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Elastic Security vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

 

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)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (11th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (9th)
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
24th
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 October 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 4.9%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Security4.9%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager0.7%
Other94.4%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

SyedAli17 - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized monitoring improves security posture through rapid data processing
The processing part of Elastic Security is very interesting for us since we handle almost 7,000 to 8,000 alerts per minute. We require rapid processing speed for alerts and event data, and Elastic Security is very efficient at handling this level of data. Additionally, Elastic Security helps improve the security posture of Pakistan through centralized visibility and real-time processing.
Yashokanth Partkunan - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"The most valuable features are the speed, detail, and visualization. It has the latest standards."
"The indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to collect authentication information from service providers."
"The most valuable feature for me is Discover."
"The stability of the solution is good."
"It's simple and easy to use."
"What customers found most valuable in Elastic Security feature-wise is the search capability, in particular, the way of writing the search query and the speed of searching for results."
"The most valuable thing is that this solution is widely used for work management and research. It's easy to jump into the security use case with the same technology."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."
"The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers."
"It's extremely easy to deploy."
"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."
"The out of the box reports and dashboard. It was easy to trim down these windows to something we could quickly use."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting."
"SolarWinds Security Event Manager has been generally working well."
"We had to integrate with other teams, and the infrastructure deployment didn't take long. The integration involves learning with different teams, networking, and configuring various network devices and servers. Infrastructure deployment only took one or two days."
 

Cons

"If you compare this with CrowdStrike or Carbon Black, they can improve."
"An area for improvement in Elastic Security is the pricing. It could be better. Right now, when you increase the volume of logs to be collected, the price also increases a lot."
"The initial configuration and setup are complicated and not straightforward."
"Elastic Security could improve the documentation. It would help if they were more simple and clean."
"Improvements in Elastic Security could include refining and normalizing queries to make them more user-friendly, enhancing the user experience with better documentation, and addressing any latency issues."
"The training that is offered for Elastic is in need of improvement because there is no depth to it."
"Authentication is not a default in Kibana. We need to have another tool to have authentication and authorization. These two should be part of Kibana."
"The tool needs to integrate with legacy servers. Big companies can have legacy servers that may not always be updated."
"The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment."
"I imagine we will have to develop our own reports soon, this seems to be more cumbersome."
"There are no multiple dashboards which would allow you to see information side-by-side."
"It won't tell you when your backups are failing, but it will give you hints when your database is running on full recovery."
"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."
"The reporting could be more robust. It can be a lot more granular and that will make it a lot more useful in comparison to how it is incorporated at the moment."
"I would like to be able to dig deeper into the visibility of events or incidents to determine whether they are malicious, such as by doing behavior analysis."
"The product should improve the ease with which you can create event alerts. They are not as hard now but you need to have an easier way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Elastic Security is free to use."
"It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
"The solution is free."
"The base product is open-source but if you need advanced security features then you need to pay for the subscription. Elastic Security's price is reasonable in some cases and in other cases it's not."
"We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."
"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
"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
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise14
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 do you like most about Elastic Security?
Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...
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 do you like most about SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
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.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
I think the customization area in the tool can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required In the future, I want to see the tool have better customization abilities with som...
 

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 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.