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Elastic Observability vs Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
Splunk ITSI (IT Service Int...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.8%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
Sunil K R - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps improve our incident response time, and our mean time to resolve, but visibility is limited
In my previous project, I successfully led the end-to-end deployment of a Splunk migration. The process went smoothly thanks in part to Splunk's professional services team. They conducted a thorough assessment, identified all our potential pain points, and developed a tailored solution and migration plan. This comprehensive approach ensured a seamless transition. Our core deployment team consisted of 5 internal members and two specialists from Splunk. Additionally, the project included a project manager and a product owner. We also benefited from the expertise of two professional service consultants and two representatives from the customer's side. An on-site admin architect further provided valuable technical support. Throughout the deployment process, we leveraged support from various resources whenever necessary. This included assistance with configuration changes, deployments, and other related tasks. We also collaborated effectively with our teammates to ensure a smooth and successful implementation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning over a month from multiple data sources can be completed within seconds."
"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."
"The architecture and system's stability are simple."
"Good design and easy to use once implemented."
"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."
"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"The solution has been stable in our usage."
"The most valuable feature is the Glass Tables. It gives you a nice, good overview of your KPIs. It's really slick and clean."
"It's scalable and expands well."
"Splunk's intuitive interface and scalability make it accessible to non-technical users, and its capacity to monitor every millisecond of data across multiple applications is truly impressive."
"ITSI includes a feature called a glass table."
"We have a lot of teams using Splunk and they would be blind without it."
"One of the excellent features is the service analyzer, which is truly impressive."
"ITSI's KPI and correlation search aspects are powerful, and the service creation suits the project well. It allows for good segregation of the monitoring solution, and up-to-date quick-time monitoring. We're notified quickly when something goes wrong."
"We liked the built-in calculation of health scores."
 

Cons

"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities."
"I am familiar with Azure Monitor, which I find more user-friendly compared to Elastic, which is a very technical tool."
"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."
"If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."
"The problem becomes the price, as Splunk is an expensive product."
"If they can somehow integrate it with AI in the near future, it will definitely be a game changer."
"We're getting alerts with delays of maybe five minutes, however, we'd like to see real-time alerting in the future."
"They should make it easier to use. Many people are new to it. It is hard and has a steep learning curve."
"We had issues with support that took a long time to resolve."
"ITSI currently lacks the capability for automated response, mitigation, and remediation."
"We have problems doing upgrades and operating alternate new versions."
"It would be advantageous to enhance the dashboard by incorporating sections for monitoring, service health, and a filter for the KPIs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"The product is not that cheap."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"Splunk ITSI is a pay-per-use service that is priced fairly based on the amount of data we use."
"Splunk ITSI is expensive compared to other tools."
"It is interesting. I am not involved that much lately, but if I recall correctly, you license primarily on the volume of data that you are using in Splunk ITSI, but there is no way Splunk can ever check if that is true, so that is interesting. We are not doing it, but someone can pretend to just use 10%, and it would be super cheap. It is tricky, but it is more tricky for Splunk than for us."
"Splunk is pretty expensive, but it gives you a decent insight into the data. It is easy to learn, and ITSI has a great interface. You can run those queries and pass the data. I"
"Splunk ITSI is expensive."
"It depends on how big an organization is. If we have a lot of resources, the licensing needs to be upgraded. If we have a small environment, the licensing cost is definitely going to be less."
"I would prefer that the price be reduced, as it would be easier to implement it and to sell it."
"Splunk ITSI is expensive; however, with the appropriate use case, it justifies the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
What needs improvement with Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence)?
Currently, Glass tables in ITSI only display metrics related to KPIs. I proposed adding an option to show metrics related to entities. This would eliminate the need for custom SPL to achieve this f...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
TransUnion, Cox Automotive, Carnival Cruises, Leidos, Econocom, National Ignition Factory, Entrust Datacard, Molina Healthcare, United States Census Bureau
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.