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: September 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

52nd

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 October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 11.4%, up from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Zabbix	11.4%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.4%
Other	88.2%

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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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.…

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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

"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 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."

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

"There are other tools out there that will do what Scrutinizer does. But what I have found with Scrutinizer is that it does it very quickly. I've taken 25 million individual data fragments from the different sensors, and it has graphed that and mapped it and presented a picture within 30 seconds. It has a very efficient database algorithm that I am really impressed with."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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

"We use Zabbix to monitor our organization's IT infrastructure and workstations. We don't use Microsoft Intune since it's expensive. The tool's real-time alerting system has proved crucial for us, particularly when a new device joins a network that is not one of our own devices. It notifies us about the presence of this new device, allowing us to investigate further. Additionally, it alerts us about disk usage, memory usage, and the software installed on the machine."

"The initial setup was not complex."

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

"We are able to monitor our virtual infrastructure, virtual machines, windows servers, databases, and the network using a simple network management protocol. We are able to pull almost all the metrics that we want, receive notifications, and have them integrate with telegrams for certain devices that are critical, such as UPSs."

"The solution is open-source, easy to manage, and user-friendly making it easy for anyone to use."

"We detect problems before the customer does and before it actually happens using the predictive functions in Zabbix."

"Zabbix is both stable and scalable."

"The initial setup was very quick. The first time it was long because I didn't know it yet. I was only using Windows. The first time was very difficult because of the operating system."

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."

"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."

"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 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."

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

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"Zabbix technical support is sold separately."

"Zabbix isn't very good at automation just yet."

"My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement."

"There are not too much documentation or manuals. We found the tutorials very easy to understand but do not go deep enough in the use of Zabbix. We need more manuals, proper use, documentation, etc."

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

"The product delivers false positives during reporting because of flapping. Other reasonably priced alternatives may have better performance."

"The event correlation could be better."

"I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE."

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."

"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."

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

"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 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 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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"It is open source. If you want to have a subscription or official support, you can pay for it. They have different plans, which are not that expensive. The plans are based on per monitoring server, not per monitored equipment. So, it is not at all expensive, and you can also live without the support if you want a cheaper option."

"I was using the free, Community Edition."

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

"It’s free of cost."

"If you have 20,000 hosts, the support costs around €95,000 for a year."

"It is reasonable."

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.

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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

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

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	53
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	34

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?

If you want to save costs, you can use Zabbix.

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

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 con...

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

NetXMS vs Zabbix

Compared 5% of the time

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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