Plixer Scrutinizer vs SCOM comparison

Plixer and Microsoft are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #54 with an average rating of 8.0, while Microsoft is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.4. Plixer holds a 0.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to Microsoft’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Plixer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

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304 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SCOM

Read 83 SCOM reviews

3,660 Views
1,201 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

SCOM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

SCOM and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in IT monitoring, with SCOM excelling in Microsoft environments and Plixer Scrutinizer leading in network traffic analysis.

Features: SCOM offers robust capabilities in monitoring Microsoft applications, extensive management packs, and integration with other Microsoft tools. It provides flexible monitoring solutions and comprehensive dashboards with automated alerts. Plixer Scrutinizer specializes in network traffic analysis, delivering detailed traffic insights and extensive reporting capabilities. It integrates with various flow technologies, making it valuable for network monitoring.

Room for Improvement: SCOM needs a more intuitive interface and improved reporting functionalities, with challenges in customizing management packs and handling non-Microsoft environments. Plixer Scrutinizer users report complexity in updates and scalability issues. Both products could enhance the user interface and documentation for configuration processes, with these improvements more pronounced in Plixer.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SCOM is mainly deployed on-premises and in hybrid cloud settings, benefiting from Microsoft's support infrastructure, with positive sentiments when a Premier Support agreement exists. Plixer Scrutinizer is predominantly on-premises, with both products receiving commendable technical support. Microsoft's broader ecosystem often benefits larger enterprises.

Pricing and ROI: SCOM, linked to Enterprise Agreements, offers favorable terms for Microsoft ecosystem users, providing good ROI through minimized downtime and improved monitoring. Plixer Scrutinizer employs a device-based licensing model, competitively priced for network traffic analysis, though additional modules may incur extra costs. Both products deliver significant value, with SCOM being more cost-effective in Microsoft environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Plixer Scrutinizer vs. SCOM Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. SCOM

June 2025

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Helped 860,592 peers since 2012

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

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

54th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (11th)

SCOM

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

13th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Event Monitoring (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 1.8%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Ira Mulyanti

Sales Director at ARGA SOLUSI

An affordable product with great integration capabilities

Plixer Core Platform is a valuable feature and a good software. Plixer Scrutinizer uses NetFlow analysis to monitor whatever is there in a network. Price-wise, Plixer Scrutinizer is not an expensive product. Basically, Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that can integrate with any other brand or product in the market, so it is not an area of concern.

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MarcMermuys

ICT System Administrator at College of Europe

Has efficient monitoring with robust integration capabilities

We use SCOM to configure different monitors using several management packs. It integrates systems like Active Directory and correlates them, and it is used for monitoring and managing systems SCOM allows integration of several systems, providing correlation between different systems such as…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."

"The ability to view the status of the top-10 at a glance is helpful. We immediately know which link is over-utilized or heavily used... and it's all in real-time."

"The reporting and generating troubleshooting reports would be the best feature; our host-to-host conversation reporting."

"The solution helps to enrich the data context of our network traffic. It allows me to see what applications are most in use on a slightly historical basis, going back a day or week at tops. It allows me to tune QoS or traffic shaping around what's being used. It saves me from having to unnecessarily upgrade, if I don't need to."

"It shows us the saturation of the network of devices. It gives us a clear view of the flows in the network to understand, for instance, planning upgrades in the network to get an idea of what's going on the network on traffic flows. It gives us insight, for instance, on what's going on on our VPN Client. There are a lot of things where it provides very helpful information. It also gives us our security reports with quite detailed information on what's going on in the network, and whether there are data exfiltrations and so on."

"It helps us determine what is going on with our Internet and who is hogging it all up. If we get a real high throughput or a throughput that's going over and getting dropped fairly quickly, we can tell who (or what device) is consuming that traffic."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the ability to track what a device is doing and to go back historically. It is also able to go down to, and identify, very low levels of traffic."

"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system."

"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."

"We are able to do problem determination on runaway processes."

"The solution is scalable. If you want to monitor more you have to buy more licenses, but you can add on. We don't plan to increase usage."

"SCOM has improved our organization by simplifying the monitoring process. The system tells you what the bi-weekly or monthly usage was and that enables us to report this information to the manager. It shows if there was a connectivity issue that needs to be fixed and it's easier to concentrate on what needs to get fixed. System errors, therefore, get fixed faster."

"Setting up SCOM is straightforward and takes about an hour as long as you have all your firewalls and DNS settings in place."

"This solution saves us a lot of work because it reduces the effort that is required in order to start monitoring."

"It can send messages to our ticketing system."

More SCOM pros

Cons

"The reporting structure, the front-end GUI, also needs some work. It needs some getting used to. It works fairly well, but it's a technical tool rather than a user tool. You have to understand the structure of the databases before you can really use it."

"Knowing that they're coming out with a new user interface, that is an area where there is room for improvement. There are so many variables. They should limit the variables in the user interface and create some classes, like "simple," "novice," and "expert" to narrow down the variables within it."

"We couldn't get it set up properly."

"The visual acuity of how it presents data can sometimes be confusing. It takes a bit for people to spin up how to look at the graphs."

"There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point."

"Though Plixer Scrutinizer has network detection and response, it's an area that needs just a little more rounding out. Another room for improvement in the solution is its lack of SaaS offering which some customers were looking for. My company deals in small to medium businesses, mid-market, and some customers wanted the SaaS feature which Plixer Scrutinizer doesn't offer. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for it to have a SaaS offering because my company also deals with educational spaces and smaller businesses that just don't have the staff that can implement this. If there's either a managed service or SaaS-based offering to just make it a little easier for those types of customers, it would be a great addition to Plixer Scrutinizer."

"The solution creates a visual map of a particular location and how the network flows. You need to spend time to generate all those maps. If they could figure out a way to reduce the time needed to generate the maps, that would be great."

"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"The GI is difficult to work with and the reporting servers are also difficult."

"There are some negative points about this product. Sometimes, the capabilities of the software don't appear, and you can't directly see the results. You have to wait for a long period to refresh the policy to push it to the software or other patches."

"The initial setup should be easier to complete."

"The price could be improved."

"The console feature is very poor, and it would be very good for us if this were improved."

"Of course, price is always an issue with Microsoft and could be improved."

"We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting."

"In a future release, they should add email notification alerts."

More SCOM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We recently bought a license upgrade, so we will integrate more exporters. We upgraded from a 25 exporter license to a 50 exporter license. Therefore, there will be more flows, and this will be an extension. I don't know when we will purchase a faster server, because the server that we have is quite new."

"We pay our one-off cost for the licenses, per device, in blocks of 50. And then we pay an annual maintenance fee of about $15,000 Australian, which is, at this point in time, about $9,000 US, for those 250 devices. The upfront costs for the 250-license use, were about $50,000 Australian, which is about $32,000 US."

"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."

"It's about €10,000 a year for initial license and yearly maintenance costs. In addition, the hardware costs are about €10,000 once every five years."

"We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."

"I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive."

"Currently, the license for Plixer Scrutinizer is subscription-based and at a yearly fee. The price would depend on the amount of traffic you pull in. For example, there are several blocks from a 10K flow, a 40K flow, and a 100K flow, and based on the number of devices that you receive the flows from, that's the license, and it is not a per-interface pricing model, so that is a very strong, very competitive pricing feature of Plixer Scrutinizer. Licensing for the product is also not based on the number of storage, compared to some competing products that are priced based on the amount of storage you need, particularly based on the retention and the amount of data. Plixer Scrutinizer licensing is based on the device, and it's more in the direction of $10,000 because, with just $1,000, you don't have anything."

"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"We have an EA with Microsoft, and it comes as part of the EA."

"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."

"The platform is cost-effective due to our existing Microsoft support."

"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."

"There is a license needed to use this solution and it is paid annually."

"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."

"It is more expensive than the competition."

"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."

More SCOM pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Plixer Scrutinizer?

Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Plixer Scrutinizer?

I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Plixer Scrutinizer?

I don't have deep enough knowledge to comment on what requires improvements in Plixer Scrutinizer. In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required.

See all answers

What do you like most about SCOM?

The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?

I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SCOM?

SCOM is likely to be phased out in favor of more compatible tools like Icinga ( /products/icinga-reviews ) for application monitoring or when moving to cloud solutions like CloudWatch and Azure ( /...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 15% of the time

LogicMonitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

Zabbix vs SCOM

Compared 12% of the time

Datadog vs SCOM

Compared 6% of the time

LogicMonitor vs SCOM

Compared 5% of the time

Checkmk vs SCOM

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

SCOM

June 2025

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Also Known As

No data available

System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012

Overview

The Scrutinizer incident response system leverages network traffic analytics to provide active monitoring, visualization, and reporting of network and security incidents. The system quickly delivers the rich forensic data needed by IT professionals to support fast and efficient incident response.

Plixer

SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) is a cross-platform data center monitoring and reporting tool that checks the status of various objects defined within the environment, such as server hardware, system services, etc. The solution allows data center administrators to deploy, configure, manage, and monitor the operations, services, devices and applications of multiple enterprise IT systems via a single pane of glass. It is suitable for businesses of all sizes.

SCOM Features

SCOM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Application monitoring
Database monitoring
Threshold alerts
IT Asset Discovery
Predictive capabilities
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting
Application performance management console
Server availability and performance monitoring
Collaboration tools
Virtualization monitoring
Patch management
Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications
Application dependency mapping and thresholding

SCOM Benefits

There are several benefits to implementing SCOM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Management and monitoring of Windows as well as Unix/Linux platforms
Remotely connect to Windows machines and perform administrative tasks from the console itself
Custom dashboard creation to help monitor the datacenter with ease
Agent based monitoring
Integrates well with other Microsoft products
Easy to use and reliable

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SCOM solution.

A Manager at a financial services firm says, “The feature I like most about SCOM is that it is easy-to-use. I find it very user-friendly. I also like the knowledge base which it has. You can find the resolution to questions or issues directly within the SCOM itself. It will alert you with a recommendation of what you need to do at the same time. This sort of self-diagnosis or prompting is one of the great values you get from SCOM compared to other solutions.”

PeerSpot user Zahari Z., Information Technology Auditor at a financial services firm, mentions, “Availability monitoring is the feature I have found most valuable, as well as the capacity and ability to send notifications. There is a mechanism to set up a notification from the SCOM and whenever there is a drop in the availability the notification alerts not only for availability but for other issues as well. You can align thresholds according to the speed of your environment and you can have a threshold related notification, which is one of the useful features.”

Bill W., Sr. Systems Engineer at Arapahoe County Government, comments, “ I like some of their newer features, such as maintenance schedules, because SCOM records SLA and SLO time. When we patch, things are automatically put into maintenance mode so that the numbers for our systems being down, do not count against us.”

A Project Manager at a tech services company explains, “The feature I have found most valuable is the book feature. While we run the Sprint one we can add some setups for multiple sprints.”

A Systems Engineer at an educational organization states, “Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it.”

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Oxford Networks, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, UltiSat, Wipro, West Aurora School District 129, SUNY Geneseo College, Bloomington Public Schools, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Kitsap Credit Union, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Houston Texas, Carilion Clinic, Banner Health, IDEXX Laboratories, Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Goodwill Industries, Parmalat, Armstrong Coal Company, Flybe, James Walker

Dialog Telekom

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. SCOM

June 2025

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