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IBM Security QRadar vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 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

IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
33rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 7.7%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Mahmoud Younes - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable installation and diverse use cases provide strong value
IBM Security QRadar has some areas for improvement. We have missed some DSM components. We need to customize logs where there is no DSM or connector for certain products. We can integrate but we have missed the DSM, which is the connector to pass logs coming from different applications. For example, with a university customer, we tried onboarding Canvas service. IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
Rafal-Stas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful in areas like event management, log viewing, and information management
The product's initial setup phase on the cloud is pretty easy but on an on-premises version, I think it is of a moderate level. The solution is deployed on the cloud and on an on-premises model. The time required to deploy the solution depends on the customers' infrastructure, and it may range from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, as it depends on how many additional custom configurations are required. Around two to three engineers are usually involved in the tool's installation process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have used IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics in a Cloud Pak on Amazon, and there it runs on top of it and is easy to assess. Additionally, I have installed processes and characters."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is very stable, easy to get going, and easy to manage. It is also easy to review all incidents."
"Provided that the report is prebuilt and I can find what I am looking for, the reporting is the most valuable feature in this solution."
"We get events and make the correlation, or rules. In IBM, we can implement our customer's rules. We can have very clear status threats and severity of antigens."
"The solution is reliable."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is how it monitors the real network. That is its leading security feature."
"I have found visibility very helpful for analytics."
"We are using the platform version, which I like."
"The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers."
"The graphical user interface is very user-friendly. SolarWinds is a hybrid solution so you can use it across many platforms."
"The product's most effective part in improving security stems from the fact that the solution is deployed for event management, log viewing, and information management."
"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."
"The out of the box reports and dashboard. It was easy to trim down these windows to something we could quickly use."
"It's extremely easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."
"It's easy to build rules and actions based on the logs and event types we collect with the software."
 

Cons

"The pricing of the solution is a bit high. If they could lower it, that would be ideal."
"The only challenge with products like IBM is the EPS. You just have to be really on the events per second, as that's where the cost factor becomes a huge issue."
"The solution can be improved by lowering the cost and bettering their technical support."
"Technical support could be improved by a bit."
"The solution is clunky."
"IBM needs to invest more into the collaboration with other vendors."
"They should introduce some automation into the product."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is good, but I think the functionality should be much more integrated. You should have easy access to the artifacts if you are doing a particular investigation. It's good, but other team solutions like LogRhythm are actually merging the functionality. So, I think that is something IBM can work on."
"The company had to use a third party for the implementation of the solution."
"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."
"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."
"It won't tell you when your backups are failing, but it will give you hints when your database is running on full recovery."
"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 have a more customizable dashboard."
"We'd like more customization capabilities."
"The solution's technical support is okay, but we don't have an SLA, and sometimes the response times are very slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be better. I bought a subscription for three years."
"It is a perpetual license that we have for the event collector. The licensing is done based on the number of events and flows that you receive on this particular device. These are perpetual licenses, which means once you purchase them, they don't expire, which means that the support to IBM is definitely renewed after every one year. We have an enterprise agreement with IBM, which puts the cost in a totally different category as compared to someone who is not an IBM partner and is approaching IBM for this solution. We were able to get massive discounts. To give you an idea, we recently purchased 30,000 event licenses, and it costs around $480,000. It is definitely not a cheap product. We have licenses for about 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second. All the appliances and their events and flows are basically clubbed together and charged or rather calculated through a single source. The console receives all the details from all the event processes that we have globally. So, the license that we have is a single license for 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second, but that can be managed centrally. I was only part of the secondary purchase, which was 30,000 events per second for about $480,000. You can calculate how much we paid for 270,000 events. Reducing its price would be a compromise. We have already used a lower-priced product in the form of NNT, but we had to get rid of it because it was not doing the job that we actually wanted to do. You get what you pay for."
"It could be cheaper, but the value itself is far more important for us than the price. Typically, our clients have yearly subscriptions."
"The tool is priced in a competitive manner. The tool's price is dependent on the installation and the product size, but it is competitive in the marketplace."
"IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
"It is very expensive."
"As for licensing costs, I haven't seen the exact figures, but it is considered somewhat costly. On a scale from one to ten, where one is very expensive and ten is very cheap, I would rate it a six—it’s costly but worth the money."
"There are different types of subscriptions available. We were on an annual subscription, but our customers typically choose the two years subscription option."
"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."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"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."
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Comparison Review

VS
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
What do you like most about SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers.
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 ?
I think the customization area in the tool can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required In the future, I want to see the tool have better customization abilities with som...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.