I would rate the cost of PRTG Network Monitor a two."

"We are licensed for 2500 endpoints."

"It is about £4,500 for the first year, then about another 15 to 20 percent annually after that. So, we are looking at about £1000 running costs a year. When you think about how much an outage costs per minute, it's negligible."

"It's a cost-efficient tool."

"PRTG Network Monitor's price is a little high."

"It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using."

"I rate the price of PRTG Network Monitor an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."

"The price was pretty good, very competitive."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

53%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Plixer Scrutinizer?

Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Plixer Scrutinizer?

I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Plixer Scrutinizer?

I don't have deep enough knowledge to comment on what requires improvements in Plixer Scrutinizer. In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required.

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it avoid the configuring the device in PRTG. It automatically discover the device an...

See all answers

What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?

The prices are very high for PRTG Network Monitor. That's why I'm using the free100 sensor license.

See all answers

Comparisons

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 36% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 26% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 22% of the time

LogicMonitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 16% of the time

More Plixer Scrutinizer Competitors

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

LibreNMS vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

PRTG Enterprise Monitor vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

March 2025

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Overview

The Scrutinizer incident response system leverages network traffic analytics to provide active monitoring, visualization, and reporting of network and security incidents. The system quickly delivers the rich forensic data needed by IT professionals to support fast and efficient incident response.

Plixer

PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.

To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.

Paessler GmbH

Sample Customers

Oxford Networks, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, UltiSat, Wipro, West Aurora School District 129, SUNY Geneseo College, Bloomington Public Schools, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Kitsap Credit Union, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Houston Texas, Carilion Clinic, Banner Health, IDEXX Laboratories, Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Goodwill Industries, Parmalat, Armstrong Coal Company, Flybe, James Walker

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

March 2025

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