Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (19th), Server Monitoring (11th), Active Directory Management (10th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
318
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is designed for Server Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 2.6%, down 3.3% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 9.4% mindshare, down 12.1% since last year.
Server Monitoring
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Camargo - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process
One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."
"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"The tool helps with advanced reports and keeps the system scalable and flexible. It provides a clear picture of the current status of any incidents. As a CISO, I see a lot of potential for future innovation, which is interesting. I've noticed better performance, especially with the reports."
"The dashboards are the most valuable feature. We like the ability to drill in and see what queries are under the dashboard, build new visualizations, edit the querying, and see the reports."
"The benefits my company has seen from the use of Splunk Enterprise Security revolve around the speed of detection it offers."
"The most valuable feature of Splunk Enterprise Security is the comprehensive logging capabilities it provides."
"We can automatically suspend or terminate suspicious sessions."
"The stability of Splunk Enterprise Security is very impressive; it is a very stable product."
"It's better than IBM, in my opinion, because it's an independent entity."
"Great platform with user-friendly interface and GUI."
 

Cons

"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."
"I believe that some of the trends, environmental maps, and items like those found in Orion would be very beneficial."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"Currently SolarWinds SAM offers AppInsight for modern versions of: IIS, Exchange, SQL Server. They have shown to be powerful and insightful tools. However, AppInsight needs to be offered for more applications: Citrix, SharePoint, AX, etc."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."
"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"Some of the terminology can be confusing, even for seasoned vets. Renaming components at this point would be a serious undertaking. However, it might be beneficial in the long run."
"I'd like to see more integration with more antivirus systems."
"The administration of the cluster and app deployment to indexers or search heads can be done only using ssh access and command line, there is no GUI tools for that."
"The solution's automation could be improved."
"Having analysts put their notes directly within the investigation feature in the incident review would be beneficial."
"The search could be improved. Now, it is a bit difficult to write search queries because they become quite long, then maintaining those long search queries is a quite challenging."
"Due to its high licensing cost, Splunk is out of reach for many organizations."
"Professional support is great, but too expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"The product is expensive."
"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"Pricing is inexpensive, starting at 2440 euros. For that, you get the ability to monitor a couple of nodes and one year of maintenance and support."
"You will eat up whatever you purchase quickly. The level of insights that Splunk empowers is addictive."
"It can be tough to determine if you are getting all of the value out of your investment at times."
"We have seen ROI and improvements as we have continued to use the product, but they are more reactive."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a worthwhile investment given the comprehensive range of features it offers."
"I believe that Splunk Enterprise Security is worth the price, but it is expensive."
"Our ROI is high."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is cheaper than competitors, but I do not know whether it is just our contract."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Server Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...
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 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 ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.