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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 May 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

"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 visual encoding."
"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 ease of implementation."
"During the failover, only a few seconds of downtime were seen, proving to me that I can count on StarWind during business hours and know that they have our back at the host level."
"Their support staff is comprised of true experts who can also communicate clearly."
"StarWind vSAN is a great solution to create a redundant two-node-only Hyper-V cluster, both for domain or workgroup scenarios."
"The feature I have found most valuable in VSAN is its high availability capability."
"This solution made it possible to make a quick start of the project on the transition from a physical environment to a virtual one in 2009 with minimal financial costs."
"To any who are considering this solution, I'd say that I've been really impressed with it so far."
"This product now allows us to migrate virtual machines between nodes as if we had a dedicated $100,000 SAN in the mix without the additional cost and management of the SAN."
"The product allows extreme flexibility for SAN and hyperconverged infrastructure."
 

Cons

"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources."
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"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."
"Marketing needs improvement."
"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"Initially, when we first started, the sync was horrible."
"The management console of StarWind Virtual SAN is pretty complex."
"This product could be improved with the inclusion of new health check procedures."
"I would say that the documentation is mostly great, however, some features could be expanded upon a bit."
"StarWind Virtual SAN requires a lot of network interfaces in order to provide the same data replication and node redundancy features."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"Diagnostics information or alerts on the state of systems could also be implemented to give more visibility."
"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided. That way, the customer doesn't have to log in to a specific server where the product is running."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"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."
"I think that purchasing StarWind Virtual SAN Professional Edition would be optimal for most."
"There are two tiers of support and in my opinion, support is worth the cost."
"The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
"The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
"I think the cost of this solution is quite fair."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"The premium support from StarWinds is a must have. The ability to have access to a storage engineer 24/7 is a must for a production environment."
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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
6%
 

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.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.