This is a pricing analysis post. We sell Flowtriq, a competing product, so we are not a neutral party. Every figure listed here comes from publicly available pricing pages, documentation, and store listings as of May 2026. If any vendor updates their pricing, we will update this page.
The headline price is the starting point, not the total
When you see "$115/month" on a pricing page, your brain anchors to that number. But DDoS protection has more moving parts than most SaaS products. The license fee is one line item on an invoice that often includes activation fees, infrastructure costs, dashboard add-ons, support tier upgrades, and bandwidth overages.
None of this is deceptive. These costs are published. But they are spread across multiple pages, store categories, and footnotes. Unless you build a complete cost model before signing, the real number will surprise you at renewal time.
Hidden cost #1: Activation fees
FastNetMon Advanced charges an $85 one-time activation fee on all non-enterprise monthly plans. This is disclosed on their pricing page but easy to miss when comparing monthly rates. If you are evaluating three vendors and comparing their monthly costs, $85 seems small. But it is a cost that exists for some vendors and not others, and it compounds if you set up multiple instances or restart a subscription.
Hidden cost #2: Per-user dashboard charges
FastNetMon launched LiveView in April 2026, a web dashboard add-on priced at $70 per user per month ($720/user/year on annual billing). This is on top of the Advanced license. The dashboard is not included in any tier.
For context:
| Team Size | LiveView Cost (Monthly) | LiveView Cost (Annual) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $70/mo | $840/yr |
| 3 users | $210/mo | $2,520/yr |
| 5 users | $350/mo | $4,200/yr |
| 10 users | $700/mo | $8,400/yr |
At 5 users, the dashboard add-on alone costs more than the base 100 Gbps Advanced license ($350/month). Every team member who needs read-only dashboard access pays the same $70/month as an administrator. There is no discounted viewer tier.
Hidden cost #3: Per-component licensing
Andrisoft Wanguard uses per-component licensing rather than per-deployment or per-node pricing. According to their online store:
| Component | Annual License |
|---|---|
| Wanguard Sensor (detection) | $595/year |
| Wanguard Filter (mitigation) | $995/year |
| Wansight Sensor (monitoring only) | $345/year |
| DPDK Engine | $1,410/year |
A deployment with both detection and mitigation requires at least one Sensor and one Filter: $1,590/year minimum. If you use DPDK for high-speed packet processing, add another $1,410/year. A multi-site ISP with 3 locations, each needing detection and mitigation, pays $4,770/year in software licensing alone, before infrastructure, support upgrades, or any other costs.
Each Flow Sensor monitors a single flow exporter. If you have 5 routers exporting NetFlow, you need 5 Sensor licenses ($2,975/year). This is not hidden -- it is in their documentation -- but the per-component model means the total scales differently than you might expect from the per-license price.
Hidden cost #4: Capped support tickets
FastNetMon Advanced includes a fixed number of support tickets per month, tied to the bandwidth tier:
- 10 Gbps plan ($115/mo): 1 ticket/month
- 40 Gbps plan ($220/mo): 2 tickets/month
- 100 Gbps plan ($350/mo): 3 tickets/month
Additional tickets are available through a custom quote from their sales team, but there is no published overage rate. If you need more support than your allocation allows, you cannot self-serve purchase additional tickets in the moment.
Wanguard includes Standard Support with the subscription, but their Priority and Enterprise support tiers (the Enterprise tier guarantees sub-one-hour response, 24/7/365) are paid add-ons at prices that are not publicly listed.
Support costs are easy to overlook during evaluation because you evaluate the product when things are working. You discover the support constraints when things are not working, which is exactly the wrong time to learn you are out of tickets or on the wrong support tier.
Hidden cost #5: Dedicated server infrastructure
FastNetMon Advanced requires its own bare-metal or dedicated virtual server. Their documentation specifies at least 16 GB RAM, 8 CPU cores with SSE 4.2 support, and 150 GB+ SSD storage. That hardware typically costs $60 to $150/month from hosting providers, depending on the specs and provider.
Wanguard also runs on your own infrastructure. The software license does not include hosting. For multi-site deployments, each site needs its own server infrastructure.
SaaS-based alternatives like Flowtriq do not require dedicated servers because the detection engine runs as a lightweight agent on existing infrastructure and the dashboard is cloud-hosted. This is not a judgment on whether self-hosted or SaaS is better for your environment -- both models have trade-offs -- but the infrastructure cost is a real line item that belongs in the TCO calculation.
Hidden cost #6: Bandwidth tier lock-in
FastNetMon licenses are tied to a maximum monitored bandwidth. If your network traffic exceeds your licensed tier, you must upgrade. The pricing jumps are significant:
- 10 Gbps to 40 Gbps: +$105/month
- 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps: +$130/month
- 100 Gbps to Enterprise: custom pricing
Networks that experience seasonal traffic variation or organic growth may find themselves forced into a tier upgrade mid-contract. If your network normally runs at 8 Gbps but peaks at 12 Gbps during events, you need the 40 Gbps tier -- nearly doubling your license cost for occasional peaks.
Full cost comparison: Year 1 for a typical deployment
Let's model a realistic deployment: a hosting provider with 10 Gbps of monitored traffic, a 3-person NOC team, and a need for both detection and mitigation.
FastNetMon Advanced + LiveView (10 Gbps, 3 users)
Andrisoft Wanguard (1 Sensor + 1 Filter + Enterprise Support)
Flowtriq (10 nodes, unlimited users)
Disclosure: Flowtriq is our product. We include it because the cost structure differences are directly relevant. The FastNetMon and Wanguard figures come from their published pricing pages and store listings. Wanguard's Enterprise Support price is not public, so the total shown is a minimum without that add-on.
A TCO checklist for any DDoS vendor evaluation
Before you sign, add these line items to your cost model:
- Base license fee -- the headline number
- Activation or setup fees -- one-time charges that do not appear in monthly pricing
- Dashboard or web UI -- included, or per-user add-on?
- Team seats -- does adding a read-only user cost the same as an admin?
- Support tier -- what is included, what is capped, and what costs extra?
- Infrastructure -- does the product require a dedicated server? What are the specs?
- Bandwidth or volume tiers -- what happens if you exceed your tier?
- Per-component licensing -- do you need separate licenses for detection and mitigation?
- Multi-site multiplication -- do license costs multiply per location?
- Contract term -- monthly flexibility vs. annual discount, and what is the cancellation policy?
No hidden costs. One price. Everything included.
Flowtriq is $9.99/node/month (or $7.99 annual). Detection, mitigation, dashboard, unlimited users, unlimited support, API, PCAP forensics. No activation fees, no bandwidth tiers, no per-user charges.
Start Free Trial →Frequently asked questions
What are the hidden costs of DDoS protection?
How much does FastNetMon actually cost per year?
How much does Wanguard actually cost per year?
What is total cost of ownership for DDoS protection?
Why do some vendors charge per user for dashboard access?
Is self-hosted DDoS protection cheaper than SaaS?
The bottom line
The DDoS protection market has a transparency problem. Not because vendors are hiding costs -- the information is publicly available -- but because pricing is fragmented across multiple pages, tiers, and add-ons that make apples-to-apples comparison difficult without building a full cost model.
The vendor with the lowest headline price is not always the cheapest once you add dashboard seats, support upgrades, infrastructure, and component licenses. And the vendor with the highest headline price might include everything in a single line item that ends up costing less at scale.
Build the full cost model. Include every line item from the checklist above. Compare year-one totals, not monthly headlines. The number that matters is what your finance team actually pays over 12 months, not what the pricing page shows in bold.