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Microsoft Sentinel vs Swimlane comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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 Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
Swimlane
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
AI-Powered Security Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 19.3%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Swimlane is 3.4%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

KrishnanKartik - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Srikanth Nuthalapati - PeerSpot reviewer
Great support, scalable, and easier to code
The stability of the solution has room for improvement. I would like Swimlane to provide a single space where we can go to code, build, and automate. Where we have a provision to create tables, playbooks, and tables to produce results, connect all the dots, and make the flow automated. This would make it much easier to navigate than having to jump to different places. I would like to have a single button to click that would start me on the journey of creating my own code from the ground up, from the workflow algorithm to the automation process. This would be simpler than what I had with Splunk Phantom, where I had to piece things together and connect the dots to get the full picture. With this new feature, I could create the full picture with just one button click.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a lot of great features."
"The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection, response, and the knowledge base for investigation."
"The solution offers a lot of data on events. It helps us create specific detection strategies."
"We feel safe knowing that we have a solution that we can use to react in case of an emergency."
"Mainly, this is a cloud-native product. So, there are zero concerns about managing the whole infrastructure on-premises."
"The analytic rule is the most valuable feature."
"We are able to deploy within half an hour and we only require one person to complete the implementation."
"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."
"Swimlane enables two SOC analysts to work efficiently as much as ten analysts would without Swimlane, which translates to significant manpower savings."
"Our primary goal was to reduce analyst time, and we have been successful in that."
"Swimlane is a very effective way to represent workflows involving multiple users."
"The technical support from Swimlane is very good."
"It provides us with a single portal for our logs from different solutions."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the support."
 

Cons

"Microsoft should improve Sentinel, considering that from the legacy systems, it cannot collect logs."
"If I can use Sentinel offline at home and use it on a local network, it would be great. I'm not sure if I can use Sentinel offline versus the tools I have."
"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."
"However, we are not using it for some features, mainly for cost-related reasons and our company policy."
"We do see continuous improvement all the time, however, I haven't got a specific feature that is lacking or not well designed."
"Sentinel should be improved with more connectors. At the moment, it only covers a few vendors. If I remember correctly, only 100 products are supported natively in Sentinel, although you can connect them with syslog. But Microsoft should increase the number of native connectors to get logs into Sentinel."
"Microsoft Sentinel should provide an alternative query language to KQL for users who lack KQL expertise."
"They only classify alerts into three categories: high, medium, and low. So, from the user's point of view, having another critical category would be awesome."
"The initial setup and deployment are complex."
"I would like to see improvements in the minor bugs that occur with each update, as some features might have issues."
"There is a need for enhanced version control in Swimlane. Currently, our version does not support it, making it tough to move changes between environments during significant updates."
"The stability of the solution has room for improvement."
"We faced a lot of issues with the product’s stability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In comparison to other security solutions, Microsoft Sentinel offers a reasonable price for the features included."
"Microsoft Sentinel is pretty expensive, and they recently announced that they will increase the price of all Microsoft services running in Azure by 11 percent. Luckily, I'm not responsible for the financial side. For one of my clients, the estimated cost is 880,000 euros for one year. There are additional costs for the service agreement."
"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."
"Microsoft can enhance the licensing side. I feel there is confusion sometimes... They should have a single license in which we have the opportunity to use the EDR or CASB solution."
"From a cost perspective, there are some additional charges in addition to the licensing."
"Good monthly operational cost model for the detection and response outcomes delivered, M365 logs don't count toward the limits which is a good benefit."
"It is kind of like a sliding scale. There are different tiers of pricing that go from $100 per day up to $3,500 per day. So, it just kind of depends on how much data is being stored. There can be additional costs to the standard license other than the additional data. It just kind of depends on what other services you're spinning up in Azure, or if you're using something like Azure log analytics."
"Sentinel's pricing is on the higher side, but you can get a discount if you can predict your usage. You have to pay ingestion and storage fees. There are also fees for Logic Apps and particular features. It seems heavily focused on microtransactions, but they may be slightly optional. By contrast, Splunk requires no additional fee for their equivalent of Logic. You have a little more flexibility, but Sentinel's costs add up."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 do you like most about Swimlane?
It provides us with a single portal for our logs from different solutions.
What needs improvement with Swimlane?
There is a need for enhanced version control in Swimlane. Currently, our version does not support it, making it tough to move changes between environments during significant updates. Furthermore, d...
What is your primary use case for Swimlane?
We have been using Swimlane for security automation within our company. All the ingestions, automations, and everything within our department goes through Swimlane.
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
LinkedIn, TransUnion, Citrix, Aetna, Perspecta
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. Swimlane and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.