Ixia Hawkeye vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

Keysight Technologies and Plixer are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Keysight Technologies is ranked #83, while Plixer is ranked #75. Keysight Technologies holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Plixer’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Keysight Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Plixer users who would recommend it.

Ixia Hawkeye

Read 4 Ixia Hawkeye reviews

1,047 Views
691 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

1,610 Views
1,191 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Ixia Hawkeye

Plixer Scrutinizer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Ixia Hawkeye and Plixer Scrutinizer are competing products in the network performance monitoring market. Plixer Scrutinizer appears to have the upper hand due to its superior data analysis features, considered worth the investment.

Features: Ixia Hawkeye focuses on real-time network performance monitoring, automated testing, and proactive alerts. Plixer Scrutinizer offers comprehensive flow analysis, extensive drill-down options, and traffic visualization.

Room for Improvement: Ixia Hawkeye could benefit from enhanced flow analysis, more detailed traffic visualization, and additional customization options. Plixer Scrutinizer might improve its deployment process, offer more competitive pricing options, and simplify its initial setup.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Ixia Hawkeye is noted for its streamlined deployment and responsive customer service team, providing assistance throughout setup. Plixer Scrutinizer, despite a more intricate deployment, is supported by comprehensive documentation and knowledgeable technical support, making the complexity manageable.

Pricing and ROI: Ixia Hawkeye is recognized for lower upfront costs and rapid ROI, appealing to budget-conscious buyers. Plixer Scrutinizer, with higher initial costs, justifies the investment with high returns through enhanced capabilities and deeper insights.

To learn more, read our detailed Ixia Hawkeye vs. Plixer Scrutinizer Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Ixia Hawkeye vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

December 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

Ixia Hawkeye

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

83rd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Unified Communications Monitoring (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (63rd)

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

75th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Ixia Hawkeye is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.5%
Ixia Hawkeye	0.5%
Other	99.0%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

José Enrique Cano Rodriguez

Assistant Consultant at Tata Consultancy

A valuable tool for optimizing network performance and security with comprehensive network monitoring capabilities, user-friendly interface, and flexibility for scripting

Distinguishing itself from network management systems like SolarWinds Orion and Dataminer, Hawkeye offers a distinctive feature. It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games. In contrast, SolarWinds and Dataminer typically offer a more general evaluation of network health. Hawkeye's unique capability enables a detailed analysis of network performance through specific tests, allowing administrators to identify areas in need of improvement and take precise actions to enhance network performance.

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Ira Mulyanti

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.

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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

"Our customer was happiest with the price of this product."

"It empowers network administrators to access specialized and detailed views for specific tests, including video streaming and performance related to specific applications like video games."

"The ease of setup is the most valuable aspect of this solution. It's easy to set up and run tests."

"The most valuable feature is the deployment because it's very easy to deploy real flow through the network."

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

"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."

"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."

"The ability to view the status of the top-10 at a glance is helpful. We immediately know which link is over-utilized or heavily used... and it's all in real-time."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

Cons

"The customization of tests and even the results can be improved."

"Ixia has one flaw, which is that they do not print the license code on the paper licenses that are shipped to the customers."

"You can't delete more than one thing at a time. It would be great to be able to highlight three out of five things and delete them, whether it's a test or an actual report."

"Improvements in network performance are essential."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It cost us approximately 25,000 for two years. This is cheaper than ThousandEyes."

"In larger networks, the costs for licenses tend to be more reasonable, but for smaller networks, it appears relatively costly."

"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 have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."

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

"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."

"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."

"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."

"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."

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

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

University

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

Aurea CX Monitor vs Ixia Hawkeye

Compared 12% of the time

ThousandEyes vs Ixia Hawkeye

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs Ixia Hawkeye

Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 14% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 13% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 11% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Network Monitoring Software

January 2026

Download Ixia Hawkeye product report

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

January 2026

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Overview

Hawkeye quickly and effectively validates network performance, isolates problems, and proactively detects issues by running scheduled verification tests. Using a combination of hardware and software agents called Performance Endpoints, Hawkeye simulates application traffic and sends key performance metrics to a central console for fast action.

Keysight Technologies

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

EMA

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

Ixia Hawkeye vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

December 2025

Free Report: Ixia Hawkeye vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

Find out what your peers are saying about Ixia Hawkeye vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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