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Scale Computing Platform vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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

Scale Computing Platform
Ranking in HCI
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Edge Computing Platforms (1st)
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Scale Computing Platform is 2.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 1.9%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance1.9%
Scale Computing Platform2.8%
Other95.3%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Joel-Gonzalez - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees
Provides ease of management with great support and easy setup
It provides a dashboard. You can adjust the signature of the drives to prioritize certain servers over others It gives the ease of management for a small IT department. There could be an easier way to see which servers are on each node. It shows you a small graphical interface, but you have to…
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School
Proactive support with improved speed and resilience
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It gives the ease of management for a small IT department."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the nice GUI."
"I would advise others they should use this solution instead of traditional servers because it's safer, and better for the company."
"The stability is very good; I have no complaints there, as there aren't bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"The most valuable feature of Scale Computing HC3 is if one of the devices fails, you won't even notice, the service maintains operation. The customers don't have to waste two, or three days on delays. Additionally, you do not have to waste time with recovery software, it is a lot easier."
"Scale Computing HC3 is highly stable."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The full suite of redundancy gives a nice sense of security for the whole environment."
"We now host all of our VMWare ESXi environments on the StarWind boxes and we wouldn't look back."
"Their support team is extremely helpful, and they are pretty friendly and knowledgeable."
"The simplicity and ease of managing the system are very valuable aspects of the solution."
"I'm very happy, it's exactly the solution I wanted to the problem, then extra on top."
"StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has positively impacted my organization by giving us high availability."
"The solution provides hyper-converged storage for cluster virtualization hosts and is used alongside Hyper-V for a highly secure, robust, resilient storage solution, allowing me to expand my virtualization footprint while reducing my overall physical server footprint."
"I love StarWind HCA because of the cost and the redundancy."
 

Cons

"The product struggles to cope with bigger workloads. In the next release, I'd like some backup solutions to be added."
"I've had so many issues with the sales team when I was looking to make some improvements, and improve the performance. They would create so many excuses to force me to buy new nodes all the time and not let me add more memory to each node."
"On the fly, you cannot do anything on Scale Computing HC3, though it is a very rarely needed area."
"There could be an easier way to see which servers are on each node"
"The product could use a better control center."
"Scale HC3 improvements would involve literally fixing up the replication."
"The snapshot technology takes up 500 times more space compared to other solutions."
"Scale Computing HC3 said in an announcement they were going to integrate with a backup service which would be good. If they could do this it would be beneficial."
"The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me."
"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."
"Shipping options should be explained in detail and offer more white glove delivery options even if it comes at an additional cost for some SMBs without docks."
"A possible thing is perhaps a customer portal to schedule a time with support online via a calendar."
"The proactive monitoring is nice. However, the response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"We did have some issues with shipping the product to one our sites."
"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone."
"We would like more complete documentation to manage on your own without support - even though they are great to work with."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"rate HC3's pricing a five out of ten since it is affordable."
"The product is worth the money, but I would not say it's very cheap or very expensive."
"I pay for Scale Computing HC3 and it includes customer service for one year. We paid for an additional year for customer service but that includes the updates and everything for the software. Additionally, the licensing is for Windows, which is the same for everybody."
"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"Its cost was reasonable."
"We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
6%
Construction Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Educational Organization
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Scale Computing HC3?
There could be an easier way to see which servers are on each node. It shows you a small graphical interface, but you have to see them all, and you have to really struggle to figure out which nodes...
What is your primary use case for Scale Computing HC3?
It provides a dashboard. You can adjust the signature of the drives to prioritize certain servers over others.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
I think nothing needs improvement in StarWind HyperConverged Appliance.
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
My main use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is server failover. I use StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for server failover to ensure high availability for the server.
 

Also Known As

Scale Computing HC3
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Resorts World Las Vegas, Stena, Telford Offshore, Goodwill, Sandals, Jerry's Enterprises, Mendard's Royal Farms, Delhaize, Benchmark Electronics, Classic Hotels, Genting Casino, Lindt, Sainsbury's, Landmark Cinemas, Golden Queen Mining, Coca Cola. Holiday Inn, Iron County School District, Sevier County Bank, City of St. Cloud Minnesota, Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly, KIB Electronics, Brake Masters, Lincoln County Hospital, Ohio Summit County Board of Elections
Sears Home and Franchise Business
Find out what your peers are saying about Scale Computing Platform vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.