Acalvio ShadowPlex vs phpMyAdmin 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. phpMyAdmin 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.
Teams defending legacy infrastructure with exposed phpMyAdmin instances should deploy phpMyAdmin Honeypot to catch reconnaissance before it becomes lateral movement; it's free, requires minimal setup, and gives you visibility into attack patterns targeting your actual admin interfaces. The 68 GitHub stars and active maintenance suggest real operational use, though this is a single-purpose tool that won't replace a broader deception platform if you're running multiple exposed services. Skip this if your phpMyAdmin instances are already behind VPN or network segmentation; the honeypot's value collapses once attackers can't reach it.
