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Pivot3 vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 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

Pivot3
Ranking in HCI
25th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind HyperConverged App...
Ranking in HCI
14th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Pivot3 is 1.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 1.9%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance1.9%
Pivot31.6%
Other96.5%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1124199 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Manager at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Stable, good technical support, and the the visual encoding works well
The most valuable feature is the visual encoding I would like to see better video compression. Snapshot notification would be a good addition. The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered. I have been using Pivot3 for between four and five years. This…
Russ Le Puill - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at St Peter's Church of England Aided School
Proactive support with improved speed and resilience
There was a long delay with shipping, which we weren't expecting, but we were kept updated throughout. It wasn't made clear to us that we needed to provide our own SFP modules to connect to our infrastructure, so that could have been a bit clearer. It would be amazing if there was, perhaps, a more automated process for updating the hosts themselves, although the maintenance mode works well. Our StarWind command center doesn't seem to have all the options available currently, which support is investigating for us.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The technical support is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter."
"It greatly streamlined the time it took to scale out the enterprise and it completely eliminated the need for a SAN/Storage engineer, with the simplicity the Pivot3 Stack Manager brought with it for managing storage."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"This solution has allowed us to take advantage of newer technologies, maintain our servers with ease, and reduce downtime."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"This solution improved our environment from an increased user experience and administrative experience."
"I thoroughly recommend this product; I wouldn't hesitate to choose it again."
"I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at."
"StarWind HCA has provided a much-needed upgrade to our aging VMware environment and infrastructure in terms of hardware, cost, and performance."
"StarWind HyperConverged Appliance has made the servers redundant, reducing downtime from just having a single standalone server with a much lower hardware cost than having an extra storage device which then reduces the redundancy unless purchasing much more hardware that increases the cost significantly."
 

Cons

"The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered."
"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources."
"Marketing needs improvement."
"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"The proactive monitoring is nice. However, the response time is usually several hours after the issue occurred."
"Over the past three years, there were two instances where our cluster had an issue, yet StarWind proactively notified me of those issues and effortlessly guided me through the process of correcting the issue with minimal effort on my part."
"This product is not one hundred percent enterprise-ready, so it is more suitable for SMB."
"The overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"The control center looks really good and looks like it could be very valuable. However, at the moment, not having email notifications makes it less worth it."
"The monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss. I don't use it much as it is a bit slow and buggy."
"The only issue we have seen is with the StarWind Server Manager. We have had to continually reboot the server in order to use it."
"It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"There is a bit of a start-up cost. Having never used HCAs before, I was reluctant to buy it. I would suggest that you jump in and do it, as I wish I hadn't wasted so much time."
"Its cost was reasonable."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"Our entire package was around $35,000 for everything, including three years of support."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
It's not the cheapest, however, the solution works incredibly well and is so simple to licence and maintain.
What needs improvement with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
I think nothing needs improvement in StarWind HyperConverged Appliance.
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
My main use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is server failover. I use StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for server failover to ensure high availability for the server.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SNHMC, HPD Software, The Hurlingham Club, NHS, Rochester Police Department, The Doe Run Company, 101 Casino, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
Sears Home and Franchise Business
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivot3 vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.