Plixer Scrutinizer vs Versa Director comparison

Plixer and Versa Networks are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #53 with an average rating of 8.0, while Versa Networks is ranked #50 with an average rating of 9.0. Plixer holds a 0.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to Versa Networks’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Plixer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Versa Networks users who would recommend it.

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

975 Views
383 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Versa Director

Read 4 Versa Director reviews

359 Views
266 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Versa Director

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Plixer Scrutinizer and Versa Director compete in network analysis and management solutions. Data comparisons indicate Plixer Scrutinizer gains an edge in ease of deployment and customer service, while Versa Director excels with its comprehensive features justifying the price.

Features: Plixer Scrutinizer offers comprehensive network traffic analytics, detailed visualizations, and in-depth security insights, focusing on security and traffic intelligence. Versa Director delivers extensive network management capabilities, efficient policy management, and scalability in multi-cloud environments, emphasizing control and management of network services.

Room for Improvement: Plixer Scrutinizer could enhance scalability, integrate with more third-party applications, and improve user interface customization. Versa Director might simplify deployment processes, broaden integration capabilities, and streamline user experience to cater to non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Plixer Scrutinizer is praised for its straightforward deployment and active customer support, facilitating seamless integration. Versa Director's deployment process is more complex due to its extensive functionalities, but it provides comprehensive support documents to aid the process.

Pricing and ROI: Plixer Scrutinizer offers competitive pricing and structured ROI, highlighting cost-effectiveness in network traffic monitoring. Versa Director features a higher setup cost but promises significant ROI through its versatile network management capabilities, reflecting its focus on functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed Plixer Scrutinizer vs. Versa Director Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. Versa Director

April 2025

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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

53rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)

Versa Director

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

50th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 Versa Director is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Ronald Jansen

Owner/President at Abraxax

Reporting is extensive, flexible, and can be custom-made in just a short time

In terms of additional features I'd like to see in the next release of Plixer Scrutinizer, I can't think of any because you can do some integration with other monitoring tools that are not strong in NetFlow or don't have NetFlow at all. There are also some integration possibilities in the product, plus there are alerts, too. Plixer Scrutinizer is a pretty complete product. 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.

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PriyankDubey

Product manager at Ernst & Young

User-friendly and simpler than its competitors

Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management. Its UI is also excellent compared to Fortinet and Cisco Versa Director's on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software are not integrated, so you have to buy a separate subscription for the SSL VPN. In…

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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

"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."

"There are other tools out there that will do what Scrutinizer does. But what I have found with Scrutinizer is that it does it very quickly. I've taken 25 million individual data fragments from the different sensors, and it has graphed that and mapped it and presented a picture within 30 seconds. It has a very efficient database algorithm that I am really impressed with."

"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."

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

"One of the most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer is the reporting, particularly how easy it is to drill down into the reports. Another valuable feature of the solution is its overall visibility. It's great. I also liked Plixer Scrutinizer in terms of deployment time and that it's very simple to set up. Once you get the appliance set up and connected, the customer starts to see results immediately, versus other solutions where that could take a while."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."

"The most valuable feature of Versa Director is analytics."

"The most valuable functionality is some of the policy pieces that are quite useful."

"Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management."

Cons

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

"They're working on the security areas, so it can provide more insight. What they have is still pretty much IP-concentric. If they were to make it IP and URL, they'd be a little bit ahead on that."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day. Every time we have the data, we are obliged to install a new server in order to integrate the old data, and every time it has a problem. Most of the time, we were obliged to scrap all the data because we couldn't transfer it to the new server. So, it would be very good if they could improve this part."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."

"Versa could be more AI-oriented."

"What needs improvement in Versa Director is maturity because, from an operating point of view, it's not mature enough. You'll still need to do a lot of research on Versa Director, so if it could mature faster, that would be very good."

"It requires some simplification."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."

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

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

"There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus."

"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."

"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."

"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

"Having to buy separate licenses for the on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software makes Versa Director very costly compared to other solutions like Fortinet and Cisco."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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.

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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 Versa Director?

Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Versa Director?

Versa could be more AI-oriented.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Versa Director?

We use the solution to monitor customer networks.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 26% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 25% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 18% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 18% of the time

LogicMonitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 14% of the time

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SolarWinds NPM vs Versa Director

Compared 56% of the time

Zabbix vs Versa Director

Compared 44% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Network Monitoring Software

April 2025

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Also Known As

No data available

Versa Networks Director

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

Versa Director is Versa Networks’ virtualization and service creation platform that simplifies the creation, automation and delivery of services using Versa WAN edge software, FlexVNF. Versa Director provides the essential management, monitoring and orchestration capabilities needed to deliver Versa’s Secure Cloud IP architecture network and security software services. Services supported by Versa include routing and advanced connectivity to direct traffic across multilink WAN access and simplify control for SD-WAN with embedded advanced security

Versa Networks

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. Versa Director

April 2025

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