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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
110
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

"The product is extremely cost-effective and affordable for customers."
"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."
"Microsoft Sentinel has improved cost efficiency, which is one of the key areas we're able to win business against the ability to have threat intelligence."
"With Microsoft Sentinel, I have seen clear improvement in efficiency and productivity, such as a 40 to 50% reduction in incident response time."
"The analytics has a lot of advantages because there are 300 default use cases for rules and we can modify them per our environment. We can create other rules as well. Analytics is a useful feature."
"It's a great product."
"I like the unified security console. You can close incidents using Sentinel in all other Microsoft Security portals, when it comes to incident response."
"Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native SIEM solution, so it helped us reduce our infrastructure costs and deliver better services to our customers."
"SolarWinds is easy to configure, and it provides timely alerts."
"The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers."
"It's easy to build rules and actions based on the logs and event types we collect with the software."
"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."
"The scalability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is good."
"We did previously use a different solution, but SolarWinds is much better; it's easy to interact with SolarWinds, easy to operate, easy to configure, and generally easier compared to what we were working with before."
"The out of the box reports and dashboard. It was easy to trim down these windows to something we could quickly use."
 

Cons

"We do see continuous improvement all the time, however, I haven't got a specific feature that is lacking or not well designed."
"Microsoft Sentinel can be improved in terms of automation or connecting with security products so that it is easier to use for general IT admins."
"When compared to other industry standard SIEM solutions like Splunk or Palo Alto, Microsoft Sentinel can improve a lot."
"Microsoft Sentinel is definitely costly. If we factor in the cost of other services, MCAS, MDI, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud, it gets seriously costly, to the extent that we cannot enable it across the organization."
"There is some relatively advanced knowledge that you have to have to properly leverage Sentinel's full capabilities."
"The dashboards can be improved. Creating dashboards is very easy, but the visualizations are not as good as Microsoft Power BI. People who are using Microsoft Power BI do not like Sentinel's dashboards."
"Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way."
"Sentinel could improve its ticketing and management. A few customers I have worked with liked to take the data created in Sentinel. You can make some basic efforts around that, but the customers wanted to push it to a third-party system so they could set up a proper ticketing management system, like ServiceNow, Jira, etc."
"It can be difficult for users who are inexperienced with the solution."
"There is no correlation made between log entries, so no threat information is presented."
"The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment."
"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 main area that would mean a big improvement for me would be for the product to include multiple dashboards."
"It is a very technical program. They can simplify it so that it isn't so hard to deal with."
"The company had to use a third party for the implementation of the solution."
"We used the support from SolarWinds Security Event Manager and they are knowledgeable but challenging to get in contact with them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Sentinel is included in our E5 license."
"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 is certainly the most expensive solution. The cost is very high. We need to do an assessment using the one-month trial so that we can study the cost side. Before implementing it, we must do a careful calculation."
"Cost-wise, Sentinel is based on the volume of information being ingested, so it can be quite pricey. The ability to use strategies to control what data is being ingested is important."
"From a cost point of view, it is not a cheap product. It's, like, an enterprise-level application. So if you compare it with a low-level application, it's expensive, but if you compare it with the same-level application, it's pretty much cost-effective, I think."
"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."
"The product is costly compared to Splunk."
"It comes with a Microsoft subscription which the customer has, so they don't have to invest somewhere else."
"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."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
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.
892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.