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Elastic Observability vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
7th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (15th), Container Monitoring (4th)
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
11th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
9th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.4%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."
"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."
"The product has connectors to many services."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Observability is the text search."
"All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important."
"Elastic APM has plenty of features, such as the Elastic server for Kibana and many additional plugins. It's a comprehensive tool when used as a logging platform."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."
"The solution monitors attacks or unauthorized access to the information we want to protect."
"Splunk APM has helped us to standardize logging and monitoring procedures."
"The data collection from our VMs, containers, databases, and backend components is valuable."
"The tool's stability is great."
"The most valuable thing that we have seen within our group is the ability to ingest all this raw data and have it organized in a certain way so that different groups can get effective alerting from this massive amount of raw data that is out there."
"Splunk's dashboards are great."
"The alerts are the most valuable feature."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring gives us complete visibility without the need for storage."
 

Cons

"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."
"The interface could be improved."
"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."
"The cost must be made more transparent."
"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."
"There's a steep learning curve if you've never used this solution before."
"More web features could be added to the product."
"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."
"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."
"There's no standard use case available where you can see the utilization of the number of use cases I have."
"Once you see the issues related to the scalability part, you need to understand that it is a warning triangle. After seeing the warning triangle, you need to realize that you cannot trust any of the numbers you see in the chart because it is not a complete, full data set."
"There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts."
"Splunk could be better integrated with configuration manager solutions so we can automatically resolve issues without human interference."
"Splunk isn't an ideal tool for application performance management due to the extensive setup required."
"In the next release, I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
"The implementation can be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.