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SolarWinds Security Event Manager vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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

SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
33rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
26
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
7.6
Number of Reviews
315
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.4%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Rafal-Stas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful in areas like event management, log viewing, and information management
The product's initial setup phase on the cloud is pretty easy but on an on-premises version, I think it is of a moderate level. The solution is deployed on the cloud and on an on-premises model. The time required to deploy the solution depends on the customers' infrastructure, and it may range from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, as it depends on how many additional custom configurations are required. Around two to three engineers are usually involved in the tool's installation process.
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

"It's extremely easy to deploy."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the visibility into both attempted and failed logins."
"It has in-depth monitoring capabilities and an easy way for setting up dashboards. I can expand in various areas, or I can reduce areas. It supports different types of breakdowns, filters, and rules. It is very simple for an out-of-the-box type of product. It doesn't take a lot of time to figure it out, which is unlike some of the solutions that I have looked at. It meets all the aspects."
"We did previously use a different solution, but SolarWinds is much better. It's easy to interact with SolarWinds. It's easy to operate, easy to configure and is generally easier compared to what we were working with before."
"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."
"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."
"SolarWinds' stability is fine. I don't think we've had any software issues."
"The product's most effective part in improving security stems from the fact that the solution is deployed for event management, log viewing, and information management."
"We have found all the features useful. However, the dashboarding and logging have been very helpful. Additionally, the log analysis does a great job."
"Splunk is a user-friendly solution."
"The breadth of the data sources that Splunk can ingest data from is broad and deep and it does an exemplary job at handling structured data."
"They are a good partner for Google Cloud. It provides great visibility, threat detection, and proactive mitigation of risks for our mutual consumers."
"I have also been able to take advantage of some of the more complex statistical capabilities when analyzing logs."
"Being able to aggregate detection and alerts from various sources is valuable. Like everyone else, we have a wide range of tools in our shop. We are able to stop at one spot and look at all the data. All the data is able to come through, and we can then jump from source to source or index to index. We can dig deep whenever we need to and get a good high-level understanding."
"We can do things in minutes instead of days."
"Its alerting is most valuable. We have alerts set up in our environment for certain attacks, such as an SQL injection attempt. We have a front-facing server for the website. It is out there, and anybody can access it. When those SQL injection attempts come in, we are able to detect that with the alert."
 

Cons

"I don't think SolarWinds is scalable enough. It is somewhat limited when I need to deploy it across multiple environments in a distributed architecture."
"The only issue is the pricetag. SolarWinds is a costly solution."
"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."
"SolarWinds should improve its correlation capabilities. The correlation does not automatically detect and reduce the events fast enough. You have to manually do a correlation report, which means the tool is not scalable in many ways."
"I imagine we will have to develop our own reports soon, this seems to be more cumbersome."
"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."
"We used the support from SolarWinds Security Event Manager and they are knowledgeable but challenging to get in contact with them."
"I would like to have a more customizable dashboard."
"I'd like to see more integration with more antivirus systems."
"While scheduled reports can be embedded, Splunk dashboard can not be embedded directly without enabling cross origin."
"We don't have SOAR products from Splunk. I believe that's an important piece."
"It can be tough to determine if you are getting all of the value out of your investment at times."
"The ingestion happens quickly, so you can run up the data costs if you use the default settings. It isn't a problem for government agencies in the Saudi market, but many of the corporations in India are small or medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford that kind of ingestion system."
"The cluster environment should be improved. We have a cluster. In the Splunk cluster environment, in the case of heavy searches and heavy load, the Splunk cluster goes down, and we have to put it in the maintenance mode to get it back. We are not able to find the actual culprit for this issue. I know that cluster has RF and SF, but it has been down so many times. There should be something in Splunk to help users to find the reason and the solution for such issues."
"I've never had too many issues with the stability. Years ago we had indexes crash but that was more on us. We didn't understand how to properly size Splunk."
"An improved user interface along with multi-tenancy support would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"It is economical than other solutions."
"The licensing costs are high for Splunk Enterprise Security."
"The licensing model can be expensive, but the value it provides is significant."
"Our customers often complain that the price of Splunk is too high."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is not a cheap product, but I think it is worth every dollar that you pay."
"As a team, we prefer the old pricing model with a perpetual license. We are still evaluating the whole subscription-based model."
"Truly evaluate the data you want to ingest and go slow. Pulling in data that can provide no use to your mission only wastes data against your license."
"Its price is fair. Like with anything else, if you go into the cloud, different providers cost more, and you are able to throttle back or throttle up. The cost is comparable with anything else."
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
44%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ?
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...
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: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.