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Graylog vs SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 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

Graylog
Ranking in Log Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server
Ranking in Log Management
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.6%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server is 1.7%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Andrey Mostovykh - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time analysis, easy setup, and open source
We stopped using it for analytics because of its price, and at the moment, we are using it mostly for log centralization. If you use it with high traffic for analytical purposes, as well as for the logs, the infrastructure costs are unbelievable. Graylog is a great product backed by Elasticsearch as the storage and query engine. It is just an interface on top of Elasticsearch and some Elasticsearch management. The indexes that are kept in Elasticsearch are managed by Graylog software. Elasticsearch is a decent product, but it's very infrastructure-heavy. It requires lots of resources, and if you make a mistake with provisioning, you are likely to not get a cluster back. We had a couple of outages like that, and we hated that. So, we ended up over-provisioning resources just to avoid such situations from happening. If you have a whole team trying to fix the Graylog instance for two days, that's a bit too much. That may be my Norwegian take on it, but the engineering resources are expensive. It's better to just provision the infrastructure. Overall, the product is great, and the features are just fine, but the infrastructure cost is what is killing it. The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic. I'm not sure if they can improve the infrastructure cost with the way Elasticsearch is. If they keep using Elasticsearch, maybe there are some opportunities there, or they can support other backends with cheaper storage. They could have a different backend to replace Elasticsearch or do some tweaks to Elasticsearch to reduce the costs. There could be partial parsing of logs or parsing on demand so that when you write data through Graylog to Elasticsearch, it doesn't need to crunch in every detail requiring that much CPU.
Muhammad Anas - PeerSpot reviewer
Shows login failures and server issues but search functions and filters could be improved
Kiwi Syslog shows login failures and server issues. I'm using version 9.8.1. It's deployed on-premises. There are four people in my organization who are using this solution. They're all infrastructure engineers The best thing about Kiwi Syslog is that it filters logs into different levels. It's…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"UDP is a fast and lightweight protocol, perfect for sending large volumes of logs with minimal overhead."
"The build is stable and requires little maintenance, even compared to some extremely expensive products."
"The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed."
"Everything stands out as valuable, including the fact that I can quantify and qualify the logs, create pipelines and process the logs in any way I like, and create charts or data maps."
"Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"We have scaled from a single machine installation (a VM with a Graylog + ES + MongoDB) to (2 Graylog + 2 ES + 3 MongoDB). This was done smoothly with a minimal impact on logging."
"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."
"Simplicity is the most valuable feature."
"The best thing about Kiwi Syslog is that it filters logs into different levels."
"We are very happy with the stability of the solution."
"I appreciate that with Kiwi Syslog, we can segregate the logs based on the display, such as using different colors and fonts, which helps greatly in identifying logs by their severity."
"Overall, I rate SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server ten out of ten."
"I appreciate that with Kiwi Syslog, we can segregate the logs based on the display, such as using different colors and fonts, which helps greatly in identifying logs by their severity."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the alerting based on the security logs."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server include its ability to provide network mapping and deliver information to my customers about their networks through various methods."
 

Cons

"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"Since container orchestration systems are popular and Graylog fits the niche well, perhaps they could officially support running in docker containers on Kubernetes as a StatefulSet as a use case. That way, the declarative nature of Kubernetes config files would document their best case deployment scenario-"
"It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
"The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic."
"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature.​"
"Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."
"When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work."
"We ran into problems with Elasticsearch throwing a circuit-breaking exception due to field data size being too large. It turned out that the heap size directly impacted this size in a high-throughput environment, causing unexplained instability in Graylog. We were able to troubleshoot on the Elasticsearch size, but we should have been able to reference some minimum requirements for Graylog to know that our settings weren't sufficient."
"Technical support could definitely be better."
"There is a need for an on-premises solution, which could lead to easier sales in larger markets."
"The Windows log forwarder is not functioning properly. This is a significant concern, as it led to losing a deal due to the inability to provide Windows logs effectively."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly and customizable dashboard."
"SolarWinds pricing is perceived as very high in the market, which can be a barrier for many customers."
"I would like to have email notifications for emergency logs."
"I would like to see better search functions and better filters in the next release."
"The Windows log forwarder is not functioning properly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"Graylog is a free open-source solution. The free version has a capacity limitation of 2 GB daily, if you want to go above this you have to purchase a license."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"We're using the Community edition."
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."
"There is an open source version and an enterprise version. I wouldn't recommend the enterprise version, but as an open source solution, it is solid and works really well."
"We subscribe and pay directly on the website."
"The price of SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server could improve."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
8%
University
7%
Government
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Graylog?
The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive.
What needs improvement with Graylog?
When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work. P...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server?
SolarWinds pricing is perceived as very high in the market, which can be a barrier for many customers.
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server?
The Windows log forwarder is not functioning properly. This is a significant concern, as it led to losing a deal due to the inability to provide Windows logs effectively. It should be more user-fri...
 

Also Known As

Graylog2
Kiwi Syslog Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Holy Cross Energy, West Texas A&M University, Medium Enterprise Industrial Manufacturing Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog vs. SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.