Acalvio ShadowPlex vs ssh-honeypotd: 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. ssh-honeypotd 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.
Security teams running Linux perimeter infrastructure who need low-friction SSH deception will find ssh-honeypotd useful for capturing attack patterns without resource overhead. Written in C with minimal dependencies, it deploys faster and consumes less CPU than higher-interaction honeypots, making it practical for sustained operation on bandwidth-constrained networks. Skip this if you need alert correlation, threat intelligence feeds, or forensic analysis built in; ssh-honeypotd logs attempts but stops there, leaving investigation and response to your existing SIEM.
