LiveAction LiveNX vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

BlueCat and Plixer are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. BlueCat is ranked #50 with an average rating of 7.0, while Plixer is ranked #54 with an average rating of 8.0. BlueCat holds a 0.7% mindshare in NMS, compared to Plixer’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 77% of BlueCat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Plixer users who would recommend it.

LiveAction LiveNX

Read 8 LiveAction LiveNX reviews

1,355 Views
983 Comparison Views

77% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

982 Views
376 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

LiveAction LiveNX

Plixer Scrutinizer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

LiveAction LiveNX and Plixer Scrutinizer are network monitoring solutions aimed at enhancing network performance and visibility. LiveNX stands out in usability and customer support, while Scrutinizer offers advanced analytics for comprehensive network analysis.

Features: LiveNX provides visual analytics, dynamic path mapping, and efficient flow collection, emphasizing intuitive operation. Scrutinizer delivers extensive reporting, advanced security threat detection, and in-depth network behavior insights.

Room for Improvement: LiveNX could benefit from enhanced threat detection, increased reporting variety, and deeper forensic capabilities. Scrutinizer may improve with simpler deployment processes, user-friendly interfaces, and more streamlined operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: LiveNX offers straightforward deployment with well-structured onboarding and responsive support, facilitating a smooth transition. Scrutinizer has strong customer assistance but requires a more detailed setup due to its extensive functionality.

Pricing and ROI: LiveNX often has a higher initial cost, seen as delivering greater long-term value through improved efficiency and reduced downtime. Scrutinizer has competitive pricing aligned with its features, potentially offering faster ROI with its strong threat detection.

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

Buyer's Guide

LiveAction LiveNX 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

LiveAction LiveNX

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

50th

Average Rating

6.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (48th)

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

54th

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 LiveAction LiveNX is 0.7%, down from 1.1% 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

Mahesh Doshi

IT at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Very good reporting and alerting abilities but inadequate enhancement support

Before choosing the solution, it is important to rank your requirements from high to low priority. The solution has a lot of features but at a high price. If you will only use 30% of the solution to meet your requirements, then it would be better for you to explore other products. Find the solution that best fulfills your requirements. The solution itself is great. If I could use it properly, then I would rate it a seven out of ten. Unfortunately, support is a factor when determining usability or cost effectiveness. We did not receive the needed support so had to stop using the solution. For that reason, my overall rating for the solution is a five 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

"The alerting feature is very good because it allows you to set MOS alerts at various network junctures or data points."

"We provide a tool for our customers to manage their reports. It's an extremely highly featured platform capable of producing a lot of data. We spent quite a long time working with customers and LiveAction to create template reports, and they're very good and configurable. You get a lot of data if you don't configure them."

"The product has a very good graphical interface."

"Its analytical capability is really good."

"We don't have any complaints about the software. According to my team, it's a very good tool that's very intuitive."

"All in all, LiveAction LiveNX has become an indispensable tool for maintaining and improving our network's reliability and performance, ultimately supporting our organization's goal of providing timely and dependable delivery services."

"One of the valuable features is the ability to create CLI scripts on the fly to fix any issues. We were using it for QoS modeling to ensure that we were properly modeling QoS, and it basically said here is what you need to fix to get this QoS done, whether it is ACL or something else. It would either push or recommend. If you have the right credentials, you could also push. It is very good if you are a Cisco shop. It gives you reporting, latency, and bandwidth utilization for your applications, so you can do good capacity management planning. There are a lot of pieces that LiveNX can give you. It is a total NPM solution for SD-WAN."

"The intention and the idea of the filter is great."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

Cons

"The only downside to this software is the price."

"Sometimes the solution does not register devices properly and that is a bug."

"Improved documentation and more responsive customer support can help in addressing issues faster."

"The product is weak in multi-tenancy. We have to install multiple instances of LiveAction, whereas we would like to build it once for our customers."

"It is not as robust as other NPM solutions. For instance, there is a problem while labeling specific applications. It works well with well-known applications, but when you have to put in new applications that are not very known and set them up with names, ports, URLs, or some protocols, it is not as intuitive."

"The tool crashes sometimes when we try to pull reports simultaneously."

"This is a horrible solution and I think everything needs to be improved."

"They need to create a more simplified UI."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is fairly expensive compared to other products."

"We use the free version."

"It's very expensive."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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 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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

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 LiveAction LiveNX?

The product has a very good graphical interface.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LiveAction LiveNX?

The product is weak in multi-tenancy. We have to install multiple instances of LiveAction, whereas we would like to build it once for our customers. Most of these analytical packages have the same ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LiveAction LiveNX?

Primarily, we use the product for monitoring the standard utilization of circuits. The tool has the incredible ability to provide granular details about the traffic passing through an interface on ...

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.

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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.

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Compared 10% of the time

Meraki Dashboard vs LiveAction LiveNX

Compared 9% 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

LiveAction LiveNX

April 2025

Download LiveAction LiveNX product report

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

April 2025

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Also Known As

LiveNX

No data available

Overview

LiveAction develops IT visibility solutions designed to simplify network management. Initially developed to aid the US Department of Defense in the operation of its networks, LiveNX (Network Experience) features an innovative visual display, real-time big data analytics and deep control of routers and switches for unparalleled network administration. LiveNX accelerates troubleshooting with its QoS control, application-aware, and WAN functionality developed through engineering partnerships with Cisco Systems.

BlueCat

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

Tampa Electric, Digital First Media, Allscripts, Boxwood Technology

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

LiveAction LiveNX vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

April 2025

Free Report: LiveAction LiveNX vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

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

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