We compared Amazon CloudWatch and Splunk Enterprise Security across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Amazon CloudWatch users liked the solution’s simplicity, intuitive interface, and ability to handle large workloads. Users also praised CloudWatch’s comprehensive monitoring and alerts. Splunk Enterprise Security stands out for its efficiency, extensive integration options, and powerful search functionality.
Room for Improvement: Some reviews mentioned that Amazon CloudWatch could improve performance and dashboard visualization. Others noted that the solution lacked compatibility with some databases. Splunk users recommended improvements in AI capabilities, user-friendliness, and analytics.
Service and Support: Customers generally have positive opinions about Amazon's customer service. They commended the support team for its availability and timely issue resolution. While some users found Splunk support to be responsive and helpful, others reported slow response times and a lack of expertise.
Ease of Deployment: Amazon CloudWatch is generally described as easy to set up. Some users thought Splunk Enterprise Security was easy to deploy, while others found it challenging and needed assistance from Splunk engineers or third-party integrators.
Pricing: Amazon CloudWatch offers a flexible pricing structure based on usage and processing without any separate licensing cost. Some users said that scaling up can be costly due to the need for additional storage space. Some users consider Splunk Enterprise Security to be expensive, but others said the price is reasonable. A few users expressed concerns about the cost of scaling up the solution and managing large volumes of data.
ROI: Amazon CloudWatch offers a return on investment by minimizing the need for manual monitoring. Users said that it’s challenging to calculate an ROI for Splunk Enterprise Security, and the return varies depending on individual circumstances. While some users have observed a substantial ROI, others have not actively explored or been engaged in ROI conversations.
"Scheduling is a valuable feature."
"The monitoring features are valuable."
"CloudWatch immediately hooks up and connects to the KPIs and all the metrics."
"The solution offers very detailed metrics for their services."
"The detection is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is reliability."
"The solution gives us very good real-time data."
"There are quite a lot of things that we find useful. Splunk agents are useful and good. Its UI is quite impressive."
"The product provides visibility and enables us to correlate data and generate alerts."
"Compared to IBM QRadar, Splunk Enterprise Security offers faster alert resolution."
"Splunk is a user-friendly solution."
"The initial setup isn't overly complex."
"Splunk has helped improve our company's resilience level."
"It is very scalable."
"I like the ease with which dashboards can be created."
"Improvement of SSSD logs would be beneficial."
"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."
"It's not an advanced way of monitoring."
"The technical support must be improved."
"Amazon CloudWatch needs improvement. The main thing is we have noticed missing logs."
"For monitoring applications or for APM, CloudWatch has some limitations. You cannot monitor application performance from CloudWatch, and you have to go for a third-party tool."
"Incorporating a straightforward method or a plug-and-play solution for integrating these databases with our systems, facilitating smooth data transfer, and enabling the creation of dashboards for monitoring and analysis would be beneficial."
"The solution's pricing is a bit higher."
"The only thing which can be improved is that they are too subjective on whom their Splunk4Good initiative can be applied. They market it as you only need to be a nonprofit, but there is more to it."
"It takes time to train people."
"Splunk can be an expensive solution. Technical support could be improved as well."
"My biggest struggle with Splunk in general is memorizing all the commands. If I want to know which users have logged in between certain hours, I cannot write that query out. It would be helpful to have AI so that I can explain in simple terms what I want and then the search gives that back to me. I am waiting for that."
"My company could benefit from doing more Splunk training with Splunk consultants teaching us how to use it."
"The biggest problem is data compression. Splunk is an outstanding product, but it is a resource hog. There should be better data compression for being able to maintain our data repositories. We end up having to buy lots of additional storage just to house our Splunk data. This is my only complaint about it."
"Its pricing model and integration with third-party services can be improved. We had faced an issue with integration. The alerting feature is currently not available with Splunk, but it is definitely available with Datadog and PagerDuty. They should include this feature. A few dashboards in Splunk look quite old and are not that modern. They aren't bad, but improving these dashboards will definitely make Splunk more attractive and usable. I read in a few blog posts that there were a few security incidents related to Splunk agents. So, it can be made more secure."
"The price has room for improvement."
Amazon CloudWatch is ranked 12th in Log Management with 40 reviews while Splunk Enterprise Security is ranked 1st in Log Management with 228 reviews. Amazon CloudWatch is rated 8.0, while Splunk Enterprise Security is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon CloudWatch writes "Instantaneous response when monitoring logs and KPIs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Splunk Enterprise Security writes "It has a drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to know SQL or Java to construct a query ". Amazon CloudWatch is most compared with Zabbix, Datadog, Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver), Dynatrace and SolarWinds NPM, whereas Splunk Enterprise Security is most compared with Wazuh, Dynatrace, IBM Security QRadar, Elastic Security and Microsoft Sentinel. See our Amazon CloudWatch vs. Splunk Enterprise Security report.
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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.
