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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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
196
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (3rd), Network Troubleshooting (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (4th)
Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
54th
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
11th
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 June 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 2.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
 

Featured Reviews

HardeepSingh2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized dashboard and real-time picture of the network improve efficiency
We have integrated Auvik Network Management with PRTG and our ServiceNow ticketing tool through API. It automatically creates notifications and sends them to Teams and our ticketing tool. It saves a lot of time. It saved 40% to 50% of our time. Auvik Network Management's network map, together with the dashboard, gives me a real-time picture of my network. It allows me to see the inventory under all sites and devices. My company has 55 sites. Whenever I want to go to a site, I can navigate the network path, and it provides me with the topology directly from source to destination. It shows all events, such as downtime or critical warnings, in an easy-to-use manner. It provides information about device interfaces, device bandwidth, latency, etc. I just need to click to view more detailed information. I have never found a scenario where Auvik Network Management did not allow me to find my site or any device. I can use global search to find my device or site and get the information easily. However, proper configuration within Auvik is critical for accurate reporting, covering all interfaces and their utilization. Using the automated documentation capabilities of Auvik Network Management is very easy. Over the last year, I have been continuously exploring this, finding that the API integration with our other platforms is straightforward, as it just requires configuration on both ends for proper communication. I didn't find any issue so far. It has been awesome. The network map dashboard of Auvik Network Management gives me full visibility into my network, making it easy to troubleshoot issues with inbuilt tools such as traceroute, ping, and SNMP. It helps diagnose problems quickly without having to type commands manually. Real-time performance insights from Auvik Network Management are very critical for my organization as we currently manage 55 sites with over 2,000 devices, and we need to keep track of numerous services such as Active Directory, DNS, and many protocols, so Auvik is essential as it consolidates everything on one dashboard. Auvik Network Management has decreased our mean time to resolution by 40% to 50%. It allows us to see traffic flow in real time without needing to guess. I can just log into the Auvik dashboard and quickly get results. Auvik Network Management helps my organization troubleshoot network issues proactively by providing alerts and monitoring. Instead of waiting for user feedback, we receive alerts on issues such as high latency or device failures directly on the dashboard. The impact of Auvik Network Management on reducing business disruptions related to network issues is significant. It reduces our downtime, improves security, and simplifies complex tasks into straightforward ones, making it the best tool for managing our complex network. We have configured multiple notification channels. We get alerts through email or integrated platforms such as Teams, which helps streamline communication. It makes it easy to collect information from various devices. We just need to configure the collector, IP addresses, and connections, and get approval from both ends. It creates a unique ID, and it can communicate with those devices.
Ira Mulyanti - PeerSpot reviewer
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's auto-detection feature is something I haven't seen in other monitoring systems. We can keep track of our internal device tables to map the devices on the network. The diagram saves us a lot of time. Usually, our new customers don't provide much information about their networks, so we need to spend a lot of time logging into every single device, going into the CDP and LLDP, making nodes, building diagrams, and adding more information. Auvik does it instantaneously."
"The alerting feature has been a very key piece for us, especially in the data center because we manage it ourselves... Within the data center, we have an RDS farm that all the users from the facility connect to. Whenever something may be slow, we can look at the alerting and it helps us troubleshoot whether the issue is at the facility level or at an infrastructure level."
"I like Auvik's alerts. We can configure the alerts for a specific timeframe, i.e., we can set it to alert us when devices have been offline for a specific amount of minutes. If a device or port is flapping, we can ignore it or allow only the first alert to come in and mute the subsequent alerts."
"Automated configuration backups and automated network diagrams are the most valuable."
"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."
"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."
"The solution allows us to spend less time on setup and maintenance and less time on issue resolution."
"The solution provides detailed device information, including serial numbers, configurations, IP, warranty status, and when the device was purchased. This is very helpful when it comes to replacing old devices."
"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."
"The reporting and generating troubleshooting reports would be the best feature; our host-to-host conversation reporting."
"We didn't experience any bugs."
"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 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."
"As a network engineer, the ability to identify what traffic on the link is consuming all the bandwidth at any given time, and provide immediate feedback to the business, is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The dashboard needs to be more intuitive."
"I wish their bandwidth monitoring were more real-time than it currently is."
"I want to be able to customize the layout more in terms of showing the alert timeframes. For example, I would like to customize it to show all the alerts in the last three hours, six hours, etc. You should be able to customize it so that it shows you the most critical information. We don't need to see CPU usage. We only want to see the up and down time. It would be nice to filter out many of those metrics we don't use."
"I did not have the chance to go through all the aspects or services that Auvik Network Management provides, but what I dealt with was good, and there was not much to complain about. However, its pricing was a little bit higher."
"When you need to tailor an onboarding for a customer who wants different triggers and conditions for alerts that don't come out of the box in their default alert set for certain device types, you can make it happen and create those, but doing so isn't that easy."
"I want to see improvements to the interface, as it's data-heavy and challenging to navigate. This makes it harder to delegate and have junior staff look around and figure out the solution. A more straightforward interface would be a welcome improvement, whether by making it cleaner or more intuitive."
"One thing I would like to see is more functionality designed for managed services, such as multi-tenancy, to better manage things from an MSP perspective."
"I would like Auvik to offer an alternative method for backing up devices that don't support or have SNMP disabled, since currently, SNMP seems to be a prerequisite for any functionality in Auvik."
"We couldn't get it set up properly."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"From what I understand it is that the solution is not very scalable in a high volume traffic environment with a large number of flows."
"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."
"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

"The pricing was a little bit higher. They can work on that as everybody wants to save money."
"Auvik isn't cheap. There are two tiers: Essentials and Performance. We're still on the Essentials plan, but we may upgrade to Performance, which is double the price."
"It's always been very affordable."
"We have licenses per year. It is on a network device, so we pay for switches and firewalls. Everything else is included, e.g., computers, access points, and printers."
"It's great for small businesses, but when you start reviewing the pricing model, depending on how many devices, and what sub-devices you decide to pull in, it can get tricky as far as the pricing goes."
"While their pricing aligns with competitors, the benefit of having these additional devices monitored for free makes Auvik a compelling option."
"The pricing for Auvik Network Management (ANM) is great; it is comparable to other solutions, and for what it does, it actually provides more value for the money than some of the other major competitors."
"If you're a small company, Auvik is probably quite reasonable. But we've got 500 servers, so pricing suddenly became a lot more of an issue. There needs to be better bulk pricing for it."
"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."
"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."
"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."
"We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."
"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."
"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."
"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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?
I only know the pricing for the first year of Auvik Network Management (ANM). After that, pricing is managed by my manager.
What needs improvement with Auvik?
It gets cluttered depending on how your sites are organized with Auvik Network Management (ANM), and if you have a ton of sites or if you set up your sites in different ways. The documentation goes...
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: May 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.