SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (8th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
255
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (1st), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Server Monitoring category, the market share of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 3.6% and it decreased by 12.0% compared to the previous year. The market share of Splunk Enterprise Security is 3.3% and it decreased by 57.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Monitoring
Unique Categories:
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2.2%
Active Directory Management
0.8%
Log Management
17.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
13.7%
 

Featured Reviews

it_user631218 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 27, 2017
We use this product for base and application monitoring.
I always thought we should be able to perform all admin activities using the web portal. Over a period of time, SolarWinds has achieved this. Most of the admin activities can be performed using SolarWinds web portal (such as advanced alerting, web reports, custom attribute editor, report schedulers, etc., which in the past were hosted on the SolarWinds server). I also thought SolarWinds doesn't provide a service navigator map that would drill down from application layer to node level, with PerfStack in place. Most of these things have been addressed. PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions.
RB
May 8, 2024
Provides a centralized place to consolidate everything and start investigations
The end-to-end visibility the tool provides is not that big of a deal. They have so many tools that can do that kind of part. Splunk doesn't have to be the one place for total visibility, but at least for visibility when it consolidates on threats. Splunk has helped improve our organization's ability to ingest and normalize data. The tool pretty much consumes everything that we have. Everything from dozens of different vendor products gets ingested into Splunk. Splunk Enterprise Security is just that one central place where everything goes. Splunk Enterprise Security has helped speed up our security investigations. Something that requires someone to work on it at the beginning of the day would not take more than 15 minutes with Splunk Enterprise Security. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the Access Rights Manager."
"I adore the NTA module that provides deep details on ingress/egress traffic for any interface. With a few clicks, you can correlate who is accessing what and when, beside the bandwidth consuming applications/users."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."
"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"The integration is seamless with many devices and operating systems."
"Splunk has give us the capability to easily track problems and their status."
"We did not encounter any issues with scalability. It is almost seamless to add new index (storage) or search (used to analyze the data) nodes to the cluster."
"I like the Splunk dashboard and search engine."
"Good for log collection and log management."
"Support is quick and competent."
"Splunk provides immediate visibility into key business metrics and new business insights that deliver immediate value."
"Splunk's strongest suit is its user interface. We can integrate multiple solutions and adjust settings in the Splunk interface."
 

Cons

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."
". Having a trial version or more training on Splunk would be helpful."
"I have concerns about the architecture as well since I can see it is not very well defined."
"We do have to educate developers on how to not blow it up. It is a little to easy to write an expensive query and overly stress the system. This could be improved."
"Over time I will have more requirements and I can foresee the solution could improve the search algorithm to run and output the data faster."
"The CIM model is the method Splunk uses to normalize data and categorize its important parts, but it is quite complex."
"Its pricing is extremely high. There are other tools out in the market that are competitive. They do not necessarily have all the functionality, but they are competitive. The professional services we have used have been high as well in comparison to the market."
"Given the ever-increasing number of threats, I would like Splunk to update its threat signatures more frequently."
"Splunk does not provide any default threat intelligence like Microsoft Sentinel, but you can integrate any third-party threat intelligence with Splunk. By default, no threat intelligence suite is there, whereas, with IBM QRadar or Microsoft Sentinel, the default feature of threat intelligence is there. It is free. If Splunk can provide a default threat intelligence suite, it would be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"The price is comparable."
"The licensing is good, but the pricing absolutely needs some work. It is very high."
"The pricing is very complicated, and it is very pricey. You do require a lot of different licenses in order to get a comprehensive solution that is not just the SIEM solution."
"Further reductions would be fantastic, and I believe that more and more people would flock to it."
"The pricing model is based on the number of gigabytes that you ingest into the Splunk system. So it can be an expensive solution."
"The cost is on the high end, which makes it difficult for some organizations to use."
"It is expensive. I work for multiple clients. I am working for more than five clients, but most of the clients are switching from Splunk to Sentinel because of the cost. Even though Sentinel is very limited, clients are moving to Sentinel."
"While Splunk is more expensive than other solutions, we would still choose it because of its capabilities."
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
The price is too high. The tool is overpriced. We don't need all the features. The product must minimize the features and reduce the price. It all comes down to pricing. The customers find it prett...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
The biggest pain point is root cause analysis. It is difficult to analyze, assess, and warn my IT department about what will happen in the next five hours. It is also difficult to use AIOps to redu...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.