Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

Kentik and Plixer are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Kentik is ranked #34 with an average rating of 9.0, while Plixer is ranked #52 with an average rating of 8.0. Kentik holds a 0.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to Plixer’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Plixer users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 16 Kentik reviews

1,587 Views
1,174 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

1,289 Views
877 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Kentik

Plixer Scrutinizer

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Kentik and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in the network analysis and monitoring category. While Kentik stands out for its SaaS capabilities and ease of use, Scrutinizer shines with its integration flexibility and reporting prowess.

Features: Kentik's strengths include real-time data exploration, effective visualization tools, and powerful DDoS alerting. It offers detailed traffic insights with robust customization options. Meanwhile, Plixer Scrutinizer is recognized for its extensive integration capabilities and comprehensive reporting features, providing valuable network traffic context.

Room for Improvement: Kentik could enhance its API usability, providing more actionable intelligence and improving security rights management. Users also suggest improving the user interface and alerting options. For Plixer Scrutinizer, users wish for SaaS availability, improved data management and storage, and better documentation alongside streamlined updates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kentik's SaaS model simplifies deployment, earning positive feedback for ease of use. Its customer service is noted for being responsive and supportive. Plixer Scrutinizer, primarily deployed on-premises, is praised for a reliable technical support team, although initial deployment can be complex.

Pricing and ROI: Kentik is perceived as cost-effective, particularly for larger deployments, with flexible licensing to accommodate diverse needs. Plixer Scrutinizer offers competitive pricing based on device count and flow capacity, with a flexible licensing model valued by users for its adaptability.

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

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

September 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

Kentik

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

34th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

52nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Kentik	0.9%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.4%
Other	98.7%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup

The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.

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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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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 valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."

"The most valuable features have been anything around traffic engineering: being able to determine the source or destination of a surge of traffic, whether it's DDoS-related, or a customer just happened to have a sudden uptick in traffic. Being able to tell where that's coming from or where it's going to enables us to do things based on that."

"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."

"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."

"The most important feature is cybersecurity."

"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."

"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."

"I really love the Data Explorer. I use it all the time to go in and craft exactly what I need to see. I'm able to then take that story and explain it to the executives. I've done that a couple of times and it is helpful."

More Kentik pros

"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

Cons

"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."

"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."

"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."

"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."

"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."

"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."

"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."

"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."

More Kentik cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The reporting structure, the front-end GUI, also needs some work. It needs some getting used to. It works fairly well, but it's a technical tool rather than a user tool. You have to understand the structure of the databases before you can really use it."

"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."

"Data retention needs improvement. Data retention is a thing where we are looking for a better way to collect flow data for a longer time to do forensic research on security incidents. By default, data retention is quite low. We need detailed data in safe storage for a longer time, e.g., for a couple of months. An improvement would be a way to export data into a secure long-term storage."

"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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."

"The tool is cheaply priced."

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

"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 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."

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

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

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

"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

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

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.

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What needs improvement with Kentik?

There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Kentik?

We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.

See all answers

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

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Compared 29% of the time

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Compared 24% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kentik

September 2025

Download Kentik product report

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

September 2025

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Overview

Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.

With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.

Kentik

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

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.

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

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

September 2025

Free Report: Kentik vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

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