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Splunk Observability Cloud vs Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 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

Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), Network Monitoring Software (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th), Container Management (5th)
Zscaler Digital Experience ...
Ranking in Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) category, the mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 5.9%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) is 8.1%, up from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud5.9%
Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX)8.1%
Other86.0%
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Taiwo Ige - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.
Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact
Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.
Chella  Chalapathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Program Manager at Infosys
Offers steady access and reliable support but could benefit from better integration and user-friendly insights
Regarding future updates, I would like to see Zscaler prioritize pricing and integrate more with multiple products. Multiple integrations with various platforms would enable some sort of automation. Zscaler provides real-time insights, but it is not reaching the end users properly, which is something Zscaler should improve because it should be user-friendly for understanding what Zscaler is offering. When there is too much technology, people cannot understand it, so it should be very simplified, and there should be some ways for users to gain knowledge about the product themselves. Zscaler's ability to analyze millions of telemetry data points in real-time is still somewhat unclear to me; perhaps that level of knowledge has not been reached by me or the end users, indicating that Zscaler has to focus on that area.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."
"The solution overall is very valuable for me."
"Splunk APM has helped us to standardize logging and monitoring procedures."
"I like the fact that Splunk APM makes it easy to connect to the application database and run queries against the data."
"Splunk Observability Cloud has helped me reduce my mean time to detect, and we have worked on around 80 applications last year for one particular client, and since the MTTR has improved drastically, they have given us 245 applications, which is around 150 applications added to the previous number of applications, which is definitely a performance improvement."
"We haven't really experienced any glitches or bugs."
"The most valuable feature is log reporting."
"Great monitoring of network devices."
"Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) has positively impacted my organization by being beneficial for me as a troubleshooter and administrator, as I can identify all types of network performance-related issues, leading to faster resolutions of user complaints, improved collaboration between network, desktop, and security teams, and more productivity in identifying issues before they affect users."
"Regarding the benefits of Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX)'s traffic analysis for my IT operations, I believe it greatly supports our needs."
"Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) positively impacted my organization by providing Zero Trust Network Access, which many organizations are moving towards."
 

Cons

"This solution is difficult to configure and the instructions are complex."
"The cost needs to be re-examined. It's extremely expensive to run. It's also expensive to expand. That's the number one complaint all of my customers have when it comes to Splunk. It's way too expensive compared to other solutions."
"They do not have all the features that I expect right now."
"The solution's machine learning deployment is hard and should be made user-friendly."
"I don't consider the solution scalable."
"Splunk Observability Cloud has not yet completely improved our operational performance for our company's resilience as we are just starting out, however, it will help us ultimately to reduce incident time."
"I need a tool that can deal with all the security solutions that will find security monitoring compliance requirements, so I'll stick to BigFix over Splunk because I'm not that big a fan of Splunk, to be honest."
"Splunk would be better if some tools were integrated to be able to take action on security or network concerns."
"Support responses are excellent, but for more complex cases, it sometimes takes longer."
"I have noticed drawbacks within Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX), as the sales team is too arrogant and too aggressive, playing politics, but the product itself is very good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is costly."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise53
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX)?
I consider the pricing reasonable for the value delivered, and the setup is straightforward with good onboarding support.
What needs improvement with Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX)?
Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) can be improved with more detailed mobile device support, better integration with third-party ITSM platforms, and enhanced reporting customizations. I can easily in...
What is your primary use case for Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX)?
My main use case for Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) is to monitor end-user experience for SaaS applications, and I can also integrate all those applications within the tenant and troubleshoot net...
 

Also Known As

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk Observability Cloud vs. Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.