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 #8 in SM , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 3.2% mindshare in the category. Splunk is ranked #1 in SIEM , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 7.0% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

5,501 Views
1,540 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Splunk Enterprise Security

Read 386 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews

31,493 Views
17,321 Comparison Views

93% 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 892,383 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 (20th), Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Splunk Enterprise Security

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

386

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 3.2%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 7.0% mindshare, down 9.2% since last year.

Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	3.2%
Zabbix	11.5%
Nagios XI	6.0%
Other	79.3%

Server Monitoring

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security	7.0%
IBM Security QRadar	5.2%
Wazuh	5.1%
Other	82.7%

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.

Read full review

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

"SAM has altered the way monitoring is being looked at - from just being able to monitor CPU, Mem, Disk and network utilization levels we have moved to the next levels of finding out process related issues, service related issues and specific application related issues to identify root cause of performance issues."

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

"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements, so the threshold gets configured automatically, and it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."

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

"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."

"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."

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

"We manage SolarWinds ourselves without outsourcing its services."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The flexibility of the search capability is most valuable. You can use it for more than just a basic log aggregator. It is powerful in that regard."

"Since Splunk is a platform for data, we can ingest and correlate data from virtually any type of system."

"It gave management confidence in current operations."

"The alerts are very effective."

"Its huge, versatile AppBase helped me to configure and bring data from different sources to a unified platform."

"We can do things in minutes instead of days."

"The solution has plenty of features that are good."

"Explore Splunk. The product has a lot of depth."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

Cons

"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."

"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."

"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."

"From an integration point of view, if you want to have a manager of manager kind of layer, that is currently lacking in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor."

"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment, but with the help of SolarWinds support, I was able to get back to a stable platform."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"The cluster environment should be improved. We have a cluster. In the Splunk cluster environment, in the case of heavy searches and heavy load, the Splunk cluster goes down, and we have to put it in the maintenance mode to get it back. We are not able to find the actual culprit for this issue. I know that cluster has RF and SF, but it has been down so many times. There should be something in Splunk to help users to find the reason and the solution for such issues."

"The solution could improve by increasing the performance. We have run into problems when large amounts of data are processed."

"The support that is included with the standard licensing fee is very bad."

"Over time I will have more requirements and I can foresee the solution could improve the search algorithm to run and output the data faster."

"They can improve their support teams. They can also improve their capability of ingesting data from different IoT sources."

"The configuration could be better."

"Sometimes, the data does not match what we're looking for, or the tool contains incorrect data."

"It needs documentation, and "how-to-do" information. It's complicated to build reports and views."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."

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

"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."

"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

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

"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."

"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."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"As a team, we prefer the old pricing model with a perpetual license. We are still evaluating the whole subscription-based model."

"I remember Splunk being relatively affordable. Kibana was more reasonable, but you get more with Splunk. If I was suggesting something, I would probably suggest Splunk because it is better to pay a little bit more and get a lot more."

"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is reasonable, falling somewhere in the middle range."

"It is expensive. I used to buy it early on, but then they combined it into a higher-up organization. They buy it for multiple systems now. Last time, I paid around 60K for it. There is just the licensing fee. That's all."

"Splunk is definitely not a cheap solution. It is an expensive product."

"I've heard Splunk is often preferred over other options, but the cost can be prohibitive for smaller organizations."

"Regarding the product's pricing, I think it has always been difficult to have a conversation with Splunk."

"Pricing and licensing are quite high compared to other tools or SIEM tools, but the features justify it."

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

Government

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

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	116
Midsize Enterprise	51
Large Enterprise	269

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

Dynatrace 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

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 4% of the time

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 3% of the time

Elastic Security 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

April 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security

April 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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