Plixer Scrutinizer vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

Plixer and Progress Software are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #72, while Progress Software is ranked #26 with an average rating of 8.7. Plixer holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Progress Software’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Plixer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

1,775 Views
1,331 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

WhatsUp Gold

Read 25 WhatsUp Gold reviews

5,476 Views
3,176 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

WhatsUp Gold

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

WhatsUp Gold and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in network monitoring and security, with WhatsUp Gold having an advantage in pricing and customer support. Plixer Scrutinizer offers better advanced analytics and network traffic insights, which can justify its investment.

Features: WhatsUp Gold provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities, intuitive network mapping, performance dashboards, and alerting systems. It is suitable for organizations seeking straightforward solutions for network monitoring. Plixer Scrutinizer provides advanced data analytics, deep traffic analysis, and cybersecurity threat intelligence, making it ideal for those requiring detailed security insights.

Room for Improvement: WhatsUp Gold could enhance its data analytics capabilities, expand its traffic analysis depth, and integrate more advanced security features. Plixer Scrutinizer might improve by simplifying its user interface, offering more customizable dashboards, and streamlining the initial configuration process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WhatsUp Gold offers a straightforward deployment and robust customer support, focusing on easy accessibility for various organization sizes. Plixer Scrutinizer requires a more complex setup due to its detailed analytics but provides thorough documentation and support channels.

Pricing and ROI: WhatsUp Gold is praised for cost-effectiveness and flexible pricing plans, with quicker ROI, beneficial for small to mid-sized businesses. Plixer Scrutinizer, despite higher initial costs, offers long-term value and ROI through its significant data analysis capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Plixer Scrutinizer vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. WhatsUp Gold

January 2026

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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

72nd

Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

13th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

WhatsUp Gold

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

26th

Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

10th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (29th), Server Monitoring (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (24th), Configuration Management (19th), Log Management (32nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 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 WhatsUp Gold is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
WhatsUp Gold	2.0%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.5%
Other	97.5%

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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Erik Cheng

Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet

Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains

The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

"It's agnostic as far as what your network gear is. As long as it supports an sFlow, JFlow, NetFlow, some kind of flow monitoring, Plixer will support it very well."

"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 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."

"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 didn't experience any bugs."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."

"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."

"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides. Additionally, WhatsUp Gold is a Windows-based solution which is a benefit."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the visibility it offers of everything in the network and infrastructure."

"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."

"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."

"The documentation is very good."

"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"I would like to see them do an enhancement to the application monitoring. A lot of other products do better application monitoring so they should do some improvements to the application monitoring."

"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."

"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."

"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."

"The tool should focus on increasing its market share, as it is the only area of concern where improvements are needed."

"Improvements are needed in integration, especially for WhatsApp call and messages. Our region heavily uses WhatsApp Messenger for communication, and integration with this platform would be beneficial."

"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."

"The product is old and not updated."

More WhatsUp Gold 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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"Pricing is reasonable compared to other products."

"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."

"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."

"This is a well priced solution."

"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."

"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

10%

Computer Software 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	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about WhatsUp Gold?

The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?

Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?

It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 13% of the time

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 10% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 10% of the time

LiveNX vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 8% of the time

Flowmon vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 8% of the time

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PRTG Network Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

LibreNMS vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

SCOM vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

NinjaOne vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

ManageEngine OpManager vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 3% of the time

More WhatsUp Gold Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

January 2026

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

January 2026

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

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

Explore and manage your entire network infrastructure effortlessly with WhatsUp Gold's robust layer 2/3 discovery, creating a detailed interactive map from the edge to the cloud. Monitor devices, wireless controllers, servers, virtual machines, applications, and traffic flows across various environments. Real-time alerts ensure optimal performance, allowing you to meet or exceed SLAs. The platform offers customizable maps, dashboards, and alerts for easy network management. Quickly resolve issues with intuitive workflows, reducing Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). WhatsUp Gold's integrated log management provides easy visibility and control of device log data, allowing monitoring, filtering, searching, and alerting on syslogs or Windows logs. Archive logs to comply with regulatory requirements and preserve historical data, all through a user-friendly interface. Streamline network monitoring and issue resolution with WhatsUp Gold, making network management efficient and hassle-free.

Progress Software

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

Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. WhatsUp Gold

January 2026

Free Report: Plixer Scrutinizer vs. WhatsUp Gold

Find out what your peers are saying about Plixer Scrutinizer vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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