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 3.3% mindshare in the category. Splunk is ranked #1 in SIEM , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 7.2% 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

4,708 Views
1,271 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Splunk Enterprise Security

Read 381 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews

27,630 Views
14,920 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 884,266 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 (22nd), Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (9th)

Splunk Enterprise Security

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

381

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 3.3%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 7.2% mindshare, down 9.8% since last year.

Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	3.3%
Zabbix	13.4%
Checkmk	6.6%
Other	76.7%

Server Monitoring

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security	7.2%
Wazuh	5.8%
IBM Security QRadar	5.3%
Other	81.7%

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.

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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

"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"

"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."

"Manage Groups: The capability to group appropriate devices gives better visibility of sites, categories, or critical regions. The same can be used to represent a dashboard for higher management."

"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."

"Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes."

"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."

"I'd rate technical support at eight out of ten. They are helpful and fast."

"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The solution has proven to be quite stable."

"Splunk gives my clients the ability to bring multiple, disparate types of data together, then correlate and report on them."

"It has a big user base, so the community is useful."

"From my experience, the visual aid that it provides is most valuable. There are charts and other means to provide information."

"It has increased our business resilience. It's a top-of-the-line SIEM security product. It's the best tool for our security analysts which helps them do their job better. That then protects our company from adversary actors."

"I like Splunk's automated threat detection and orchestration capabilities. Splunk offers a single solution for analyzing, aggregating, correlating, monitoring, reporting, visualizing, etc. You can get all of these capabilities in one place. On top of that, it provides a cloud, testing, on-premise, and hybrid solution, giving customers more flexibility for their use cases."

"You can use it to gather syslog messages from anything."

"You can check up on security from the dashboards."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

Cons

"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."

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

"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."

"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."

"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"Integrating tools and creating use cases could be easier. It's hard for a junior security engineer with only a couple of years of experience to write use cases. They can do it, but it's much easier in a solution like IBM QRadar. Setting conditions is like a multiple-choice type of thing. It's a more user-friendly process."

"The training was mostly sales-focused, like how to monitor your sales. It was hard to then come back from doing the training and try to switch it to a cybersecurity focus because all the training we did was sales oriented. The basic training didn't really touch on any kind of cybersecurity use cases or anything like that. That would have been great to see in the training."

"The setup time is quite long."

"I feel the solution to be too slow."

"I would like more assistance with use cases and help with teaching us how to use it once it's installed."

"The GUI can be improved to include some of the capabilities that other BI solutions have."

"There is a learning curve in order to start using machine learning. We have been trying to do it for three years, and we have not managed anything. It is too complex."

"It is a challenge to manage the environment in such a way, that one’s log, even with the bandwidth license, isn’t exceeded."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."

"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."

"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."

"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."

"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."

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

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is good, but the pricing absolutely needs some work. It is very high."

"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."

"Our ROI is high."

"I think we recently switched to the SVC pricing compared to the ingest pricing."

"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is pretty competitive."

"The pricing modules could be improved."

"Splunk is expensive based on our current requirements, but it's obviously worth what we pay."

"It's more expensive than the other tools, but it's worth it. Every penny is worth 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%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing 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	112
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	267

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

See all answers

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 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 9% of the time

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

eG Enterprise 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 10% of the time

Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 5% of the time

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 3% of the time

Elastic Security vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

February 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security

February 2026

Download Splunk Enterprise Security product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

No data available

Overview

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

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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