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Microsoft Sentinel 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

Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
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 May 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 4.0%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Sentinel4.0%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager1.0%
Other95.0%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Kallamuddin Ansari - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
Centralized monitoring has improved threat response but cost control still needs refinement
Based on real operations used in our corporate IT environment, the key features include log correlation and incident view. Microsoft Sentinel's biggest strength is how it correlates multiple related alerts into a single incident. This significantly reduces alert noise and helps the SOC focus on real threats instead of isolated events. Another valuable feature is KQL-based threat hunting with Kusto Query Language. The flexibility of this language allows us to build custom hunting queries based on our environment's behavior. This is extremely useful for detecting low and slow threats or hidden threats that default rules may miss. Cloud-native scalability and stability is another important feature. Being cloud-native, Microsoft Sentinel scales well for medium to large corporate environments without infrastructure management. Stability has been solid in day-to-day production. SOAR automation using playbooks is a feature we highly recommend. Microsoft Sentinel's SOAR functionality helps automate repetitive SOC tasks like alert enrichment and notification. This saves analyst time and improves response consistency.
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

"Once you get that familiarity, Sentinel is a valuable tool for your cloud security posture."
"The pricing of the product is excellent."
"The product is extremely cost-effective and affordable for customers."
"I like the KQL query. It simplifies getting data from the table and seeing the logs. All you need to know are the table names. It's quite easy to build use cases by using KQL."
"Sentinel has an intuitive, user-friendly way to visualize the data properly. It gives me a solid overview of all the logs. We get a more detailed view that I can't get from the other SIEM tools. It has some IP and URL-specific allow listing"
"Overall, per week, Sentinel saves us 40 to 45 hours, per person."
"We didn't have anything similar, so it really provides value from the incidents and automation point of view, and the overview of the security fabric is most valuable."
"What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part."
"If you have no monitoring tool in place, SolarWinds SIEM is a good place to start and very inexpensive."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting."
"Some of the rules are most valuable because you can be notified about various things, such as spyware or things that are going on in the internal network."
"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 most valuable feature of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is the analysis and the knowledge about the incidence that we trace."
"The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers."
"Technical support for this solution is good."
"It's extremely easy to deploy."
 

Cons

"When compared to other industry standard SIEM solutions like Splunk or Palo Alto, Microsoft Sentinel can improve a lot."
"If their UI was a bit more streamlined and easy to find when I need it, then that would be a great improvement."
"Sentinel provides decent visibility, but it's sometimes a little cumbersome to get to the information I want because there is so much information."
"I would like to be able to monitor applications outside of the Azure Cloud."
"Only one thing is missing: NDR is not available out-of-the-box. The competitive cloud-native SIEM providers have the NDR component. Currently, Sentinel needs NDR to be powered from either Corelight or some other NDR provider."
"Improvement-wise, I would like to see more integration with third-party solutions or old-school antivirus products that have some kind of logging capability. I wouldn't mind having that exposed within Sentinel. We do have situations where certain companies have bought licensing or have made an investment in a product, and that product will be there for the next two or three years. To be able to view information from those legacy products would be great. We can then better leverage the Sentinel solution and its capabilities."
"With non-Microsoft products, there are definitely integration issues. Exporting the logs is very difficult, and the API calls are not being generated frequently from the Microsoft end."
"Given that I am in the small business space, I wish they would make it easier to operate Sentinel without being a Sentinel expert. Examples of things that could be easier are creating alerts and automations from scratch and designing workbooks."
"It is a very technical program. They can simplify it so that it isn't so hard to deal with."
"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."
"The only issue is the pricetag. SolarWinds is a costly solution."
"Not very scalable in my opinion. That's why I'm investigating new SIEM replacement."
"The solution's technical support is okay, but we don't have an SLA, and sometimes the response times are very slow."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing isn't very high. It depends on the number of logs you have. If you're expecting to ingest 50 to 60G in a day, but you're only ingesting 20 to 25G per day at first and you have a good team to analyze the logs, then you can segregate the ingestion at under 15G."
"There are no additional costs other than the initial costs of Sentinel."
"Sentinel is a bit expensive. If you can figure a way of configuring it to meet your needs, then you can find a way around the cost."
"I don't know yet because they gave us a 30-day test window for free."
"I am not involved on the financial side, but from an enterprise-wide use perspective, I think the price is good enough."
"We are charged based on the amount of data used, which can become expensive."
"We must have saved some money with this product. It is a cloud-native product, and the ingestion is per GB. Every GB costs a certain amount of money. That is how the license of Microsoft Sentinel works."
"For us, it is not expensive at this time, but if we start to collect all logs from our on-premise SIEM solutions, it will cost more than QRadar. If we calculate its cost over the next five or ten years, it will cost more than what we paid for QRadar."
"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."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
"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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
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

Azure Sentinel
SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.