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Plixer Scrutinizer vs Zabbix comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
74th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)
Zabbix
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (9th), Server Monitoring (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 5.0%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zabbix5.0%
Plixer Scrutinizer0.5%
Other94.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ira Mulyanti - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Director at ARGA SOLUSI
An affordable product with great integration capabilities
Plixer Core Platform is a valuable feature and a good software. Plixer Scrutinizer uses NetFlow analysis to monitor whatever is there in a network. Price-wise, Plixer Scrutinizer is not an expensive product. Basically, Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that can integrate with any other brand or product in the market, so it is not an area of concern.
KamranBhatti - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Helps reduce response time but has room to improve customization complexity
We are not working on simple standalone solutions like Kaspersky DDoS Protection or Hybrid Cloud Security. Once you understand Zabbix, then it is easy to customize those web pages and graphs for our customer use. It is fully automated to your requirements. Zabbix is working fine with no issues, and I am satisfied with it. We have combined Zabbix and SolarWinds. The integration works fine, and it is easy to integrate Zabbix with the IT environment. We were trying to purchase MDR (Managed Detection and Response), but we are not working on that. I don't have real experience with MDR. We are using Falcon software for that. We are working with Falcon Complete, not with Sandbox. We are not using Kaspersky for business or cloud protection. For that, we are using Zabbix CrowdStrike Falcon Complete solution. I have given this review an overall rating of 8.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 ability to view the status of the top-10 at a glance is helpful. We immediately know which link is over-utilized or heavily used... and it's all in real-time."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the ability to track what a device is doing and to go back historically. It is also able to go down to, and identify, very low levels of traffic."
"We didn't experience any bugs."
"As a network engineer, the ability to identify what traffic on the link is consuming all the bandwidth at any given time, and provide immediate feedback to the business, is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."
"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."
"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."
"We have found that Zabbix is more easy to use than other applications."
"I use the solution to provide a perfect environment for remote connectivity with my clients."
"The implementation process is very straightforward."
"It provides high scalability, alerting, notification, templating, and end-to-end security."
"The solution allows you to configure and customize how you want to collect information from servers or other systems."
"The most valuable feature is service assurance."
"We like the user-interface for this solution, which makes it an easy to use tool."
"The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration."
 

Cons

"We couldn't get it set up properly."
"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."
"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."
"Though Plixer Scrutinizer has network detection and response, it's an area that needs just a little more rounding out. Another room for improvement in the solution is its lack of SaaS offering which some customers were looking for. My company deals in small to medium businesses, mid-market, and some customers wanted the SaaS feature which Plixer Scrutinizer doesn't offer. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for it to have a SaaS offering because my company also deals with educational spaces and smaller businesses that just don't have the staff that can implement this. If there's either a managed service or SaaS-based offering to just make it a little easier for those types of customers, it would be a great addition to Plixer Scrutinizer."
"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."
"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."
"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."
"If you want to use all of the features then you have to pay a licensing fee."
"We had some scalability issues with a large number of nodes."
"The APM monitoring has room for improvement, although I hear that the new 5.2 version has some improvements in that area, and I'd like to give that a go. I would like to see a few more templates out there for different styles of monitoring. I use the Grafana interface for reporting. I would also like it to have an out-of-the-box ability to email reports. You can create reports, but to be able to email those reports would be really helpful. I've got users who are not interested in logging in and generating a report. They want it all pre-canned and sent to an email address. It would also be really handy if we could pin certain reports up onto platforms such as Teams or SharePoint. A GUI for the proxy server would be cool to have for debugging purposes and for the support teams to have a look at, but I don't know whether that's really feasible to do. I get enough from the log files themselves."
"They should open an SSH session from the web interface."
"When it comes to troubleshooting or technical support, there is usually some time lag."
"One of the things we don't like is that Zabbix has a license structure with a price that is high compared to the competition. It's very high, for example, compared to something like Microsoft Teams."
"I want Zabbix to improve the UX/UI. Zabbix doesn't use a JavaScript chart for images, and I want them to improve this."
"Zabbix isn't a great tool for cloud-specific monitoring - its connection to public clouds needs to be improved. Other areas for improvement would be the lack of dashboards and integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."
"We pay our one-off cost for the licenses, per device, in blocks of 50. And then we pay an annual maintenance fee of about $15,000 Australian, which is, at this point in time, about $9,000 US, for those 250 devices. The upfront costs for the 250-license use, were about $50,000 Australian, which is about $32,000 US."
"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."
"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."
"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."
"The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra."
"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."
"There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus."
"Its licensing is fair. It seems to be much cheaper than others."
"It is freeware. We still use the free version of Zabbix."
"It’s free of cost."
"The solution is free to use but they offer support as a paid service. If you can go read the manuals and do the fine-tuning based on your needs, you do not need to pay anything and you will have a full solution."
"It is free, which allows us to reduce costs."
"It is a true open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"We use the open-source version of Zabbix."
"The solution is open source so is free."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Zabbix?
The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?
I think Zabbix is economical, whereas SolarWinds is expensive. SolarWinds has a lot of secure features, but Zabbix is providing everything free of cost. Zabbix is economical, and you can install it...
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
The potential and customization is a little difficult because you have to learn scripts. I think Zabbix needs to improve the customization better. At present, I am satisfied with the functionality ...
 

Overview

 

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
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about Plixer Scrutinizer vs. Zabbix and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.