Microsoft Sentinel vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

Microsoft and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while SolarWinds is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.8. Microsoft holds a 7.5% mindshare in SIEM, compared to SolarWinds’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Sentinel

Read 90 Microsoft Sentinel reviews

14,032 Views
8,568 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Security Event M...

Read 26 SolarWinds Security Event Manager reviews

1,936 Views
662 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

Microsoft Sentinel

SolarWinds Security Event M...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

SolarWinds Security Event Manager and Microsoft Sentinel are leading security information and event management solutions with distinct strengths. Based on user reviews and data comparisons, Microsoft Sentinel has the upper hand in features, while SolarWinds excels in pricing and customer support.

Features: SolarWinds is known for its log management, real-time event correlation, and automated threat detection. Microsoft Sentinel stands out with its integration capabilities, advanced analytics, and scalability.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds users desire better cloud integration and enhanced reporting capabilities. Microsoft Sentinel users seek improvements in alert accuracy and customization options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds benefits from a straightforward deployment process and strong customer support. Microsoft Sentinel has a more complex deployment but offers extensive documentation and support resources.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds offers a cost-effective solution with a satisfactory ROI for smaller businesses. Microsoft Sentinel has a higher upfront cost but delivers better long-term ROI due to its advanced features and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager

February 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 842,592 peers since 2012

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)

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)

SolarWinds Security Event M...

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

22nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.5%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

KrishnanKartik

Cyber Security Consultant at Inspira Enterprise

Every rule enriched at triggering stage, easing the job of SOC analyst

It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it. In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, you can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer. The SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work. And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel. That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free

Read full review

Alex Kinyanjui

Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom

A stable and scalable solution that provide 24/7 monitoring

We have to protect customer data, including any PII, accessed via the internet terminal. Additionally, we need to monitor events from network devices and servers that may raise suspicion, allowing us to analyze them and determine what is occurring. SolarWinds affected your overall security costs. Considering the nature of our traffic, it has been very effective. We have proactively identified and addressed issues before they escalate into incidents. I've noticed a reduced investment in handling event-related cases with SolarWinds Security Event Manager. This reduction includes reducing human resources and the time required for teams to provide 24/7 monitoring. Consequently, there has been a significant decrease in costs. Additionally, the platform enables us to address issues before they escalate into incidents, thus preventing revenue leakage. As a result, the organization experiences reduced costs and avoids revenue leakage. Since the SolarWinds Security Event Manager implementation, the total budget allocated to security has been reduced by close to five percent. Initially, there was a heavy investment in that aspect, but we have observed this reduction in the allocated budget for the security team. Since implementing SolarWinds Security Event Manager, the team members' pressure has been reduced. They can now concentrate on more critical tasks and development, promoting growth within their department rather than solely focusing on incident monitoring. I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Read full review

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 alert notifications, which are categorized by severity levels: informational, low, medium, and high."

"Free ingestion for Azure logs (with E5 licence)"

"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"

"We didn't have anything similar. So, it really provides value from the incidents and automation point of view. The overview of the security fabric is most valuable."

"One of the most valuable features is that it creates a kind of a single pane of glass for organizations that already use Microsoft software. So, when they have things like Microsoft 365, it is very easy for them to kind of plug in or enroll those endpoints into the Azure Sentinel service."

"Native integration with Microsoft security products or other Microsoft software is also crucial. For example, we can integrate Sentinel with Office 365 with one click. Other integrations aren't as easy. Sometimes, we have to do it manually."

"Investigations are something really remarkable. We can drill down right to the raw logs by running different queries and getting those on the console itself."

"The dashboard that allows me to view all the incidents is the most valuable feature."

More Microsoft Sentinel pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."

"It performs network behavior monitoring, log monitoring, and disaster recovery monitoring."

"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."

"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."

"It's extremely easy to deploy."

"It supports high availability, which is very helpful."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the reporting."

More SolarWinds Security Event Manager pros

Cons

"I think the number one area of improvement for Sentinel would be the cost."

"Microsoft Defender has a built-in threat expert option that enables you to contact an expert. That feature isn't available in Sentinel because it's a huge product that integrates all the technologies. I would like Microsoft to add the threat expert option so we can contact them. There are a few other features, like threat assessment that the PG team is working on. I expect them to release this feature in the next quarter."

"Not all information shows up in Sentinel. Sometimes there are items provided in 365 and if you looked in Sentinel you would not see them and therefore think they do not exist. There can be discrepancies between Microsoft tools."

"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."

"The AI capabilities must be improved."

"I would like Microsoft Sentinel to enhance its SOAR capabilities."

"It would be good to have some connectors for third-party SIEM solutions. Many customers are struggling with the integration of Azure Sentinel with their on-premise SIEM. Microsoft is changing the log structure many times a year, which can corrupt a custom integration. It would be good to have some connectors developed by Microsoft or supply vendors, but they are not providing such functionality or tools."

"At the network level, there is a limitation in integrating some of the switches or routers with Microsoft Sentinel. Currently, SPAN traffic monitoring is not available in Microsoft Sentinel. I have heard that it is available in Defender for Identity, which is a different product. It would be good if LAN traffic monitoring or SPAN traffic monitoring is available in Microsoft Sentinel. It would add a lot of value. It is available in some of the competitor products in the market."

More Microsoft Sentinel cons

"The company had to use a third party for the implementation of the solution."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There is no correlation made between log entries, so no threat information is presented."

"I imagine we will have to develop our own reports soon, this seems to be more cumbersome."

"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."

"We'd like more customization capabilities."

More SolarWinds Security Event Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It varies on a case-by-case basis. It is about $2,000 per month. The cost is very low in comparison to other SIEMs if you are already a Microsoft customer. If you are using the complete Microsoft stack, the cost reduces by almost 42% to 50%. Its cost depends on the number of logs and the type of subscription you have. You need to have an Azure subscription, and there are charges for log ingestion, and there are charges for the connectors."

"Sentinel is pretty competitive. The pricing is at the level of other SIEM solutions."

"The product is costly compared to Splunk."

"The combination of the ease of accessibility and the free cost of the service is great. But we buy storage based on our events per second and on how many sources are integrated into the solution."

"It's costly to maintain and renew."

"I'm not happy with the pricing on the integration with Defender for Endpoint. Defender for Endpoint is log-rich. There is a lot of information coming through, and it is needed information. The price point at which you ingest those logs has made a lot of my customers make the decision to leave that within the Defender stack."

"Pricing is pay-as-you-go with Sentinel, which is good because it all depends on the number of users and the number of devices to which you connect."

"Some of the licensing models can be a little bit difficult to understand and confusing at times, but overall it's a reasonable licensing model compared to some other SIEMs that charge you a lot per data."

More Microsoft Sentinel pricing and cost advice

"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."

"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 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."

"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."

"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."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

77%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Security Hub vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 21% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 9% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 8% of the time

Wazuh vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 6% of the time

Google Chronicle Suite vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Sentinel Competitors

Wazuh vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 30% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 19% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 9% of the time

ManageEngine Log360 vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 8% of the time

More SolarWinds Security Event Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel

March 2025

Download Microsoft Sentinel product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Security Event Manager

March 2025

SolarWinds Security Event Manager report

Download SolarWinds Security Event Manager product report

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel

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

Overview

Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution that lets you see and stop threats before they cause harm. Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance, and elastically scale to meet your security needs—while reducing IT costs. With Microsoft Sentinel, you can:

- Collect data at cloud scale—across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds

- Detect previously uncovered threats and minimize false positives using analytics and unparalleled threat intelligence from Microsoft

- Investigate threats with AI and hunt suspicious activities at scale, tapping into decades of cybersecurity work at Microsoft

- Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

When TriGeo was acquired by SolarWinds, TriGeo SIM became known as SolarWinds Log & Event Manager. This product is a leading Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) product and log management solution, which provides log collection, analysis, and real-time correlation.

SolarWinds

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.

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager

February 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager report.

See our list of best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors.

We monitor all Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.