Acalvio ShadowPlex vs node-ftp-honeypot: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Acalvio ShadowPlex is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Acalvio Technologies. node-ftp-honeypot 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.
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.
Small security teams or researchers who need to observe FTP attack patterns without overhead will find node-ftp-honeypot useful; it's lightweight enough to run on minimal infrastructure and transparent about what it captures. The tool has 6 GitHub stars and sits in active use within honeypot communities, though it lacks the telemetry depth or multi-protocol coverage of commercial alternatives. This is not for teams needing alerting integration, threat intelligence feeds, or deception across SSH, HTTP, or database protocols; you're building a single-purpose FTP trap here.
