Plixer Scrutinizer vs Zabbix comparison

Read 107 Zabbix reviews

24,598 Views
15,005 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: July 2025).

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. Zabbix

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,295 peers since 2012

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

55th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)

Zabbix

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (9th), Server Monitoring (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 Zabbix is 12.3%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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.

Read full review

B Ahmed

Manager, Information Technology Zara & Inditex at Cenomi

Enables seamless global client monitoring with reliable remote connectivity

I use the solution to provide a perfect environment for remote connectivity with my clients. Many tools that I require for system maintenance are included. I can easily monitor all of my clients throughout the world I did not give much thought to it, however, improvements could be made to Zabbix.…

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We didn't experience any bugs."

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

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

"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 resource usage, CPU utilization, disk usage, network monitoring, network performance, and alerting features are invaluable."

"The most valuable features in Zabbix are those that help us overcome bottlenecks in CPU usage, as well as reduce memory delay. I know that we have only reached the tip of the iceberg of what Zabbix's features can do for us, and we have not used all of them yet."

"The flexibility of this solution is amazing."

"The most valuable feature is network traffic monitoring."

"It's the best solution. Great. I would rate the overall solution ten out of ten."

"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."

"Every new asset placed in the environment can be automatically detected, predicting human failures."

"The performance and bandwidth are valuable features."

More Zabbix 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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"The stability could be better."

"Even though it’s such a powerful monitoring system, it would be more helpful if it had a flexible UI."

"In terms of user-friendliness, large maps could be more interactive. We should be able to click on some areas and move some objects. It would make it simpler to see things while analyzing some dedicated parameters."

"I would like for this solution to be more cloud-friendly."

"Zabbix is powerful, but it is difficult to understand initially. There are many things that can be improved, but we might not be using Zabbix to its fullest extent. The software has more features than we need."

"There are a lot of areas for improvement, specifically in the dashboards and reports functionalities."

"In the next release, I'm hoping for features targeted towards larger users with more customizable options. Despite this, I think pre-canned reports that can be used straight out of the box would be beneficial rather than having to configure each report individually. Additionally, a deeper dive into software configurations on the machines would be useful, although I understand there may be challenges in implementing this due to scripting requirements. More documentation would also be appreciated."

"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."

More Zabbix 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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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 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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"We use the open-source version of Zabbix."

"Zabbix is free but if you use it in production then you have to pay for it."

"It is reasonable."

"It is freeware. We still use the free version of Zabbix."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."

"This solution is completely open-source, so it is quite affordable."

"The solution is open source so is free."

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

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

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.

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.

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.

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?

We didn't use the commercial version. We used the free version.

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

I think it's the best solution for monitoring. I don't know any better.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Comparisons

Compared 25% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 22% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 17% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 16% of the time

LogicMonitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 11% of the time

More Plixer Scrutinizer Competitors

LibreNMS vs Zabbix

Compared 9% of the time

Checkmk vs Zabbix

Compared 9% of the time

Icinga vs Zabbix

Compared 6% of the time

NetXMS vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

Nagios XI vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

More Zabbix Competitors

Product Reports

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Plixer Scrutinizer

August 2025

Download Zabbix product report

July 2025

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