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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
206
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Pivot3 is 1.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.2%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN2.2%
Pivot31.4%
Other96.4%
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 most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"The most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter."
"The technical support is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"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 StarWind Virtual SAN management console is intuitive and easy to use."
"Compared to other products that we looked at, the cost-saving was so great that choosing StarWind was a no-brainer."
"Even though we got rid of our SAN, we are still getting higher performance for significantly less outlay, dollar-wise."
"Failover happens smoothly, recovery and maintenance are less stressful, and we no longer need to worry about downtime."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to grow rapidly while still providing flexibility and reliability."
"Luckily, I came across Starwind VTL which is the same as having a physical tape library without the hassle of changing tapes, the whole process is automated and we have the option of choosing between multiple cloud storage providers such as Amazon, Wasabi, Azure, etc., and it has been working well without any issue with the jobs completed within 24 hours which meets our RTO while also saving us a few thousand dollars compared to a physical tape library."
"The best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers in my experience are that there is a free version and it can be used as hyper-converged storage over multiple nodes."
"It has been extremely stable for the three years we've been running it."
 

Cons

"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources."
"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."
"The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered."
"Marketing needs improvement."
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"I'm sure it needs bug fixes, and there are new features coming down the pipe, but it works great."
"The documentation could be clearer in terms of explaining the installation."
"Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs."
"In the next release, Starwind should include enhanced integration with cloud services for more seamless hybrid cloud operations. Advanced analytics and reporting tools would improve monitoring and decision-making."
"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."
"While StarWind.com excels in numerous areas, there are a couple of notable functionalities that it currently lacks."
"Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."
"The setup cost, pricing, and licensing are very straightforward. They are exactly what you expect."
"The free version is great to use for labs or test environments."
"Once you buy the license, you are free to build your own hardware solution based on your needs."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"The cost takes into account the number of nodes, so the size of the storage is not important."
"We evaluated other options and this one was the most cost-effective."
"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business166
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we are using the free version, so we did not incur any cost.
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
The better features are in the paid version, and I would like to see something from the graphical user interface in the free version, which is not available. I wanted to see better understanding of...
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
In production, I wanted to use StarWind Virtual SAN for shared storage. My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is shared storage. I wanted shared storage with local resources for Hyper-V, specif...
 

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: April 2026.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.