SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

The compared SolarWinds and Splunk solutions aren't in the same category. SolarWinds is ranked #7 in SM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 2.9% mindshare in the category. Splunk is ranked #1 in SIEM , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 7.3% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

6,822 Views
2,115 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Splunk Enterprise Security

Read 392 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews

40,673 Views
22,777 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Splunk Enterprise Security

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and Splunk Enterprise Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Server Monitoring solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security Report (Updated: May 2023).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

May 2023

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Helped 896,563 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

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Server Monitoring (7th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Splunk Enterprise Security

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

392

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (1st), 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 2.9%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 7.3% mindshare, down 9.5% since last year.

Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	2.9%
Zabbix	10.3%
Nagios XI	6.1%
Other	80.7%

Server Monitoring

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security	7.3%
IBM Security QRadar	5.3%
Wazuh	4.4%
Other	83.0%

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint

Technical Specialist at ServiceIO

Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility

From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

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Sathis-Kumar

Senior Manager at Bank of America

Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively

Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

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 solution has good alerts; notifications are sent via email to technicians, and you can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well, which is excellent."

"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."

"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything. All we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."

"It is scalable."

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."

"SolarWinds is one of the best products on the market and if they eventually support the IBM Mainframe then it will be perfect."

"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"This solution helps us increase our productivity."

"I like the search feature and the indexing. It's very fast and comprehensive."

"We primarily use it to correlate logs throughout the enterprise for both searching and use in investigations."

"The ability to rapidly diagnose problems in production and non-production, across hundreds of log files, is the most valuable feature."

"Splunk Enterprise Security gives us a single pane of glass so that we can use just one tool instead of having to use different tools."

"The solution's most valuable feature is threat intelligence correlations."

"We saw the granularity that we could get from Splunk far exceeded what we already had. We had the ability to have our security team really focus on the platform and stay within the platform, but they could correlate with a variety of other stakeholders, and our stakeholders were growing."

"The solution allows easy gathering and ingestion of the data."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

Cons

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."

"SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved."

"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."

"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."

"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."

"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"A problem that we had recently had was we licensed it based on how much data you upload to them every day. Something changed in one our applications, and it started generating three to four times as many logs and. So now, we are trying to assemble something with parts of the Splunk API to warn ourselves, then turn it off and throttle it back more. However it would be better if they had something systematically built into the product that if you're getting close to your license, then to shut things down."

"It needs a better way to export dynamic views without requiring a ton of code and user/pw."

"I think the tech support response time could be a bit better. Sometimes I need to wait more than 24 hours for a response to my tickets."

"The solution could be more user friendly and it's difficult to know at this stage whether our requirements will be met by the solution."

"The user interface is the main area for improvement."

"Resource usage can probably be described as an area with shortcomings in the product where improvements are required."

"Inflexible and expensive and I do not have much faith in the people working there because if someone is asking for a test environment and is willing to spend up to €2,500 a year, I can't understand why they are unable to provide a license."

"Splunk is query-based, which is not the case with most cybersecurity tools. It is based on search queries and can be difficult to use."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."

"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."

"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"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."

"The product is expensive."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"It is economical than other solutions."

"Although Splunk is an expensive product, it is designed to be utilized across your organization in order to maximize your ROI and lower your TCO."

"The price of this solution is expensive. However, it has great features. If you want a great solution you need to pay a price matching the features."

"Splunk Enterprise Security is not at all cost-friendly to be deployed in very small enterprises like start-ups."

"I work on the technical side, so I don't know precise figures. However, I know that Splunk is a premium product, so it's somewhat costly. Still, you get a lot of unique features for the money."

"Splunk is really expensive."

"The price can always be lower, but it is fair at the moment. The cost efficiencies depend on the licensing and how much data we are bringing in. We have a fairly large footprint, so it is cost-effective."

"I assume that the pricing is reasonable, because if it was too costly, there are other alternatives."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

13%

Financial Services Firm

University

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	123
Midsize Enterprise	52
Large Enterprise	272

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...

See all answers

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...

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

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Opsview vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 8% of the time

Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 5% of the time

Elastic Security vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 3% of the time

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 3% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 2% of the time

More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

May 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security

May 2026

Download Splunk Enterprise Security product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Overview

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

Splunk Enterprise Security delivers powerful log management, rapid searches, and intuitive dashboards, enhancing real-time analytics and security measures. Its advanced machine learning and wide system compatibility streamline threat detection and incident response across diverse IT environments.

Splunk Enterprise Security stands out in security operations with robust features like comprehensive threat intelligence and seamless data integration. Its real-time analytics and customizable queries enable proactive threat analysis and efficient incident response. Integration with multiple third-party feeds allows detailed threat correlation and streamlined data visualization. Users find the intuitive UI and broad compatibility support efficient threat detection while reducing false positives. Despite its strengths, areas such as visualization capabilities and integration processes with cloud environments need enhancement. Users face a high learning curve, and improvements in automation, AI, documentation, and training are desired to maximize its potential.

What Are the Key Features of Splunk Enterprise Security?

Log Management: Efficiently manages and organizes a vast amount of logs for better data handling.
Rapid Data Search: Quickly retrieves relevant data for fast decision-making.
Flexible Dashboards: Customizable dashboards provide clear data visualization.
Comprehensive Threat Intelligence: Offers detailed insights to preemptively defend against threats.
Real-Time Analytics: Analyzes data in real-time to enhance response times.
Integration with Third-Party Feeds: Streamlines information flow from multiple sources.

What Benefits Should Users Investigate in Reviews?

Efficient Incident Response: Enhances the ability to respond promptly to threats.
False Positive Reduction: Minimizes incorrect threat alarms, making monitoring more efficient.
Threat Detection Speed: Accelerates the identification and evaluation of security threats.
Cost-Effectiveness: Potential savings through better licensing options and operational efficiency.
User Adaptability: Enhancements in documentation and training resources aid in overcoming the learning curve.

In specific industries like finance and healthcare, Splunk Enterprise Security is instrumental for log aggregation, SIEM functionalities, and compliance monitoring. Companies leverage its capabilities for proactive threat analysis and response, ensuring comprehensive security monitoring and integration with various tools for heightened operational intelligence.

Splunk

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.

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

May 2023

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.

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