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Honeycomb.io vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

Honeycomb.io
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (25th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
305
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Honeycomb.io is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 1.7%, up 1.3% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 9.5% mindshare, down 12.8% since last year.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Diego Gomes De Lima - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and the dashboard is very intuitive
We faced some OpenTelemetry metrics lost between the communication from the service and the Honeycomb.io. I can't say if this is a Honeycomb.io issue or if there are some limitations in OpenTelemetry. Alerts are very helpful in Honeycomb.io, but we don't usually merge because we can compare queries with queries for making alerts. We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team."
"The solution's most valuable features are the queries for the OpenTelemetry events and all the tracing."
"I like Splunk's data aggregation and search capabilities."
"The indexing and data collection are valuable."
"We can quickly search for almost anything across many log sources in seconds."
"I very much enjoy Splunk's robust search nature, which enables me to find the data I want within the data I have."
"The initial setup is really straightforward. It's one of the easiest installations."
"The Splunk user community and forum are most valuable."
"Splunk's visualizations make it easy for users to understand the data."
"The connections to the database are very good and updating the data files is simple to do. The dashboards are useful and user-friendly."
 

Cons

"The process of log scraping gets delayed on Honeycomb.io. At times, it gives false alerts to the application team."
"We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced."
"We usually have to follow up with technical support on our open cases."
"Writing queries is a bit complicated sometimes."
"Some of the terminology can be confusing, even for seasoned vets. Renaming components at this point would be a serious undertaking. However, it might be beneficial in the long run."
"Splunk ES could have more pre-built integrations and rules. The detection is fairly accurate, but it depends on the rules you create. Splunk's out-of-the-box configuration isn't that useful."
"There's been a big push for SBC compute over the ingestion model, which will hamper us."
"Deployment is not difficult but the lock sources and configurations can take time."
"I would like to see ability to master management. In terms of clustering, how it manages clustering needs improvement."
"I would like more assistance with use cases and help with teaching us how to use it once it's installed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is possible to use a developer's license, which is up to 10GB per day of volume traffic, which is usually enough for most use cases."
"From what I have seen so far, Splunk has multiple cost models. The one that we are using is pretty good when it comes to ingesting data into the environment. It has worked out pretty well."
"The pricing is very complicated, and it is very pricey. You do require a lot of different licenses in order to get a comprehensive solution that is not just the SIEM solution."
"You will eat up whatever you purchase quickly. The level of insights that Splunk empowers is addictive."
"As a team, we prefer the old pricing model with a perpetual license. We are still evaluating the whole subscription-based model."
"The pricing is based on the volume of data fed into it, which can lead to substantial costs. This pricing model is complex and unpredictable, making cost management difficult."
"The license for Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive."
"Splunk is a bit pricier, but the benefits and ROI are huge."
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Honeycomb.io?
The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team.
What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?
We faced some OpenTelemetry metrics lost between the communication from the service and the Honeycomb.io. I can't say if this is a Honeycomb.io issue or if there are some limitations in OpenTelemet...
What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?
The solution is mainly used for stack observability. It observes service behavior or any kind of failure that may be happening. The tool is also related to research. My company is working more on t...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
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