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Pivot3 vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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
26th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Pivot3 is 1.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.3%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN2.3%
Pivot31.5%
Other96.2%
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…
Jccerong Heron - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Support team has guided us through deploying virtual storage on legacy hardware and reducing operational costs
The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price. In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are easy integration with the system installed in the data center. The integration with my existing systems in the data center works well, especially with VMware, as we already have a big cluster in VMware, and the easy integration with that is helpful to solve some problems with the platform. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs. My OPEX costs have gone down as we reutilize some old servers, and this reduces the CAPEX of hardware in the data center.

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."
"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 most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"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."
"We have High Availability, failover, redundancy, and the ability to move workloads on the fly with no impact on the organization."
"Ten gigabit Ethernet compatibility, support, ease of use, and management are some positive features."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"Training is also easy as it is just one system to learn."
"The price was right."
"The StarWind Virtual SAN provides a clever and unique solution to the Computing Split Brain problem."
"The ability for us to manage all of our nodes from the same console makes systems administration very easy."
"We are able to do maintenance by bringing down one node at a time, rather than having to schedule a complete shutdown."
 

Cons

"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources."
"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"Marketing needs improvement."
"The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"If you're in a high-performance-driven environment, I don't think this is the right solution."
"For someone entering the IT sector with little knowledge of storage, iSCSI, and virtual disks, they might not find the GUI immediately obvious."
"I think the setup could be streamlined a bit."
"The initial setup got a little confusing at a few points with differences between the VMware version in documentation vs the latest, etc."
"The price is a bit more expensive than analogs."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell. It is not entirely clear and there is quite a bit of documentation."
"I wish the sync after a failure, such as hardware failure or power-related issues, for example, was faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
"This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."
"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."
"The Price/Performance ratio for this solution is outstanding!"
"The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
"The support contract is well worth it. The price for it was very reasonable and their team has been very engaged whenever we reach out."
"Cost is affordable and licensing is smooth."
"This solution has a great price for the functionality."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business169
Midsize Enterprise55
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN is very cost-effective for mid-level companies like ours, costing about one-sixth of what we would pay for a hardware solution that would require redundant hardware due to our ...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
I'm not certain how StarWind Virtual SAN can be improved. Perhaps they could have better technical support available for troubleshooting on our own, with better guidance and instructions. However, ...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
We are operating in a remote area in Madagascar where networking and communication services are very limited, so we need a common storage solution for our two on-premises servers, which mirror each...
 

Also Known As

No data available
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SNHMC, HPD Software, The Hurlingham Club, NHS, Rochester Police Department, The Doe Run Company, 101 Casino, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivot3 vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
903,871 professionals have used our research since 2012.