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Elastic Security vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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 Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (13th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (23rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (10th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
38th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.3%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.3%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager1.1%
Other95.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
Yashokanth Partkunan - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed Services Engineer at Loop1 Systems
Has supported client needs efficiently but requires deeper analysis features and faster support
The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment. More modification and enhancements are required on the dashboard side in order to make it closer to optimal performance. From observation and feedback from users, they need more functionality related to monitoring, and in-depth analyzing needs to be improved.

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 features of Elastic Security are it is open-source and provides a high level of security."
"Elastic Security is cost-effective compared to Defender and CrowdStrike."
"The most valuable feature is the machine learning capability."
"My advice is that this is a good product to use if you are financially contained, and you want to start with something small."
"The solution's most valuable features are anomaly detection and connectivity reporting."
"This solution helps us because we can find all of the logs in one place."
"It is the best open-source product for people working in SO, managing and analyzing logs."
"ELK Logstash is easy and fast, at least for the initial setup with the out of box uses."
"We had to integrate with other teams, and the infrastructure deployment didn't take long. The integration involves learning with different teams, networking, and configuring various network devices and servers. Infrastructure deployment only took one or two days."
"SolarWinds is effective for server, network, and log monitoring. It's also good for IP address management. We also have a patch manager, but we're still working on getting that operational."
"The solution helps me to go back in time and search for different events. For example, if you wanted to know who activated an account; you could go back in time and find out."
"SolarWinds is one of the products that I use, amongst many others, to fit the needs of our customers which includes their budget, size, and industry."
"It's extremely easy to deploy."
"SolarWinds Security Event Manager has been generally working well."
"We were suffering from a lack of visibility into our logs, so we implemented SolarWinds LEM."
"SolarWinds is easy to configure, and it provides timely alerts."
 

Cons

"In terms of improvement, there could be more automation in responding to and evaluating detections."
"The tool should improve its scalability."
"I think maybe on the last exercise part, I think the index rotation can be improved. It's something that they need to work on."
"The interface could be more user friendly because it is sometimes hard to deal with."
"Elastic Security's maintenance is hard and its scalability is a challenge. There are complications in scaling and upgrading. The solution needs to also provide periodic upgrade checks."
"There is room for improvement in the Kibana dashboard and in the asset management for the program."
"Installation is a little bit overwhelming, so improvements on the installation site could make it easier."
"Continuous upgrades can be quite inconvenient. My security testing team continuously reports vulnerabilities, and we have to fix and update the versions frequently."
"The flash-based interface can be improved because sometimes, the speed of monitoring is reduced."
"It takes a long time to perform a root cause analysis."
"The solution's technical support is okay, but we don't have an SLA, and sometimes the response times are very slow."
"Under the new system, it is not upgradable the way they say. When you try to do an upgrade, it doesn't really work unless you dump everything and start from scratch."
"The reporting could be more robust. It can be a lot more granular and that will make it a lot more useful in comparison to how it is incorporated at the moment."
"I would like to be able to dig deeper into the visibility of events or incidents to determine whether they are malicious, such as by doing behavior analysis."
"I don't think SolarWinds is scalable enough. It is somewhat limited when I need to deploy it across multiple environments in a distributed architecture."
"The product should improve the ease with which you can create event alerts. They are not as hard now but you need to have an easier way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
"Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution."
"The base product is open-source but if you need advanced security features then you need to pay for the subscription. Elastic Security's price is reasonable in some cases and in other cases it's not."
"Its price is fine. Its licensing works on a yearly basis. We have to renew the license every year. I also have a good experience with Darktrace. When we buy Darktrace, we get training free of cost, which is not there in Elastic. We have to pay extra for training. There is certainly room for improvement."
"The solution is free."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
"We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
What needs improvement with Elastic Security?
I do not have any specific recommendations for improvements in Elastic Security, but I feel that the AI module should get more mature. These machine learning algorithms become better with time; as ...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment. More modification and enhancements are required on the dashboard side in or...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
I work with all SolarWinds products mostly, including Network Configuration Manager and NPM. I am a reseller. I usually recommend SolarWinds products for Loop1. It's for the bigger ones; we are the...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
I am still dealing with SolarWinds products and use most of their solutions. User-friendly configuration is key, and the configurations are simple, not complex. The only important part is what we d...
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,325 professionals have used our research since 2012.