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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
30th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
5th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 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 Virtual SAN is 1.9%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN1.9%
Pivot30.3%
Other97.8%
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…
Vladimir Simion - PeerSpot reviewer
Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support
The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it. My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful. They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.

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 most valuable feature is the ease of implementation."
"Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses."
"The performance of the solution is accurate and concise."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"It includes every feature that a traditional SAN offers and so much more."
"The feature I have found most valuable in VSAN is its high availability capability."
"It's quite easy to manage."
"A great feature is that I basically set it and forget it, as everything is automatic."
"Immediately we noticed huge performance gains, even on older hardware and once we implemented a 10GB link between both servers, the sync was near-instant after the initial sync was complete."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see compatibility and support for critical applications, like SAP."
"One of the biggest problems with HCI vendors was the lack of flexibility for adding resources"
"Snapshot notification would be a good addition."
"I would like to see more monitoring and alert tools."
"We just need more integration with Veeam."
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"I'd love to see more clarification for us folks who are smart enough to do some damage yet not smart enough to use CLI."
"If there was one feature I would like to see it would be a built-in subsystem for managing UPS backups shutdown procedures providing a way to initiate VM shutdown on all host servers, shut down the host servers, then put the fault-tolerant mirroring in standby, and finally shut down the StarWind SANs."
"We would like to see the documentation more fully developed."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $100,000 yearly."
"For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
"This solution has competitive prices and the implementation is very easy."
"If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."
"It's priced fairly. It was definitely cheaper than the competition. The licensing terms are straightforward and reasonable."
"I think the bang for the buck is much better with StarWind Virtual SAN."
"We are happy with the price."
"Licensing is based on nodes rather than TBs, which means that the users are free to increase storage capacity without putting thought into licensing."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business159
Midsize Enterprise54
Large Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
I had experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing through using the free version of StarWind Virtual SAN for testing purposes, so there was no cost involved during my evaluation. That made i...
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
One area for improvement regarding StarWind Virtual SAN is the lack of a full-feature trial. At the time I tested it, I had access only to the free version, which required using PowerShell scripts ...
 

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: September 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.