Plixer Scrutinizer vs Zabbix comparison

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Plixer Scrutinizer

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Zabbix and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in the network monitoring solutions category. Zabbix appears to have the upper hand in overall feature set due to its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, while Plixer Scrutinizer is stronger in network traffic analysis.

Features: Zabbix is known for its automated network discovery, SMS alerts, and customizable dashboards, integrating with tools like Grafana. Plixer Scrutinizer is distinguished by NetFlow analysis, real-time network insights, and traffic data visualization.

Room for Improvement: Zabbix could enhance reporting, expand predictive analytics, and improve UI ease-of-use for non-technical staff. Plixer Scrutinizer can work on update processes, increase scalability, and improve configuration complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zabbix offers flexible deployments across different environments with a supportive open-source community and professional support options. Plixer Scrutinizer is noted for its straightforward on-premises setup but may require additional customer support investment.

Pricing and ROI: Zabbix's open-source approach eliminates licensing fees, providing significant savings. Plixer Scrutinizer has tiered pricing based on device and network flows, offering competitive pricing for its network-focused capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Plixer Scrutinizer vs. Zabbix Report (Updated: December 2025).

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. Zabbix

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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

75th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

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 (10th), Server Monitoring (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 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 6.9%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Zabbix	6.9%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.5%
Other	92.6%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Ira Mulyanti

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.

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KamranBhatti

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.

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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

"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."

"It helps us determine what is going on with our Internet and who is hogging it all up. If we get a real high throughput or a throughput that's going over and getting dropped fairly quickly, we can tell who (or what device) is consuming that traffic."

"We didn't experience any bugs."

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

"The solution helps to enrich the data context of our network traffic. It allows me to see what applications are most in use on a slightly historical basis, going back a day or week at tops. It allows me to tune QoS or traffic shaping around what's being used. It saves me from having to unnecessarily upgrade, if I don't need to."

"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 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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"Our customers also like that they don't have to use multiple modules. Micro Focus and major vendors typically require you to buy several modules and plugins. Our customers do not like that. We offer them a single product for all their monitoring needs."

"It not only provides the preconfigured item monitoring feature, but it is also easy to configure custom items."

"I really enjoy network traffic triggers that allow us to check traffic threshold from ISP."

"I have found that the reporting feature in Zabbix is most valuable. Additionally, the solution has given us bandwidth options, we are able to see where problems are. For example, we noticed a problem that occurred because of a bad interface going in the wireless VLAN."

"The most valuable feature is that it provides network segregation for server monitoring."

"The solution allows you to configure and customize how you want to collect information from servers or other systems."

"Zabbix is quite stable once it is set up. We haven't had any post-setup issues."

"In terms of customization and integration, we have more flexibility. We can automate configurations, define deletion rules, and customize based on the needs. The client interface allows for further configuration, making it quite comprehensive."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"Knowing that they're coming out with a new user interface, that is an area where there is room for improvement. There are so many variables. They should limit the variables in the user interface and create some classes, like "simple," "novice," and "expert" to narrow down the variables within it."

"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."

"I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples."

"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."

"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."

"The solution creates a visual map of a particular location and how the network flows. You need to spend time to generate all those maps. If they could figure out a way to reduce the time needed to generate the maps, that would be great."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"Zabbix is not easy to configure, and upgrading is also an issue."

"I would like to remotely connect to the computer, and Zabbix doesn't have this capability."

"The documentation gets a bit messy between versions and is not too detailed, which is a bit painful for first-timers, especially when they run into issues."

"The GUI could be more intuitive. Also, we'd like streaming telemetry. Zabbix might have this feature, but I haven't seen it yet. It took us a long time to get started because the documentation isn't very descriptive. We had to go through various sources like YouTube and forums to get this solution working."

"The reporting is lacking because this is an open-source tool, and nowadays, management's expectation is that the reports should be of high quality and every information should be presented in a concise manner."

"I think the reporting part of Zabbix can be improved in terms of more user-friendly graphics to display the collected data. Many simple users who don't know how to use Zabbix properly might get confused by the reporting, although at the same time it is very versatile for my company."

"If Zabbix had a better dashboard then it would be nice."

"I'm using the free version of Zabbix, and I'd like to see more customization options, especially for setting trigger thresholds."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."

"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."

"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."

"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."

"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."

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

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"We purchased Zabbix for a good price, including support"

"Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed."

"Its licensing is fair. It seems to be much cheaper than others."

"There is a license required for this solution and we pay annually for our license."

"We were searching for an open source solution and Zabbix fit the bill because it is free and open source under the GPL license."

"Zabbix and Grafana are both open source products, we only needed to go to their website and download the application and we began to use them. The solutions are free."

"We’re using the free version, which covers all our current needs."

"The product is an open source and free solution."

More Zabbix 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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	56
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	34

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Zabbix?

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

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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...

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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 ...

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Comparisons

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 14% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 14% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 13% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 12% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 9% of the time

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Checkmk vs Zabbix

Compared 9% of the time

LibreNMS vs Zabbix

Compared 7% of the time

Icinga vs Zabbix

Compared 5% of the time

Nagios XI vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

Centreon vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Plixer Scrutinizer

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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

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.

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

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. Zabbix