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Auvik Network Management (ANM) vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

Auvik Network Management (ANM)
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
2nd
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
221
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), Network Troubleshooting (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
73rd
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) category, the mindshare of Auvik Network Management (ANM) is 4.6%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 4.0%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Auvik Network Management (ANM)4.6%
Plixer Scrutinizer4.0%
Other91.4%
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2349501 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Technical Services at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Real-time network visibility has transformed how we pinpoint LAN bottlenecks and resolve issues faster
The only area for improvement is pricing. Otherwise, the tool is great. I think the pricing is acceptable. If you are working with resellers, it makes it a little bit difficult sometimes for the reseller to be able to make too much, as the margin is not all that significant. However, we are not getting rid of Auvik Network Management (ANM). That is the only thing in my opinion that Auvik Network Management (ANM) can do a little bit better on—maybe just the pricing—but it is a great tool. We are not replacing it with anything and we are not removing it at all. It is a great tool, and we are able to monitor our own internal network as well as that of our customers. In most cases, we have not had any complaints about neither from my techs or from myself about its functionality, as it works really.
Ira Mulyanti - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Auvik has definitely impressed me; it seems like it's very lightweight, yet it gives you a lot of features."
"I've existed in this organization for eight years and it has scaled up tremendously, and that wouldn't have been possible without a tool like this."
"One feature that is the most valuable for me is that after we added all of our firewalls, every time we make any configuration change in the firewall, it creates a backup and retains the change history for months. We can see and find out when a change was done and what was the change. The best part is that if we want to compare the current config with the config from two weeks ago, the tool pulls up both config files and tells us what the difference is."
"They allow for integrations into their platform via API with PSA tools like ConnectWise Manage and ConnectWise Automate. They have a lot of add-on integration and plug-ins for a lot of the big names and IT RMM stacks commonly used in my industry space. These integrations are absolutely valuable. With the integrations into ConnectWise, we are able to automatically create and close tickets across systems."
"The product has helped to decrease our main time to resolution by 50%."
"The most valuable feature is that it will back up the configuration and that it will keep multiple copies of it. If a change is made to the configuration by someone else in my company, for example, and something goes wrong, I can bring up the previous configuration and the current configuration, and it will show me exactly what's different. It greatly reduces the time it would take to troubleshoot because I can pinpoint exactly what was done. I can then either change whatever it may have been or roll back the change."
"Auvik is a fantastic network monitoring tool that does everything PRTG does, plus all the things that SolarWinds and CM did."
"My team has a lot of different needs and they will use it for monitoring server performance issues and the like. But the most important functionality for me, over the years, has been port mapping when I'm trying to figure out where a network has stopped responding."
"We didn't experience any bugs."
"I really feel, after reviewing three at one time and knowing some other ones, the bang and performance for the dollars, and the capacity and the flexibility; it's really second to none in those situations."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It helps us determine what is going on with our Internet and who is hogging it all up, and 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."
"Compared to other solutions, the functionality Scrutinizer delivers is better."
 

Cons

"More capabilities in terms of default OIDs, so we can leverage more of the information from SNMP would be good to see. It's been a while since I messed with the OIDs, but the last time I was trying to get additional information from printers, such as the model number. I was able to find that information, but it took a good amount of research to figure out how. I want to see more default capability regarding what information gets spit out from SNMP."
"Sometimes we get a generic device, then we can't tell what it is quickly from the details. Just having a better knowledge-based integration for determining what devices are, what they're make and models are, would be helpful."
"They can maybe provide some more best practices or guidance around how large a network should be. They can provide some cutoff points, such as, if you have 30 network devices, you might want to chunk that into a smaller subset or site. They can help you better plan and design how to create your Auvik sites, especially if you have a large environment."
"Auvik has less AI than what's readily available. I'd like for Auvik to incorporate more AI. I'm definitely a fan of more AI being integrated."
"I've been finding some features difficult. It might be because I'm used to PRTG, and Auvik works differently. When it comes to monitoring a simple IP address, Auvik makes it a bit harder and more complex because you have to create a service inside the site. It's not just creating a sensor and having it ping the device. You need to go to the site and create the service."
"There is room for improvement in the reporting aspect."
"I would like more customizable alerts."
"We had some issues with the licensing. You need to pay for premium to use NetFlow, and we had a problem with them counting the same device multiple times for licensing purposes. It was a little frustrating because the Auvik database in the background didn't see it as a single device even though it came from the same critical hardware and only had one serial number. However, it was in different groups, so it was counted two or three times. It took a while to work with the accounting team to get that sorted."
"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."
"We were trying to set up some configuration, but it just wasn't quite working properly; we couldn't get it set up properly."
"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."
"It would be useful if there was a way to back up the configuration information."
"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day."
"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."
"We couldn't get it set up properly."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing is very fair. The devices that stand to gain the most benefit from this product are the ones that are billed. In the case of routers, switches, and firewalls, I won't necessarily have the ability to put a management agent on them to gather errors and activity logs. This type of solution is a requirement for me to properly monitor and manage these devices. The devices that aren't being billed are workstation servers, etc. For those devices, I can put agents on them to monitor their health. It has a fair billing structure."
"We have a lot of problems with licensing in many other solutions, but I've never run into a problem with Auvik licensing. That's a pretty good vote of confidence."
"Auvik is fairly priced. The cost is what we expected considering network management. The benefits outweigh the cost for us."
"The pricing could be tiered so that you get a discount for more devices. We're fairly early on in the billing process, but it could be slightly cheaper."
"It's absolutely worth the money. I would probably charge more if I were them. They don't charge you for anything that's not a router, switch, or firewall controller, or a network device. So, you can throw anything like servers and ESX hosts."
"I'm unfamiliar with other network monitoring applications, as I've been using Auvik for so long, but it is one of the more expensive solutions. However, we have used the product to troubleshoot different issues. For example, one of our clients had an issue where their phones were constantly going down, and nobody could figure out the problem. We put Auvik on the network and found a loop in their switches, so it simplifies our lives, increases resolution speed, and makes us look like competent technicians."
"Its pricing is very reasonable. We had looked at other solutions where you pay based on the amount of traffic that was filtered through and analyzed. With Auvik, we pay by a billable device. We're not paying based on every single device we have. For one of the locations I have, one network element would likely be a billable device. So, every billable device has a network element, but not every network element is a billable device. If I have a location that has 50 network elements, then maybe 30 of them are billable devices. PCs, VoIP phones, and access points are monitored at no charge."
"It's priced fairly, avoiding any underestimation of its value."
"We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."
"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."
"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."
"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."
"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 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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business160
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Auvik?
The reason I give it an eight, rather than a nine or ten, relates to the premium price of Auvik Network Management (ANM). If the price were lower, my expectations would not be so high, and I would ...
What needs improvement with Auvik?
Regarding the features of Auvik Network Management (ANM), I believe that the primary improvement needed focuses on ensuring the live topology map is as accurate and easy to understand as possible, ...
What is your primary use case for Auvik?
My main use case for Auvik Network Management (ANM) is to have full visibility, so when I have Auvik Network Management (ANM) deployed with my customer, especially the full license, which includes ...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Auvik Network Management (ANM) vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.