Plixer Scrutinizer vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

Plixer and Progress Software are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #74, while Progress Software is ranked #31 with an average rating of 8.7. Plixer holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Progress Software’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Plixer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

1,510 Views
1,087 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

WhatsUp Gold

Read 25 WhatsUp Gold reviews

3,144 Views
1,729 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

WhatsUp Gold

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

WhatsUp Gold and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in network monitoring and security, with WhatsUp Gold having an advantage in pricing and customer support. Plixer Scrutinizer offers better advanced analytics and network traffic insights, which can justify its investment.

Features: WhatsUp Gold provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities, intuitive network mapping, performance dashboards, and alerting systems. It is suitable for organizations seeking straightforward solutions for network monitoring. Plixer Scrutinizer provides advanced data analytics, deep traffic analysis, and cybersecurity threat intelligence, making it ideal for those requiring detailed security insights.

Room for Improvement: WhatsUp Gold could enhance its data analytics capabilities, expand its traffic analysis depth, and integrate more advanced security features. Plixer Scrutinizer might improve by simplifying its user interface, offering more customizable dashboards, and streamlining the initial configuration process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WhatsUp Gold offers a straightforward deployment and robust customer support, focusing on easy accessibility for various organization sizes. Plixer Scrutinizer requires a more complex setup due to its detailed analytics but provides thorough documentation and support channels.

Pricing and ROI: WhatsUp Gold is praised for cost-effectiveness and flexible pricing plans, with quicker ROI, beneficial for small to mid-sized businesses. Plixer Scrutinizer, despite higher initial costs, offers long-term value and ROI through its significant data analysis capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Plixer Scrutinizer vs. WhatsUp Gold Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. WhatsUp Gold

December 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

74th

Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

12th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

WhatsUp Gold

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

31st

Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (29th), Server Monitoring (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Configuration Management (19th), Log Management (32nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
WhatsUp Gold	1.2%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.5%
Other	98.3%

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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Erik Cheng

Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet

Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains

The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

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

"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 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."

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

"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."

"It's agnostic as far as what your network gear is. As long as it supports an sFlow, JFlow, NetFlow, some kind of flow monitoring, Plixer will support it very well."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"The user interface is good enough."

"Our local support team provides excellent service."

"The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one link. You can go into a particular part of the topology map, scroll in, and see exactly which module it is."

"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."

"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of resources."

"The threshold alerting is the most valuable feature."

"Auto scanning is most valuable. It looks for rogue devices on your network."

"The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless."

More WhatsUp Gold pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user. All the monitoring is from inside out, we need something that also can give us from outside in."

"I think there are a few bugs now. Although they give some resolution for this, we cannot share the network remotely because of our company policy."

"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."

"Pricing is too high relative to how many devices we use. The price list is not linear to number of devices."

"Adding on services increases the cost and on the version we have there is no option for ATM monitoring."

"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."

"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."

"Users want SMS available via Whatsapp Gold. They don't want to go through third party SMS servers. The solution should work to make this possible."

More WhatsUp Gold cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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 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."

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

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."

"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."

"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."

"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."

"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."

"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."

"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."

"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."

More WhatsUp Gold pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

11%

Computer Software 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	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What do you like most about WhatsUp Gold?

The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?

Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?

It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.

See all answers

Comparisons

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 13% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 12% of the time

Kentik vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 11% of the time

LiveNX vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 7% of the time

More Plixer Scrutinizer Competitors

PRTG Network Monitor vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 7% of the time

Grafana vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 5% of the time

LibreNMS vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 5% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

ManageEngine OpManager vs WhatsUp Gold

Compared 4% of the time

More WhatsUp Gold Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

December 2025

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Buyer's Guide

WhatsUp Gold

December 2025

Download WhatsUp Gold product report

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

Explore and manage your entire network infrastructure effortlessly with WhatsUp Gold's robust layer 2/3 discovery, creating a detailed interactive map from the edge to the cloud. Monitor devices, wireless controllers, servers, virtual machines, applications, and traffic flows across various environments. Real-time alerts ensure optimal performance, allowing you to meet or exceed SLAs. The platform offers customizable maps, dashboards, and alerts for easy network management. Quickly resolve issues with intuitive workflows, reducing Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). WhatsUp Gold's integrated log management provides easy visibility and control of device log data, allowing monitoring, filtering, searching, and alerting on syslogs or Windows logs. Archive logs to comply with regulatory requirements and preserve historical data, all through a user-friendly interface. Streamline network monitoring and issue resolution with WhatsUp Gold, making network management efficient and hassle-free.

Progress Software

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

Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer vs. WhatsUp Gold

December 2025

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