Plixer Scrutinizer vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Plixer and Broadcom are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #53 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.3. Plixer holds a 0.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to Broadcom’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Plixer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

1,336 Views
895 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 47 vRealize Network Insight reviews

1,764 Views
1,270 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

vRealize Network Insight and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in the network management and monitoring category. vRealize Network Insight holds the advantage with its strong network visualization and microsegmentation capabilities, whereas Scrutinizer excels in traffic analysis and security focus.

Features: vRealize Network Insight provides extensive network visualization, enabling effective flow monitoring, capacity management, and troubleshooting. It supports microsegmentation and assists in application migrations and firewall rule distribution. Plixer Scrutinizer is strong in detailed traffic analysis with advanced network flow monitoring and reporting. It integrates with Active Directory and Cisco Identity Services, providing enriched data context.

Room for Improvement: vRealize Network Insight could improve integration with third-party solutions, simplify its interface for non-technical users, and enhance user-friendliness. Plixer Scrutinizer needs enhancements in data visualization, easier integration with third-party applications, and improvements in configuration management. Users also suggest better scalability, reporting enhancements, and a more streamlined update process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both vRealize Network Insight and Plixer Scrutinizer are primarily deployed on-premises. vRealize Network Insight users rely on VMware's knowledgeable technical support. Plixer Scrutinizer is recognized for its ease of deployment and available demo options, though technical support experiences vary, with some unresolved cases.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight is considered expensive but offers significant ROI with its robust features, providing labor savings and network management efficiency. Plixer Scrutinizer offers competitive pricing linked to the number of devices and sensors, seen as reasonably priced for its value, making it accessible for larger networks. Both solutions help reduce operational costs and improve efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Plixer Scrutinizer vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. vRealize Network Insight

September 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) (11th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

40th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (41st)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.6%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
vRealize Network Insight	0.6%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.4%
Other	99.0%

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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Shaijith KB

Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)

Comprehensive management and detailed reports benefit operations while improvements are needed in support and maintenance

We have Tanzu and OpenShift. We have OpenShift, Canonical, and the Tanzu one. The Tanzu platform from VMware is a Kubernetes platform. We haven't completely installed Tanzu yet; we installed the vROps part. vRealize Network Insight is beneficial because you can control the East-West traffic. vRealize has a component called NSX, which has East-West traffic controlling and micro-segmentation, that is one of the best options, and we have the layer extension, layer 2 extension possible through NSX. If you have anything accountable in any business, even in a candy business, having proper accountability on what you are selling and buying will save a lot. If you don't know what you're selling and buying, you will end up with a loss. My team does not use the flow analytics feature; we have a security and network monitoring team, which is a different SOC team. I am using it as an administrator internally. We perform different tasks including costing analysis, capacity management, and many other things. vRealize Network Insight has a concern about the maintenance part, as it requires a person to monitor it completely. It's not something you install and your report will be generated automatically. You have to work on this properly to get the insights. vRealize Network Automation, vRealize Operations, and vRealize Network Insight are completely related to the network. I cannot say much about these network aspects because I am on the operations side, but overall, the vRealize suite is good for reporting perspective or any ISO-related documentation; this is very helpful. The product is called vRealize Operations Manager, and now it is referred to as Aria or vAria. I am now a Senior System Specialist. We use different metrics because we have multiple departments, and we can monitor utilization and comparisons with the previous year. On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a seven.

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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."

"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."

"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 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."

"As a network engineer, the ability to identify what traffic on the link is consuming all the bandwidth at any given time, and provide immediate feedback to the business, is the most valuable feature."

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

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"compare-to-competition; I would recommend the product. I don't think there is any other product like this on the market right now."

"The most valuable features are the packet trace flow and that the view of the whole environment is deep."

"The automation collects all the relationships between servers, allowing us to visualize these relationships and organize the migration into waves."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"We can see everything going on in NSX and get a good picture of our environment."

"The most valuable feature is being able to easily see the path that the VM traffic is taking, what ports are in use."

"It allows us to see how the network devices function as well as to see network glitches or fluctuations or dropping of packets."

"With this product, we can precisely identify communication patterns between virtual machines within our data center, whether it's east-east or east-west communication."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There is room for improvement around the data that they have on the website about solutions... they should have more templated solutions on their website. Going out and identifying how to do RTP performance with a Cisco router, or how to do application response times in an Arrista data center deployment was where most of the work was... They should spend some more time documenting solutions and putting together white papers."

"It would be useful if there was a way to back up the configuration information. E.g., if you wanted to deploy a new instance or disaster recovery, you could quite easily deploy and restore the config, as opposed to having to restore all the NetFlow data. If there was just a button that said "backup config information", that would be good."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"There is room for improvement when it comes to pricing because we pay here in Brazil, and all the costs are based on the dollar."

"The only reason I would not give it a nine or a 10 is for cost reasons. It seems to be one of those things that really belongs as part of the product inherently and not as an add-on. That would be my only concern."

"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."

"While it's not exactly a feature, what normally happens when we are trying to look at the VM flow portion is - although Network Insight does have options to integrate a few physical switches into it - we can't really get an end-to-end flow of the network. We might be using a few switches that are not supported by Network Insight. That is where they can improve, in the support for more physical switches and network devices."

"The UI, even though once you get to know it, it's easier, still it's hard to figure out by yourself. You have to go read, watch videos. It has a lot of data on it. So that is an issue."

"vRNI needs more remediation where it hooks into NSX."

"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."

"After you use it for a little while you become accustomed to it but the layout doesn't feel very intuitive. You have to dig around and find the exact place where you can find the information, where you can actually see your east-west traffic, etc. I would like them to bring that information more to the forefront, instead of having to find it."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"Cost always has room for improvement, you could always make it cheaper. But I think it's a good value for what you pay for it."

"It has brought more money into our company."

"It reduces costs. It takes something that may be challenging and makes it more usable and visual by being able to bring in tools, seeing what their impact is, such as microsegmentation and application rationalization, and seeing it quickly."

"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."

"It's a little expensive, but for what you're getting out of the product, you often see the trade-off. It depends on the type of licensing you have. It might be a little too pricey for some."

"The solution has reduced the time that we spend on other products. For example, with NSX, we were able to quickly find things that we would normally spend days trying to figure out."

"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	41

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 vRealize Network Insight?

The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?

In VMware you have to buy a separate license for it. We have VVF and VCF-type of licenses, and if you want to go with this NSX and sort of higher-end professional services, you need to go with VCF....

See all answers

What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?

There is room for improvement as not all cases are getting resolved, and we often do not get L3 support directly, having to go through L1 and L2, resulting in delays that usually are a headache for...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 28% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 21% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 20% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) for IT Operations vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 11% of the time

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Alluvio AppResponse vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 22% of the time

VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 13% of the time

DX NetOps vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 13% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 12% of the time

Cisco Intersight vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

August 2025

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

August 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

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

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It helps customers build an optimized, highly-available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks and provides operational views to manage and scale VMware NSX deployments.

Broadcom

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

NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. vRealize Network Insight

September 2025

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