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Cribl vs Trellix ESM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.3
Cribl offers cost-effective solutions with potential 30%-50% returns, reducing operational costs through log optimization and automation.
Sentiment score
3.2
In-house teams claim McAfee offers high ROI, but executives struggle to see it without C-level focused reports.
In the case of optimization, it has helped return on investment to somewhere close to 50%.
we have saved a significant amount of time and resources moving from a manual approach to something that's more automated.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.0
Cribl's customer support is highly responsive with quick issue resolution, knowledgeable staff, and strong technical assistance despite minor improvements needed.
Sentiment score
4.3
Trellix ESM customer service is generally satisfactory, but technical support varies with noted delays and skill gaps.
They had extensive expertise with the product and were able to facilitate everything we needed.
If they could enhance their internal logging, we won't require Cribl support to engage.
The community, including the engineering and sales teams, is available on Slack and is very supportive.
I would rate support for Trellix ESM 10 out of 10 because if we connect with the support in the UK, we get excellent support.
It's rare for me to need them unless it's an issue with licensing, and they are the best in that regard.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.9
Cribl offers scalable, automated deployment and seamless growth for efficient data handling, suitable for businesses of all sizes.
Sentiment score
8.6
Trellix ESM is highly scalable and adaptable, excelling in enterprise environments but may have limitations for medium enterprises.
It's an enterprise version, and we have a good amount of users using this solution.
I don't need to talk to a Cribl engineer to connect a new log source.
Cribl is quite scalable, as we could add worker nodes as our data grows.
Scalability is quite easier with Trellix ESM, because all we need to do is add more receivers to it, so it can go to any point.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.3
Cribl is stable and reliable, with minor bugs quickly resolved, earning stability ratings between six and nine.
Sentiment score
8.3
Trellix ESM is generally stable with effective support, though some users experience bugs and interruptions affecting reliability.
I would rate the stability as ten out of ten.
If the pipeline is down and we receive an alert that it's not sending information to the log collection platform for more than one or two hours, if we receive an alert, it would be great.
Cribl is quite stable and doesn't crash; there's no unusual behavior.
 

Room For Improvement

Cribl struggles with legacy integration, advanced customization, and documentation, while users seek better logging, indexing, and Microsoft connectors.
Trellix ESM requires stability, HTML5 migration, and upgrades in customization, integration, support, usability, and AI for improved functionality.
If we can have more internal logs and more debug logs to validate the error, that would be beneficial because instead of reaching out to Cribl support, we can troubleshoot and find the root cause ourselves.
In terms of large datasets—whether they originated from network inputs, virtual machines, or cloud instances—ingesting the data into the destination was relatively easy.
Since Cribl is such a large platform with numerous features, having a clear, structured approach would make it easier for me and others to understand and utilize its capabilities.
If there is any device which is not covered, there should not be any additional charges for writing the custom parsers on that.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Cribl cost-effective, offering good value and savings, despite its complex credit-based billing and yearly price increases.
Trellix ESM offers flexible, slightly costly licensing, valued for its SOC features, with straightforward setup and deployment.
Over time, the licensing cost has increased.
Cribl is very inexpensive, with enterprise pricing around 30 cents per GB, which is really decent.
 

Valuable Features

Cribl excels in real-time data transformation, routing, and management with user-friendly tools, cost efficiency, and extensive integration support.
Trellix ESM excels in real-time threat detection, user-friendly interface, quick deployment, and strong integration with other technologies.
The data reduction and preprocessing capabilities make Cribl really unique.
Cribl has a feature called JSON Unroll or Unroll function that allows you to differentiate the events; each event will come ingested as a single log instead of piling it up with multiple events.
The community on Slack is excellent for solving questions and getting ideas.
The weakest point is it doesn't cover almost all the devices, so the customer has to be more dependent on the parsers to be written by the Professional Services team.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cribl
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (12th), Log Management (6th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
Trellix ESM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
17th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cribl is 1.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Trellix ESM is 1.1%, up from 0.7% 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 (%)
Cribl1.2%
Trellix ESM1.1%
Other97.7%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Manoj Gowda J - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce log ingestion cost by dropping unnecessary events and customizing pipelines
The best feature in Cribl, when getting logs from some custom application, is the ability to break up logs that pile up together and come as one event. Cribl has a feature called JSON Unroll or Unroll function that allows you to differentiate the events; each event will come ingested as a single log instead of piling it up with multiple events. This is critical as this generally happens in CrowdStrike. This feature helps us significantly. When the ingestion is high from unwanted logs, logs not related to security purposes can be dropped by writing the parser function. By dropping events that are not required for security purpose monitoring, we can reduce the ingestion, which drastically reduces the cost as well. Cribl gives another option where I can store some logs, and when needed, I can pick them up from there. The interface is very handy and not very complicated, yet there are many functions you can perform. You can play around with numerous functions, parse there, and add UDMs to SecOps, which makes it really easy. To simplify the pipeline, when we go to the pipelines, there are vast options. We can make it specific requirements based on the customers. I would prefer a customized or simplified version. Cribl is a very good platform to work with, with lots of features that other platforms don't provide.
Daniel Durian - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to monitor and detect cyberattacks
The tool's effectiveness depends on how you define your log sources. To build visibility of incoming and outgoing traffic, you need logs from perimeter defense, firewalls, web application firewalls, and endpoint protection. With good traffic visibility, incident response time is really quick. Trellix ESM provides situation awareness. On the dashboard, I can see outbound and inbound communications to known threat hosts, IPS/IDS activity, and threat intelligence of the perimeter defense in the firewall. This information helps preempt attacks.
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Comparison Review

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Feb 26, 2015
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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
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
Cribl is very inexpensive, with enterprise pricing around 30 cents per GB, which is really decent. Organizations looking to ingest terabytes or petabytes of data each day find it quite an inexpensi...
What needs improvement with Cribl?
They've already done many good things with the product, but perhaps they could implement a temporary SIEM solution where we could store logs and display them as a SIEM, though I think that's not th...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
Our main use case for Cribl was SIEM migration, where we merged multiple SIEM solutions to a single SIEM solution. SIEM migration was the most major use case we were looking for. The second use cas...
What do you like most about McAfee ESM?
The solution's technical support is great.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for McAfee ESM?
When discussing Trellix ESM pricing and licensing, if you consider some premium product, the pricing also has to be premium, however, enterprise customers who look for a premium product, alongside ...
What needs improvement with McAfee ESM?
Areas of Trellix ESM that could be improved or enhanced include checking on the clients who are still on-prem, especially banks, as most are not moving everything to the cloud due to confidentialit...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
McAfee ESM, NitroSecurity, McAfee Enterprise Security Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
San Francisco Police Credit Union, Wªstenrot Gruppe, Volusion, California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, Government of New Brunswick, State of Colorado, Macquarie Telecom, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Cologne Bonn Airport
Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. Trellix ESM and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.