Acalvio ShadowPlex vs iMISP: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros and cons, compared head to head.
Acalvio ShadowPlex is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Acalvio Technologies. iMISP is a free honeypots & deception tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best honeypots & deception fit for your security stack. Independent and vendor-neutral: we never sell rankings.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Mid-market and enterprise security teams with exposed APIs, web applications, or IoT infrastructure should use ShadowPlex to catch reconnaissance and credential attacks before they reach production systems. The platform's external-facing decoys generate high-fidelity threat intelligence in STIX format while monitoring for password spraying and brute-force attempts, directly addressing ID.RA and DE.CM in NIST CSF 2.0. Skip this if your attack surface is entirely internal or if you need deep visibility into post-breach lateral movement; ShadowPlex is optimized for early detection at the perimeter, not incident response.
Security teams defending instant messaging platforms against credential theft and malware distribution will find iMISP's free honeypot deployment useful for generating behavioral baselines of attacker tactics specific to IM channels. The tool's availability as open source on GitHub with active maintenance means you can customize detection rules without vendor lock-in. Skip this if you need centralized alerting or integration with existing SIEM platforms; iMISP is a tactical detection component, not a platform, and requires hands-on tuning to reduce false positives in high-volume IM environments.
