Methodology

The reconciliation test

Storing addresses is easy; spreadsheets do it. The hard part of IP address management is keeping two versions of the truth in agreement — the record of what should be on each subnet, and what is actually answering there. So we judge every product by how it handles the gap between the two. Does it learn about the live network on its own, through scans, DHCP lease imports or SNMP reads of routers and switches? When it finds a host that is not on record, a record that has gone silent or two devices claiming one address, does it say so clearly? And once you know, how many steps does it take to put the record right?

Discovery scanners are held to the same test from the other side: how directly their findings can be carried back into a register. Subnet planning tools are judged on whether the plan they produce can live alongside the record rather than in a separate file that ages on its own.

Where the evidence comes from

We do not run a test lab and do not claim to. Each review is built from sources a reader can check:

• the vendor’s product pages, edition matrices, pricing pages and licence terms;
• administrator guides, system requirements and API documentation;
• release notes and changelogs, which show how actively a product is maintained and what has been fixed;
• public demos and trial or free editions, where a vendor offers them;
• source repositories and issue trackers for the open-source projects;
• administrator discussions in forums and communities, weighted towards detailed, specific reports.

A limitation admitted in a vendor’s own documentation or release notes carries more weight with us than a claim on a marketing page, because it is not something a vendor publishes lightly.

The six criteria

1. Live-network awareness. Which discovery methods are built in — ICMP, ARP, TCP probes, SNMP, DHCP lease reads — and which need plugins, agents or a separate product.
2. Drift reporting. Whether conflicts, undocumented hosts, stale records and filling scopes are flagged, and how visibly.
3. Record quality. Hierarchy of supernets and subnets, VLAN and VRF context, custom fields, change history and IPv6 parity.
4. Integration. DHCP and DNS integration (read or write), a documented API, CSV or Excel import and export.
5. Cost of ownership. Licence model, what the free or community edition leaves out, hosting requirements and the upkeep a small team takes on.
6. Safe acquisition. Whether the software comes from an unambiguous official source, with signed packages, published checksums or a maintained container image.

We do not publish scores. Two tools with the same total can suit opposite teams, and a number hides that. Each review says plainly where the product is strong, where it falls short and who should skip it.

How comparison tables are ordered

Category tables are ordered by the reconciliation test as it applies to that category, weighted for a small IT team — for example, how directly scan results flow back into a register on the discovery page. The note under each table states the reasoning. Placement is never sold; vendor links are plain links to each vendor’s official site and earn us nothing (see the affiliate disclosure).

Scanning and authorization

Discovery features probe networks, so every guide and review on this site assumes address space you administer, or a network whose owner has authorized the work in writing. We do not describe techniques for getting into networks you do not run, evading detection or intercepting other people’s traffic.

Keeping pages current

Each page shows the date it was last checked. When we update a page, licence terms, editions and supported platforms are rechecked against the vendor’s own site. Prices are given only when a vendor prints them, always “at the time of writing”; otherwise we describe the pricing model — per managed address, per module, per machine. Corrections go to editor@techscan365.lol.

Read more about who runs TechScan365, or go straight to the IPAM software comparison.