No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
212
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

"One feature we found useful was the product's complete ability to integrate with vCenter."
"The most valuable feature is the visual encoding."
"The technical support is very good."
"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 most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"The most valuable feature is the managed service, which has been an important part of monitoring our critical infrastructure."
"Virtualizing data infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN improves efficiency and reduces operational costs."
"From what we have implemented, we are not finding any lacking features or issues with our configuration that we would like to see improved."
"StarWind Virtual SAN is a very easy-to-use solution that can be quickly and easily deployed and configured without intimate and specific knowledge in the virtualization sphere."
"Without the need for any downtime, enterprises can simply grow their storage infrastructure using StarWind Virtual SAN by adding new servers or disks to the current infrastructure."
"We can lose a site or even two of our three, and we would lose no data and have no outage."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"Integration with virtualization platforms helped us to resolve many issues we were facing while using the physical storage."
 

Cons

"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources."
"The price of this solution is high compared to the competitors, so it should be lowered."
"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"Marketing needs improvement."
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"Server-side snapshots are one thing the Linux appliance can't do yet."
"Though I have learned some of the nuances with the upgrading of firmware/windows/etc., it would be nice to have a more efficient method of doing so."
"I hope you can try to have a multiple deployment option like ceph which covers several nodes and replicas"
"However, I would absolutely like to see a lot more on the monitoring side."
"The software is very deep, complex and profound with many features and the learning resources were pretty tough to find."
"While using StarWind Virtual SAN so far, I have not found anything missing."
"StarWind Virtual SAN could be improved, and I wish the management GUI worked better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
"This is a good, economical solution compared to data storage systems."
"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."
"StarWind is a low-cost, full-featured alternative to the traditional SAN environment, and their support will guide you every step of the setup."
"If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."
"This solution is very accessible and the pro-level for support is well worth the cost."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
906,887 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
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 Enterprise56
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 acceptable for now, but I hope in the future we can find a better offer.
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
StarWind Virtual SAN can be improved by adding a certificate with the virtual switch in Hyper-V, reducing the license cost, and not having a minimum of 3 TB requirement.
What is your primary use case for StarWind Virtual SAN?
My main use case for StarWind Virtual SAN is for clustering in our store, specifically using Windows OS and Hyper-V for the virtual machine. In our store, we have services for our customers, and I ...
 

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.
906,887 professionals have used our research since 2012.