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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
29th
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
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Pivot3 is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1124199 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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 most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"The hardware footprint is great. We've got two 2U servers which replaced four 2U servers. Granted, they were about three years old at that point, but we actually increased our processing capacity by about 50 percent while keeping our storage capacity about the same. We've actually been able to downgrade to a half rack from a full rack because we've gotten rid of some of our network equipment and some of our additional storage arrays."
"It is the perfect solution for hyper-convergence at a fair price. Our customers have Hyper-V and VMware environments, with Windows servers and Linux."
"The most valuable feature is the high-availability. We have three nodes, and all data will be synched instantly through all the nodes. Even if we had a disaster where two nodes failed, containing dozens of critical machines, almost automatically, all the loads would be run on the remaining node."
"The most valuable aspect of StarWind is the all-in-one solution that they provide."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"The redundancy of two identical nodes that can run alone allows us to have truly "no single point of failure" in our computing and primary storage infrastructure."
"StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature."
"Overall, the solution has improved our system's performance. I was concerned about the physical-to-virtual conversion of our database server. It's actually much faster now, as a virtualized host on this Hyper-V cluster."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources"
"The only area that surprised me had to do with the fact that each host runs a StarWind virtual machine used to maintain the health of the vSAN, which individually uses 24GB of memory per host. You should keep this in mind when determining the resources you will need when selecting hardware and components for your specific setup. If I knew that, I would have chosen to add more memory per host to make up for the use."
"The only real flaw that I have seen so far is this hard drive that was accidentally ejected because when it was received and added back into the RAID. There was an error there. It was not added back into the RAID correctly, so I have an outstanding hard disk. Apparently, a guy just knocked it with his hand as he was in my office, so it was just a small eject. He said that he didn't crash into anything. That is the only thing that has reared its head."
"The only thing that can use improvement is the StarWind Management Console and Command Center."
"The StarWind Command Center web portal could use some work."
"The monitoring and report software is a bit hit and miss."
"The truth is that the operation and support offered is good, but we consider that the product's usability could improve, as well as the data resynchronization time after an unexpected closure."
"We have to pay for support, which is high-end support. That can be expensive, at least for us."
"I wish I understood what goes into the StarWind software a little bit better. To me, it's kind of magic the way some of it works. As an IT professional, you don't really want things to be magic. I do wish there was a little more "Here's how it works." There could be more documentation given to administrators..."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"In terms of cost, a storage array is more expensive... For half the cost of Compellent, I got two hosts, more storage, and redundancy."
"It's an all in one package, making it very easy."
"The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."
"When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
"Its cost was reasonable."
"We didn't have any issue with pricing or any of the sales process."
"The HCA price is all-inclusive (setup, hardware, support, warranty), except for your standard Microsoft Server licensing."
"I was able to bring the price per year down by going out to a five-year plan."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Non Profit
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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?
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 inf...
What is your primary use case for StarWind HyperConverged Appliance?
We desperately needed to update yet downsize our data centre. We had six hosts for only approximately 14 or so Virtual machines and two old SANs. All of this was running on 10+ year-old refurbished...
 

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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.