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SolarWinds Security Event Manager vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

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
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
375
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.4%, down from 10.0% 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 (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.4%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager0.8%
Other91.8%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It supports high availability, which is very helpful."
"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 of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is the analysis and the knowledge about the incidence that we trace."
"The graphical user interface is very user-friendly. SolarWinds is a hybrid solution so you can use it across many platforms."
"SolarWinds' stability is fine. I don't think we've had any software issues."
"User-friendly configuration is key, and the configurations are simple, not complex."
"SolarWinds Security Event Manager has been generally working well."
"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 feature that I have found most valuable with Splunk is the ability to sift through a bunch of data very quickly."
"The varied prebuilt feature is the most valuable because it ensures that we have complete coverage over all of the key questions."
"It is a one stop shop as a full monitoring and alerting solution for operations and application analysis for most of our back-end systems."
"The dashboards, indexing speed, correlations, and machine learning are advantages of Splunk Enterprise Security; even though other competitors offer the same features, the efficiency of Splunk Enterprise Security is the best."
"The initial setup is simple, not very complex. Initial deployment takes around 10 to 15 minutes to set up the entire base for Splunk including all three tiers."
"The Splunk Enterprise Security's threat-hunting capabilities have been particularly useful in later releases."
"The search function for spam is like a google search. You just enter and it will quickly show you the results."
"The most valuable feature is the incident dashboard, and the extensive use of correlation searches, which isn't available with a standard Splunk search package. This feature is important to me because it enables SOC analysts to do their job more efficiently and be able to investigate or mediate incidents at a faster pace."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution's technical support is okay, but we don't have an SLA, and sometimes the response times are very slow."
"It can be difficult for users who are inexperienced with the solution."
"We have automated threat detection in the Alliance Security, Antoinette. However, if these features could be further enhanced, it would simplify my work, potentially allowing me to allocate more time to address complex issues."
"Training for this solution needs to be improved, as new employees are sometimes unfamiliar with the product."
"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."
"The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment."
"It needs a better way to export dynamic views without requiring a ton of code and user/pw."
"I haven't found a way for me to create my own plugins and integrate them into Splunk, but this isn't necessarily a limitation; it could simply be a lack of knowledge on my part."
"The UI could be better. This is applicable to Splunk in general. I know that a lot of people who get their hands on Splunk are hesitant to use it just because they find it overwhelming. There are a lot of options."
"It would be nice if Splunk provided a little more documentation and instructions on how to upload. The steps are short, but sometimes it's not so intuitive."
"The solution could use a different licensing model."
"I do not have any pain points for Splunk Enterprise Security. I am still trying to learn it, but there can be more information on the education side for Splunk Enterprise Security. It would be nice if the certification path was more specific to what I use instead of being so broad."
"We do have to educate developers on how to not blow it up. It is a little to easy to write an expensive query and overly stress the system. This could be improved."
"For us, the area that Splunk Enterprise Security can improve is performance optimization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"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."
"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."
"Further reductions would be fantastic, and I believe that more and more people would flock to it."
"The price of Splunk is too high for our market."
"Splunk licensing model might seem expensive but with all the gain in functionalities you will have compared to traditional SIEM solutions I think it’s worth the price."
"Be upfront about your needs and expectations. Splunk is great to work with."
"Splunk is costly but it’s worth it due to the high-end features."
"Splunk's cost is very high. They need to review the pricing. They have to go back and totally readdress the market."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive. I would rate the cost an eight out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"Although Splunk is an expensive product, it is designed to be utilized across your organization in order to maximize your ROI and lower your TCO."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
Financial Services Firm
14%
University
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise264
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Security Event Manager vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.