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Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Datadog optimizes costs, boosts efficiency, enhances debugging, saves time, and outperforms alternatives despite challenges in quantifying returns.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk Enterprise Security cuts costs and boosts efficiency with automation, threat response, and real-time insights, enhancing user satisfaction.
For smaller organizations, other products may provide better value for money.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Datadog's customer service is generally praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some users note delays and lack of phone support.
Sentiment score
6.7
Splunk Enterprise Security's customer service is praised for knowledgeable support but needs improvement in response times and consistency.
If you want to write your own correlation rules, it is very difficult to do, and you need Splunk's support to write new correlation rules for the SIEM tool.
The technical support for Splunk met my expectations.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog offers scalable performance and customization but users should monitor rising costs and potential challenges with complex architectures.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Enterprise Security scales effectively, handling large data volumes and diverse environments, though costs may increase with scalability.
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog is praised for its stability and reliable performance, effectively managing disruptions and supporting diverse operational needs.
Sentiment score
7.9
Splunk Enterprise Security is stable and reliable, but proper setup and careful capacity planning are crucial for optimal performance.
It provides a stable environment but needs to integrate with ITSM platforms to achieve better visibility.
It is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Datadog users face challenges with billing, integration, interface complexity, and desire more flexibility, support, and improved features.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs better setup, integration, documentation, interfaces, access controls, data management, and pricing flexibility for improved user experience.
An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.
Splunk Enterprise Security would benefit from a more robust rule engine to reduce false positives.
 

Setup Cost

Datadog's pricing varies by organization size, requiring careful monitoring and planning due to complex usage-based billing and potential hidden costs.
Splunk Enterprise Security's cost is seen as high, prompting calls for flexible pricing to suit different budgets and needs.
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
Splunk is priced higher than other solutions.
 

Valuable Features

Datadog excels in real-time monitoring, intuitive interface, robust integrations, efficient alerts, and comprehensive performance tracking and system reliability.
Splunk Enterprise Security offers robust data analysis, real-time alerts, and machine learning, enhancing threat detection and incident response.
They have approximately 50,000 predefined correlation rules.
The Splunk Enterprise Security's threat-hunting capabilities have been particularly useful in later releases.
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
186
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (9th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
303
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Datadog is 5.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 8.7%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.
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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
39%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
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

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
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...
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
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 Datadog vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.