Azure Bastion vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

Microsoft and Plixer are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.9, while Plixer is ranked #53 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 0.2% mindshare in NMS, compared to Plixer’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Plixer users who would recommend it.

Azure Bastion

Read 12 Azure Bastion reviews

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169 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

975 Views
383 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Azure Bastion

Plixer Scrutinizer

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Plixer Scrutinizer and Azure Bastion are solutions in the network management arena. Plixer Scrutinizer holds an edge for those needing detailed network traffic analysis, while Azure Bastion shines in environments integrated with Azure for secure remote access.

Features: Plixer Scrutinizer offers advanced network traffic analytics, detailed reporting, and in-depth logging capabilities. It provides tools for effective network performance monitoring and valuable insights into network behavior. Azure Bastion enables secure RDP/SSH connectivity without a public IP, seamless integration with Azure services, and a robust security model for remote access to virtual machines.

Room for Improvement: Plixer Scrutinizer could benefit from streamlined setup processes, enhanced user interface design, and improved scalability options. Azure Bastion might expand its feature set for non-Azure environments, provide more comprehensive usage analytics, and offer better support for complex network topologies.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Plixer Scrutinizer requires network configuration and can be complex, but boasts responsive customer service. Azure Bastion offers straightforward deployment for Azure infrastructure users, with support bolstered by the Azure platform, making it easier to deploy within the Azure ecosystem.

Pricing and ROI: Plixer Scrutinizer involves initial setup costs that might be substantial, but offers return on investment through enhanced network visibility and security. Azure Bastion's pricing aligns with Azure service models, providing predictable costs with good ROI for businesses leveraging Azure, benefiting from integration efficiencies and security improvements.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Bastion vs. Plixer Scrutinizer Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Bastion vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

April 2025

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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

Azure Bastion

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

24th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) (6th), Microsoft Security Suite (19th)

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

53rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Bastion is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Aladin Steiner

Head of Value Stream Azure at SmartIT Services AG

Has good scalability and provides secure access to the virtual machines

The product improved the security posture of our organization. We don’t have open ports and connect them to servers using it. We can carry out two-factor authentication to protect the devices with conditional access features. It would be nice to have a feature to copy and paste the files into servers. I rate the product a nine out of ten.

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Ronald Jansen

Owner/President at Abraxax

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.

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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

"As an Azure consultant, for me, it is the best way to give the administrator access as you can manage the permission - including who can access Bastion."

"Azure Bastion eliminates the need for a jump server by providing secure access to servers without hitting the public network."

"The product's setup is easy."

"Overall, I had a very positive experience."

"It provides all the security to us. Without getting on the internet, we can access our servers. We can access our desktop through our web browser. We don't need to run the mstsc command and login to the VM. All those things are not required."

"Azure Bastion makes it easy to provide quick virtual machine access to our customers."

"The ability to operate the product with scripting is excellent."

"The connection to virtual machines is very useful."

More Azure Bastion pros

"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."

"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."

"The reporting and generating troubleshooting reports would be the best feature; our host-to-host conversation reporting."

"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."

"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."

"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."

"We didn't experience any bugs."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

Cons

"While general support is valuable, having a detailed breakdown of the specific issues would contribute to a more streamlined and efficient resolution process."

"Azure Bastion does its job. However, it would be nice to have the capability to cut and paste across desktops, similar to old-fashioned Remote Desktop emulation."

"You are charged for retrieving your own data."

"There are some challenges because Bastion is more compatible with Edge but not with the other browsers. As an organization, it doesn't make sense that we have to use only Edge. We should be able to access Bastion over Chrome, Mozilla, or Opera. It should be our choice."

"The protocol speed could be faster."

"There is room for improvement with AI features. I would like to see integrated AI features with Azure Bastion, especially for connectivity issues."

"The solution breaks down sometimes."

"Speaking of AI, having Microsoft Copilot in Azure Bastion would be good."

More Azure Bastion cons

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

"The visual acuity of how it presents data can sometimes be confusing. It takes a bit for people to spin up how to look at the graphs."

"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a lower decision point than high-quality security for our organization. Better security comes at a cost, but it's worth it, and that's what we tell our customers."

"The tool is cheaply priced. I would say that the product is free to use."

"It does not save money for us."

"Azure Bastion's pricing is good."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."

"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Bastion?

Azure Bastion makes it easy to provide quick virtual machine access to our customers.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Bastion?

The price is not necessarily cheaper, but it is acceptable. We are satisfied with the licensing on a yearly basis.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Bastion?

Azure Bastion does its job. However, it would be nice to have the capability to cut and paste across desktops, similar to old-fashioned Remote ( /products/remote-reviews ) Desktop emulation. I am u...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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Compared 12% of the time

Zabbix vs Azure Bastion

Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 26% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 25% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 18% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 18% of the time

LogicMonitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 14% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Bastion

May 2025

Download Azure Bastion product report

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

April 2025

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Overview

Azure Bastion is a service you deploy that lets you connect to a virtual machine using your browser and the Azure portal. The Azure Bastion service is a fully platform-managed PaaS service that you provision inside your virtual network. It provides secure and seamless RDP/SSH connectivity to your virtual machines directly from the Azure portal over TLS. When you connect via Azure Bastion, your virtual machines do not need a public IP address, agent, or special client software.

Microsoft

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure Bastion vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

April 2025

Free Report: Azure Bastion vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Bastion vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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