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Elastic Observability vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

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
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
8th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (15th), Container Monitoring (4th)
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
11th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.6%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.0%, up from 0.5% 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.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."
"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."
"The solution allows us to dig deep into data."
"Elastic APM has plenty of features, such as the Elastic server for Kibana and many additional plugins. It's a comprehensive tool when used as a logging platform."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Observability is the text search."
"The solution has been stable in our usage."
"It's a very easy-to-use solution."
"The most valuable features are troubleshooting and optimizing application performance."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is its ability to get information about all of the security measurements in my environment."
"This solution is very quick to deploy as it is a SaaS solution and integrates with tools like ServiceNow."
"It is a great resource for us because we have so many different data sources and to be able to aggregate that and put it through a concise dashboard or an alert really helps."
"The solution monitors attacks or unauthorized access to the information we want to protect."
"Splunk's dashboards are great."
"The most valuable feature in this solution is the log searching."
 

Cons

"Elastic Observability is reactive rather than proactive. It should act as an ITSM tool and be able to create tickets and alerts on Jira."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."
"The price is the only issue in the solution. It can be made better and cheaper."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."
"The interface could be improved."
"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with the automation."
"We still use Splunk Enterprise licensing. A lot of the newer features go into Splunk Cloud before Enterprise. We're not looking to switch our licensing over, so we're falling behind on the newer features."
"The solution should have more sensors regarding fiber intelligence for security measures."
"The cost needs to be re-examined. It's extremely expensive to run. It's also expensive to expand. That's the number one complaint all of my customers have when it comes to Splunk. It's way too expensive compared to other solutions."
"It would be useful if they provided some help pages. If you don't know too much about the tool, there should be more documentation readily available. It would be useful if they had a help button embedded in the solution so you could ask questions and get answers."
"They can get more integration with a few more products. They can also update some of the dashboards that are in there now."
"The solution's machine learning deployment is hard and should be made user-friendly."
"There's no standard use case available where you can see the utilization of the number of use cases I have."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"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."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"The product is not that cheap."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"The price of Slunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"I am not in that circle, but we are currently licensing based on our queries. That is working out for us. Previously, it was by volume of data, and now, we can store as much data as we want."
"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."
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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
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

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 do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
841,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.