Splunk Enterprise Security vs syslog-ng comparison

Splunk and One Identity are both solutions in the Log Management category. Splunk is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while One Identity is ranked #17 with an average rating of 10.0. Splunk holds a 7.1% mindshare in Log Management, compared to One Identity’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Splunk users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of One Identity users who would recommend it.

Splunk Enterprise Security

Read 375 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews

24,784 Views
13,383 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

syslog-ng

Read 7 syslog-ng reviews

3,537 Views
3,537 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Enterprise Security

syslog-ng

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Splunk Enterprise Security and syslog-ng are competing in the security information and event management category. Splunk Enterprise Security has the upper hand due to its comprehensive analytics and robust support infrastructure, which justify its higher cost.

Features: Splunk Enterprise Security quickly analyzes large data volumes, offers flexible integration, and provides advanced threat detection, making it ideal for extensive security operations. Syslog-ng excels in lightweight architecture, focusing on high-performance log collection and data parsing, valuable for specific logging tasks.

Room for Improvement: Splunk Enterprise Security could benefit from simplified setup and more cost-effective solutions for smaller enterprises. Syslog-ng might improve by enhancing its analytics capabilities and expanding its integration options with third-party tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Syslog-ng is known for straightforward deployment and fits well into existing infrastructures, providing a seamless experience. Splunk Enterprise Security, while requiring more complex deployment and configuration, offers substantial customer support to ease this process.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Enterprise Security involves higher initial costs but can deliver good ROI over time, thanks to its extensive security management capabilities. Syslog-ng offers a more cost-effective solution with lower upfront expenses, appealing to organizations focused on specific logging needs without extensive security analysis requirements.

To learn more, read our detailed Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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

Splunk Enterprise Security

Ranking in Log Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

375

Ranking in other categories

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)

syslog-ng

Ranking in Log Management

17th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

3.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.1%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 2.0%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security	7.1%
syslog-ng	2.0%
Other	90.9%

Log Management

Featured Reviews

reviewer1469784

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.

Read full review

Oliver Castellucchio

IT Infrastructure & Cloud Security Manager at Thux

Has ensured compliance by centralizing log data and supporting secure connections

We currently do not use that feature. We currently have just an open-source release, not a premium release. My boss has indicated that he wants to buy a premium syslog-ng version next month. I think we can use other features of this tool in the future. In syslog-ng, I think a GUI would be beneficial. I am unsure if the premium module has a GUI to administer it.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The investigation feature helps the team seamlessly put everything together, providing a consistent view of all relevant artifacts for incidents."

"The most valuable feature of Splunk Enterprise Security is the threat intelligence integration because essentially having to go out and correlate all the data on our own becomes convoluted."

"It has the ability to correlate data, analyze and review it."

"The flexibility of the search capability is most valuable. You can use it for more than just a basic log aggregator. It is powerful in that regard."

"The risk-based alerting (RBA) is one of the valuable features."

"The ease of use and building queries, specifically SQL queries, is notably beneficial as it is easy to build, and the data model itself is very simple."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to look at threats and link them to the MITRE ATT&CK framework."

"The solution has made us more secure."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

"We chose syslog-ng because it is easy to install, easy to maintain, easy to update, and due to the fact that all data arrive in raw format, we can manipulate it as we want."

"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."

"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

"What I appreciate most about syslog-ng is its configuration; its C-style config is much easier to understand, read, and write than other popular solutions such as syslog or rsyslog."

"For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior."

"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."

"Syslog-ng provides easy access to all my logs. It helps me show managers and other clients precisely where an incident occurred. I also like it because you can integrate syslog-ng with multiple solutions to allow real-time monitoring."

Cons

"A lot of people are averse to using new tools so if they make it even more user-friendly than it already is, I think that could go a long way."

"Its interface could be improved."

"The complexity could be worked on so that it's even easier and faster."

"We'd like to see a more seamless cloud-based integration."

"Delays in responses from the technical team can pose challenges for both vendors and clients, especially considering that Splunk applications and machine solutions are critical assets."

"When deploying Enterprise Security, the biggest challenge or the most amount of work that you're going to spend time on is onboarding your data and getting it into a position that allows you to search it uniformly. So applying things like the common information model is the biggest time investment that you'll have in the deployment."

"It's difficult to set up initially, and their billing model is also a bit complicated."

"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."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."

"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

"It's hard to find people who know how to use syslog-ng. I often find problems with configurations, and solutions aren't integrated correctly with syslog-ng. For example, there might be data with extra decimals, or the collector agents are incorrectly named. It isn't a problem with the solution; it's a lack of professionals."

"The filtering has room for improvement."

"In syslog-ng, I think a GUI would be beneficial. I am unsure if the premium module has a GUI to administer it."

"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Splunk is really expensive."

"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive. I would rate the cost an eight out of ten with ten being the most expensive."

"We have seen ROI and improvements as we have continued to use the product, but they are more reactive."

"It is expensive. I work for multiple clients. I am working for more than five clients, but most of the clients are switching from Splunk to Sentinel because of the cost. Even though Sentinel is very limited, clients are moving to Sentinel."

"The pricing of Splunk Enterprise Security is high."

"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."

"The price of Splunk Enterprise Security is reasonable, falling somewhere in the middle range."

"Pricing is probably its weakest spot. As compared to some competitors, Splunk is really expensive."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice

"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."

"Syslog-ng is open-source."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	109
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	264

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with syslog-ng?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for syslog-ng?

In Italy, we have to be compliant with the Garante for privacy. We have to log every login, logout, or login failure made by a system administrator. We store all syslog data of the infrastructure. ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering syslog-ng?

When it comes to parsing, I can parse both structured and unstructured data, though our data are only structured. Currently, we collect all data we receive as raw data. Each file is stored for each...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 9% of the time

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 4% of the time

Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 4% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors

Graylog Enterprise vs syslog-ng

Compared 26% of the time

SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server vs syslog-ng

Compared 20% of the time

Grafana Loki vs syslog-ng

Compared 7% of the time

Cribl vs syslog-ng

Compared 7% of the time

Elastic Stack vs syslog-ng

Compared 5% of the time

More syslog-ng Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security

January 2026

Download Splunk Enterprise Security product report

Buyer's Guide

syslog-ng

January 2026

Download syslog-ng product report

Overview

Splunk Enterprise Security delivers powerful log management, rapid searches, and intuitive dashboards, enhancing real-time analytics and security measures. Its advanced machine learning and wide system compatibility streamline threat detection and incident response across diverse IT environments.

Splunk Enterprise Security stands out in security operations with robust features like comprehensive threat intelligence and seamless data integration. Its real-time analytics and customizable queries enable proactive threat analysis and efficient incident response. Integration with multiple third-party feeds allows detailed threat correlation and streamlined data visualization. Users find the intuitive UI and broad compatibility support efficient threat detection while reducing false positives. Despite its strengths, areas such as visualization capabilities and integration processes with cloud environments need enhancement. Users face a high learning curve, and improvements in automation, AI, documentation, and training are desired to maximize its potential.

What Are the Key Features of Splunk Enterprise Security?

Log Management: Efficiently manages and organizes a vast amount of logs for better data handling.
Rapid Data Search: Quickly retrieves relevant data for fast decision-making.
Flexible Dashboards: Customizable dashboards provide clear data visualization.
Comprehensive Threat Intelligence: Offers detailed insights to preemptively defend against threats.
Real-Time Analytics: Analyzes data in real-time to enhance response times.
Integration with Third-Party Feeds: Streamlines information flow from multiple sources.

What Benefits Should Users Investigate in Reviews?

Efficient Incident Response: Enhances the ability to respond promptly to threats.
False Positive Reduction: Minimizes incorrect threat alarms, making monitoring more efficient.
Threat Detection Speed: Accelerates the identification and evaluation of security threats.
Cost-Effectiveness: Potential savings through better licensing options and operational efficiency.
User Adaptability: Enhancements in documentation and training resources aid in overcoming the learning curve.

In specific industries like finance and healthcare, Splunk Enterprise Security is instrumental for log aggregation, SIEM functionalities, and compliance monitoring. Companies leverage its capabilities for proactive threat analysis and response, ensuring comprehensive security monitoring and integration with various tools for heightened operational intelligence.

Splunk

Optimizing SIEM
syslog-ng is the log management solution that improves the performance of your SIEM solution by reducing the amount and improving the quality of data feeding your SIEM.

Rapid search and troubleshooting
With syslog-ng Store Box, you can find the answer. Search billions of logs in seconds using full text queries with Boolean operators to pinpoint critical logs.

Meeting compliance requirements
syslog-ng Store Box provides secure, tamper-proof storage and custom reporting to demonstrate compliance.

Big data ingestion
syslog-ng can deliver data from a wide variety of sources to Hadoop, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, and Kafka as well as many others.

Universal log collection and routing
syslog-ng flexibly routes log data from X sources to Y destinations. Instead of deploying multiple agents on hosts, organizations can unify their log data collection and management.

Secure data archive
syslog-ng Store Box provides automated archiving, tamper-proof encrypted storage, granular access controls to protect log data. The largest appliance can store up to 10TB of raw logs.

One Identity

Sample Customers

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

Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng

December 2025

Free Report: Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng

Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Splunk Enterprise Security vs. syslog-ng report.

See our list of best Log Management vendors.

We monitor all Log Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.