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Elastic Security vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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 Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (14th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (25th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (12th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
38th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.2%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.2%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager1.1%
Other95.7%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Lead at Orange
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
Yashokanth Partkunan - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed Services Engineer at Loop1 Systems
Has supported client needs efficiently but requires deeper analysis features and faster support
The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment. More modification and enhancements are required on the dashboard side in order to make it closer to optimal performance. From observation and feedback from users, they need more functionality related to monitoring, and in-depth analyzing needs to be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Elastic Security is a highly flexible platform that can be implemented anywhere."
"The intelligence of the system has been very impressive; it's pretty accurate and gives you good details to create an intelligence report and present that to your C-level management."
"The visualization is very good."
"Elastic Security actually has a very good cost-benefit ratio compared to other vendors in the market."
"We like Elastic Security because it's a REST API-based solution. That's the primary reason we use it."
"It is scalable."
"This solution helps us because we can find all of the logs in one place."
"Elastic Security offers advanced features such as machine learning and integration with ChatGPT."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting."
"Some of the rules are most valuable because you can be notified about various things, such as spyware or things that are going on in the internal network."
"It will identify things in your network that you just didn't know were going on."
"User-friendly configuration is key, and the configurations are simple, not complex."
"The reporting and alerting capabilities are really nice."
"SolarWinds has provided greater visibility into incidents and activities on the network."
"The graphical user interface is very user-friendly. SolarWinds is a hybrid solution so you can use it across many platforms."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."
 

Cons

"Elastic Security has a steep learning curve, so it takes some time to tune it and set it up for your environment. There are some costs associated with logging things that don't have value. So you need to be cautious to only log things that make sense and keep them around for as long as you need. You shouldn't hold onto things just because you think you might need them."
"The setup process is complex. You need a solid working knowledge of networking, operating systems, and a little programming."
"The Integration module could be improved. It is a pain to build integration with any product."
"They don't provide user authentication and authorisation features (Shield) as a part of their open-source version."
"I think maybe on the last exercise part, I think the index rotation can be improved. It's something that they need to work on."
"I would like the process of retrieving archived data and viewing it in Kibana to be simplified."
"Better integration with third-party APMs would be really good."
"It could use maybe a little more on the Linux side."
"We'd like more customization capabilities."
"It is a very technical program. They can simplify it so that it isn't so hard to deal with."
"Under the new system, it is not upgradable the way they say. When you try to do an upgrade, it doesn't really work unless you dump everything and start from scratch. You lose a lot of your nodes. Whenever you set your nodes up and everything else, they don't want to bring those nodes back in, so you have to really go back and restructure all your nodes. I went from version 6.5 to version 6.6 and then to version 6.7. I then went to version 2019, and now it is version 2020. It would be good if we can upgrade without having to delete everything and start from scratch. They can maybe build more KPIs and other things for the dashboard. Some of the other systems already have built-in KPIs. SolarWinds is starting to catch up, but it is not there yet. They can include some of the business or industry standards for tracking the time, that is, the meantime to detect (MTTD) and the meantime to resolve (MTTR). They can also find a way to build a KPI that measures the number of instances of port scans experienced in a week or a month."
"Training for this solution needs to be improved, as new employees are sometimes unfamiliar with the product."
"I don't think SolarWinds is scalable enough. It is somewhat limited when I need to deploy it across multiple environments in a distributed architecture."
"The company had to use a third party for the implementation of the solution."
"There is no correlation made between log entries, so no threat information is presented."
"I think the customization area in the tool can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I can say that the product is cheaply priced."
"Its price is fine. Its licensing works on a yearly basis. We have to renew the license every year. I also have a good experience with Darktrace. When we buy Darktrace, we get training free of cost, which is not there in Elastic. We have to pay extra for training. There is certainly room for improvement."
"I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
"The solution is free."
"The product offers an amazing pricing structure. Price-wise, the product is very competitive."
"It is easy to deploy, easy to use, and you get everything you need to become operational with it, and have nothing further to pay unless you want the OLED plugin."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
What needs improvement with Elastic Security?
I do not have any specific recommendations for improvements in Elastic Security, but I feel that the AI module should get more mature. These machine learning algorithms become better with time; as ...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment. More modification and enhancements are required on the dashboard side in or...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
I work with all SolarWinds products mostly, including Network Configuration Manager and NPM. I am a reseller. I usually recommend SolarWinds products for Loop1. It's for the bigger ones; we are the...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
I am still dealing with SolarWinds products and use most of their solutions. User-friendly configuration is key, and the configurations are simple, not complex. The only important part is what we d...
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.