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Elastic Security vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

 

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)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (11th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (10th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (12th)
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
34th
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 July 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.5%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 1.0%, 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 Security3.5%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager1.0%
Other95.5%
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 feature is the ability to collect authentication information from service providers."
"It's open-source and free to use."
"My advice is that this is a good product to use if you are financially contained, and you want to start with something small."
"Elastic Security is very easy to adapt."
"The product has huge integration varieties available."
"Based on my experience, it's quite easy and manageable with small scale implementations, and the time to market is quite fast."
"It is an extremely stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"We chose Elastic Security because we felt it was the most flexible, cost-effective solution to provide the results needed."
"It performs network behavior monitoring, log monitoring, and disaster recovery monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is intuitivity of navigation; it's easy to build rules and actions which are based on the logs and event types we collect with the software."
"SolarWinds Security Event Manager has been generally working well."
"Technical support for this solution is good."
"It has in-depth monitoring capabilities and an easy way for setting up dashboards. I can expand in various areas, or I can reduce areas. It supports different types of breakdowns, filters, and rules. It is very simple for an out-of-the-box type of product. It doesn't take a lot of time to figure it out, which is unlike some of the solutions that I have looked at. It meets all the aspects."
"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."
"If you have no monitoring tool in place, SolarWinds SIEM is a good place to start and very inexpensive."
 

Cons

"The solution could offer better reporting features."
"The solution's basic setup takes time, and a lot of effort is required from the beginning to make it actually work."
"There isn't really a very good user experience. You need a lot of training."
"With Elastic, you have to build the use cases for the specific requirement. Other products have a simple integration and more use cases to integrate out-of-the-box solutions for SIEM."
"Technical support could respond faster."
"They don't provide user authentication and authorisation features (Shield) as a part of their open-source version."
"The signature security needs improvement."
"Elastic Security can be a bit difficult to use if a person only has experience in SMBs with tools like Zoho. The product can also be difficult for those who have never dealt with query language."
"SolarWinds should improve its correlation capabilities. The correlation does not automatically detect and reduce the events fast enough. You have to manually do a correlation report, which means the tool is not scalable in many ways."
"One of the drawbacks of being so flexible is that it is also a fairly complicated software application to install, configure, and maintain."
"There is no correlation made between log entries, so no threat information is presented."
"We need to post events on the end of the devices. Sometimes, the event does not respond."
"We'd like more customization capabilities."
"It is a very technical program. They can simplify it so that it isn't so hard to deal with."
"Training for this solution needs to be improved, as new employees are sometimes unfamiliar with the product."
"The company had to use a third party for the implementation of the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"The pricing is in the middle. I think it is not an expensive experience if we compare it with big names, for example, QRadar, and also Oxide. I think Elastic Security is quite cheap. I would rate the pricing of this solution a five out of ten."
"The solution is free."
"Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution."
"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
"The licensing cost of Elastic Security is based on the daily ingestion rate. I can't recall the exact figure, but for 10GB of log action daily, it would cost around $20,000."
"There is no charge for using the open-source version."
"I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10."
"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 price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"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."
"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
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
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.
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...
 

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: June 2026.
903,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.