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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
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (8th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (8th)
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
37th
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 January 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 4.1%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.8%, 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 Security4.1%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager0.8%
Other95.1%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
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

"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 indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash."
"It is an extremely stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It's very customizable, which is quite helpful."
"I like the indexing of the logs."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it is more flexible than AlienVault."
"It can handle millions of loads at a time, and you can always use the filters to find exactly what you are looking for and detect errors in every log message you are searching for, basically."
"Elastic Security helps improve the security posture of Pakistan through centralized visibility and real-time processing."
"The out of the box reports and dashboard. It was easy to trim down these windows to something we could quickly use."
"The solution helps me to go back in time and search for different events. For example, if you wanted to know who activated an account; you could go back in time and find out."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use for the end user."
"It performs network behavior monitoring, log monitoring, and disaster recovery monitoring."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is the analysis and the knowledge about the incidence that we trace."
"SolarWinds is effective for server, network, and log monitoring. It's also good for IP address management. We also have a patch manager, but we're still working on getting that operational."
 

Cons

"We're using the open-source edition, for now, I think maybe they can allow their OLED plugin to be open source, as at the moment it is commercialised."
"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."
"Elastic has one problem. In the past, Elastic Security was free. Now, they currently only offer the basic license or a certain period of time."
"We set up a cron job to delete old logs so that we wouldn't hit a disk space issue. Such a feature should be available in the UI, where old logs can be deleted automatically. (Don’t know if this feature is already there)."
"Elastic Security can be a bit difficult to use if a person only has experience in SMBs with tools like Zoho. The product can also be difficult for those who have never dealt with query language."
"Anything that supports high availability or ease of deployment in a highly available environment would help to improve this solution."
"The process of designing dashboards is a little cumbersome in Kibana. Unless you are an expert, you will not be able to use it. The process should be pretty straightforward. The authentication feature is what we are looking for. We would love to have a central authentication system in the open-source edition without the need for a license or an enterprise license. If they can give at least a simple authentication system within a company. In a large organization, authentication is very essential for security because logs can contain a lot of confidential data. Therefore, an authentication feature for who accesses it should be there."
"I would like more ways to manage permissions and restrict access to certain users."
"I think the customization area in the tool can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required."
"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."
"It won't tell you when your backups are failing, but it will give you hints when your database is running on full recovery."
"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."
"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 only issue is the pricetag. SolarWinds is a costly solution."
"One of the drawbacks of being so flexible is that it is also a fairly complicated software application to install, configure, and maintain."
"I would like to have a more customizable dashboard."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"The pricing is in the middle. I think it is not an expensive experience if we compare it with big names, for example, QRadar, and also Oxide. I think Elastic Security is quite cheap. I would rate the pricing of this solution a five out of ten."
"Elastic Security is free to use."
"When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"The solution is not expensive and costs around ten dollars a month."
"It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"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."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
University
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
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 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 ?
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...
 

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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.