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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 features are the speed, detail, and visualization. It has the latest standards."
"It's very stable and reliable."
"It is scalable."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it is more flexible than AlienVault."
"The stability of the solution is good."
"It is the best open-source product for people working in SO, managing and analyzing logs."
"What customers found most valuable in Elastic Security feature-wise is the search capability, in particular, the way of writing the search query and the speed of searching for results."
"The solution has very good logging functionality, the aggregation capability is quite useful, the solution is quite stable, the performance has been good, and the solution scales well."
"We were suffering from a lack of visibility into our logs, so we implemented SolarWinds LEM."
"It will identify things in your network that you just didn't know were going on."
"The scalability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is good."
"It has in-depth monitoring capabilities and an easy way for setting up dashboards."
"SolarWinds has provided greater visibility into incidents and activities on the network."
"If you have no monitoring tool in place, SolarWinds SIEM is a good place to start and very inexpensive."
"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 Security Event Manager has been generally working well."
 

Cons

"The solution is stable if you don't touch it too much. Meaning, it's technically stable, but if there is a period of downtime, you will face quite a big hiccup in getting it running again and stabilized."
"There are connectors to gather logs for Windows PCs and Linux PCs, but if we have to get the logs from Syslog then we have to do it manually, and this should be automated."
"One thing they could add is a quick step to enable users who don't have a solid background to build a dashboard and quickly search, without difficulty."
"If the documentation were improved and made more clear for beginners, or even professionals, then we would be more attracted to this solution."
"The solution should generate an automatic product that integrates with ELK Stack to use artificial intelligence."
"It is difficult to anticipate and understand the space utilization, so more clarity there would be great."
"Upgrades currently released as stacks when it should be a plugin or an extension to save removal and reinstallation."
"We're using the open-source edition, for now, I think maybe they can allow their OLED plugin to be open source, as at the moment it is commercialised."
"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. You lose a lot of your nodes. Whenever you set your nodes up and everything else, they don't want to bring those nodes back in, so you have to really go back and restructure all your nodes. I went from version 6.5 to version 6.6 and then to version 6.7. I then went to version 2019, and now it is version 2020. It would be good if we can upgrade without having to delete everything and start from scratch. They can maybe build more KPIs and other things for the dashboard. Some of the other systems already have built-in KPIs. SolarWinds is starting to catch up, but it is not there yet. They can include some of the business or industry standards for tracking the time, that is, the meantime to detect (MTTD) and the meantime to resolve (MTTR). They can also find a way to build a KPI that measures the number of instances of port scans experienced in a week or a month."
"I think the product can use some improvement on the reporting side. The reporting could be easier and more robust."
"The only issue is the pricetag. SolarWinds is a costly solution."
"We used the support from SolarWinds Security Event Manager and they are knowledgeable but challenging to get in contact with them."
"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."
"The flash-based interface can be improved because sometimes, the speed of monitoring is reduced."
"There are no multiple dashboards which would allow you to see information side-by-side."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Elastic Security is free to use."
"There is no charge for using the open-source version."
"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."
"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."
"Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution."
"I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10."
"The solution is not expensive and costs around ten dollars a month."
"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 price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"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."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"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.
904,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.