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OP5 Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

OP5 Monitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
38th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (37th)
Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
53rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of OP5 Monitor is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OP5 Monitor0.7%
Plixer Scrutinizer0.4%
Other98.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Sumanth Arshanapally - PeerSpot reviewer
Monitoring ease and cost-saving benefits enhance operational efficiency
The monitoring in OP5 Monitor is very easy because we can directly use custom plugins. We can write custom scripts and use those scripts directly. It's very low cost, open, and the dashboards are easy to see. We can extract the reports easily, and this is very easy to compare. Real-time monitoring in OP5 Monitor provides data every one minute or every five minutes, enabling us to get live data from the last one minute or last five minutes. OP5 Monitor gave us proper server availability, so we can always check whether a server goes down or the server CPU and memory decreases. Before reaching a particular bottleneck situation, we identified and fixed the issue, which helped us from a cost-saving business perspective. It helped us avoid application downtime.
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

"We can also observe whatever we want, and there are no limitations."
"It monitors and continuously tests everything that is of importance to you and your users. It could be everything from monitoring disk space to CPU usage to memory. It could include determining if the response time in your e-commerce platform is quick enough, or whether you have too many bounces from some of the pages on your website. You want to monitor anything that could cost you money or time or resources. You can do that with this system. It's very flexible."
"The best feature is that it is very relatable, stable, and scalable. The logger is a part of the software, but it's not the most important point of it."
"OP5 Monitor is a great choice due to its being built on an open-source monitoring tool and provides ample opportunity for customization based on specific support requirements. It is also user-friendly and easy to manage with a wide range of plugins available for use. In comparison to other enterprise tools, such as Micro Focus, OP5 Monitor stands out for its features and cost-effectiveness, making it the best tool in the market. Customization is one of the key strengths of the tool and provides a lot of capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to find support and plugins for the tool through online resources."
"The API makes it pretty easy to integrate with any system."
"With limited hardware or a virtual machine, you can address a huge network, hundreds of thousands of elements that need to be monitored. Other commercial software is not on that level."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The reporting and generating troubleshooting reports would be the best feature; our host-to-host conversation reporting."
"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."
"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 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

"We do not get performance reports properly."
"IT environments today are in constant flux. This is driven by the newer cloud technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker, etc. The whole Nagios-based monitoring system that OP5 is created on top of, is based on a host-service model. There is a need for a strategy on what to do with more dynamic environments. There is some cool stuff going on in that direction."
"The user interface is not what we are used to these days, and should be improved."
"OP5 Monitor could include application monitoring in addition to infrastructure monitoring. If application business transactions were monitored, it would be helpful."
"OP5 lacks some visualization, a feature that makes some other products nice. Op5 is built for purpose, which is fine, but if you compare it with some new products, the visualization is not so appealing, especially for management... If you don't need fancy visualizations, OP5 is fine."
"They need to improve the dashboard interface."
"The solution is useful for tweaking. However, there have been some negative experiences, such as limited report capabilities. The only report available is in PDF format, making it difficult for teams managing multiple servers to extract data in Excel format. The speaker recommends that the team improve the report capabilities to better serve users."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was not expensive. And because it's less demanding in terms of hardware, you don't have to pay for another SQL or other database license, and you can have a huge installation on one machine..."
"OP5 has a very low price as a solution, compared to many other solutions out there."
"The cost of the license and support are separate. If you want platinum call support, it will cost more than a regular call. I did not opt for it, as it is an additional cost."
"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."
"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."
"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."
"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."
"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."
"There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OP5 Monitor?
The price for OP5 Monitor is fine, but we don't know the exact price because it was managed by us; the customer themselves bought it and gave it to us to monitor.
What needs improvement with OP5 Monitor?
OP5 Monitor could include application monitoring in addition to infrastructure monitoring. If application business transactions were monitored, it would be helpful. For application-related issues, ...
What is your primary use case for OP5 Monitor?
Our previous use case for OP5 Monitor was server monitoring.
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

Svenska Spel, Carus, VGL, Tele2, Viking Line, Clas Ohlson, Vanderlande, Försäkringskassan
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 OP5 Monitor vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.