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Auvik Network Management (ANM) vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

 

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
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
189
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (3rd), Network Troubleshooting (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)
Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
54th
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
10th
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 May 2025, in the Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) category, the mindshare of Auvik Network Management (ANM) is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 2.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
 

Featured Reviews

Jeremy Campbell - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to get on top of issues before they become an outage
When I change IP addresses on a device or on a server, I have to wait for Auvik to figure out that change. It will tell me the device is offline until Auvik scans the whole subnet again and finds it. If I change 25 devices, I'll get 50 emails in a short time because they've gone offline. I'd love the ability to change that where I can update that device with the IP address without it going offline. That goes against the idea of a system that dynamically scans. It's information overload sometimes when you need to change a bunch of factors. You get inundated with emails. I would almost love a button whenever you first log in that says maintenance window, and then it would maybe take some of those alerts away. It's fairly intuitive but sometimes you have to search for things because it's hidden in the user interface, so I think that could be improved a little bit. The search could be better because they have these strange search terms. Instead of being able to look for what you want, you have to lay out the query in a specific way to get results. We've also been dealing with some weird bugs lately. We get alerts on miscellaneous items that go offline and online all the time. I've reached out to support, and they said that they've got a fix that they rolled out. However, we're still experiencing the issue, so I've got to work with them to fix that. They seem to be on top of the support.
Ronald Jansen - PeerSpot reviewer
Reporting is extensive, flexible, and can be custom-made in just a short time
In terms of additional features I'd like to see in the next release of Plixer Scrutinizer, I can't think of any because you can do some integration with other monitoring tools that are not strong in NetFlow or don't have NetFlow at all. There are also some integration possibilities in the product, plus there are alerts, too. Plixer Scrutinizer is a pretty complete product. 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboard and the network map give a real-time picture."
"Auvik's email alerts are convenient because we're always monitoring email, and it's easier to receive the alerts in your inbox."
"Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution. It's easier to find the devices on the network and pull out the information. Of course, the SNMP is also good to get the logs. It helps in the network debugging or if we have to find any problems."
"Being able to back up switch configurations through Auvik Network Management is an absolute necessity. It really helps us."
"I've found the topology mesh graph helpful, and I like the other features that factor into my work with Kubernetes."
"Credential management is the most valuable feature. It's helpful to have everything in one essential place."
"Among the most valuable features are the hardware life cycle and configuration backups, when applicable... When it does show you the hardware life cycle for, say, a Cisco device and the configuration backup, that's the most useful aspect for me as a network engineer."
"We like the alerts, the network mapping, and the backup of configurations."
"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."
"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 reporting and generating troubleshooting reports would be the best feature; our host-to-host conversation reporting."
"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"It requires a lot of hands-on maintenance when it comes to cleanup. That's probably the biggest problem I've had, because I don't have a dedicated resource to manually clean up stale records. I have a customer where it shows 4,000 devices because of the duplication of devices that I have to clean up."
"Auvik's network map is easy to use for someone who is experienced, but if someone is not too experienced with it, they might be overwhelmed, especially if they run a really big client network with hundreds of devices."
"In terms of the dashboard, maybe seeing on the map, for example, if you have an access point that's connected to switch one, and the access point you do not have credentials for, that could help us make management a bit easier."
"The network mapping is just okay when I consider what I would typically see in a network map... that whole overview map in a single pane of glass can be pretty messy and a little bit of a performance hog on computers. The network mapping needs improvement in Auvik, as a whole."
"Sometimes it's a little bit slow to load, but I can't think of anything else that could be improved."
"It's not the most intuitive dashboard."
"We're having difficulties with Auvik's regular maintenance windows. They do the maintenance on the cloud side, which affects the on-prem collectors that gather the logs from the different network assets."
"They can improve its monitoring capabilities for the physical servers or operating systems. At the moment, they do have some visibility. Even though you don't buy Auvik for monitoring your servers, and it is more for network monitoring, it would be nice if they can do end-to-end monitoring so that you don't have to use a different tool for operating system monitoring. You can get all the information from Auvik."
"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."
"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I do not have a whole lot of information on the pricing, but our pricing seems to be okay. Internally, we have not had any issues with it, so we have not had the need to discuss pricing."
"Compared to other products, Auvik's pricing is more feasible since you get all its features. You pay for licenses on a per network device basis. It monitors hypervisors, but does not bill for that. There are no additional costs, which is something that I like."
"Auvik is expensive, but given how much we use it and how many hours it is saving over the year, it is justified."
"Auvik's pricing... is pretty competitive."
"Auvik is significantly cheaper than what we were using before."
"Auvik offers two publicly available pricing tiers, but there are also additional options that require contacting a sales representative."
"I appreciated the way Auvik's pricing scaled with the size of my network. We're a non-profit, and they gave us a non-profit discount. I didn't do an exhaustive comparison, but I felt their pricing was pretty reasonable. I'm a cheap guy when it comes to spending in a non-profit, but I did feel that what I was getting out of them was a good value for my dollar."
"It's always been very affordable."
"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."
"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 have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."
"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."
"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."
"There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Auvik?
The most valuable feature for us in Auvik is the network topology.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Auvik?
Auvik is pricey, and we were paying a lot for it, especially when compared to SolarWinds.
What needs improvement with Auvik?
The network maps can be confusing due to the wide scope of the network, making it difficult to find specific details. Improvements in the network exclusions part would be helpful, as well as enhanc...
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.
 

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: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.