Plixer Scrutinizer vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

Plixer and Splunk are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #54 with an average rating of 8.0, while Splunk is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.7. Plixer holds a 0.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to Splunk’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Plixer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

971 Views
306 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 56 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

1,165 Views
351 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Splunk Observability Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in the monitoring and data analysis market. Splunk holds an edge in application performance and infrastructure monitoring through its integration capabilities, while Plixer is superior in real-time network traffic analysis and security insights.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud's notable features include comprehensive dashboards, integration with diverse data sources, and application performance monitoring. Plixer Scrutinizer offers real-time network traffic analysis, cross-platform visibility, and detailed reporting capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Splunk might benefit from reduced licensing costs, better user interface and automation features, and improved documentation. Plixer Scrutinizer could enhance deployment simplicity, scalability, and integration with more security tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk allows flexible deployment options in cloud and hybrid environments but faces challenges in setup complexity. Its technical support has improved but still varies in responsiveness. Plixer operates primarily on-premises with satisfactory customer service, needing improvements in workflow and support accessibility.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk is often costlier due to data volume-based licensing impacting large deployments, yet users value the features and ROI. Plixer is seen as cost-effective, with fees based on the number of devices monitored, offering notable ROI for network-centric analysis.

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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)

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Container Management (7th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.7%, up from 0.6% 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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Lakshmi Padaga

Java Developer at U.S. Bank

Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection

Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have had many requests to understand in the network which devices are connected to others. Most people don't have this information or are able to establish a map of data flow everywhere around the network. Scrutinizer can really help with this. We are using it to understand who is talking to what, how, and which protocols can help us to improve security and analyze flow."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"One feature I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer is the very extensive reporting. Reporting is very flexible, though sometimes you need a little bit of support from Plixer Scrutinizer to create custom-made reporting in a very short time. Reporting is a very strong feature of the product."

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

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"I like the fact that Splunk APM makes it easy to connect to the application database and run queries against the data."

"The product retains a lot of log data for subsequent analysis."

"The initial setup was straightforward. We didn't find it to be too complex."

"It supports proactive management, enhances security, and improves operational efficiency."

"Dashboards help the application support teams to have a quick look at how their systems are running. It helps other teams as well."

"The volume it handles is very good, including the number of metrics, the volume number of traces, and more."

"It has been beneficial for our IT infrastructure."

"The most valuable feature is log reporting."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

"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."

"Data retention needs improvement. Data retention is a thing where we are looking for a better way to collect flow data for a longer time to do forensic research on security incidents. By default, data retention is quite low. We need detailed data in safe storage for a longer time, e.g., for a couple of months. An improvement would be a way to export data into a secure long-term storage."

"From what I understand it is that the solution is not very scalable in a high volume traffic environment with a large number of flows."

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

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

"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."

"I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"Splunk APM should include a better correlation between resources and infrastructure monitoring."

"The solution's machine learning deployment is hard and should be made user-friendly."

"There is a lot of room for improvement with the automation."

"Splunk could be better integrated with configuration manager solutions so we can automatically resolve issues without human interference."

"There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts."

"It does not have a user-friendly interface and it is difficult to use."

"I would like to see an improvement and some innovation in the customer interface."

"Splunk APM's performance could be improved - at the moment, it's very slow and takes forever to give me what I want."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra."

"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."

"Splunk APM is expensive."

"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."

"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."

"This is an expensive solution."

"The solution's pricing is costly."

"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."

"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."

More Splunk Observability Cloud 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

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Retailer

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 SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SignalFx?

Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 15% of the time

LogicMonitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

SigNoz vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

May 2025

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring

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

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

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

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

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