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Devo vs syslog-ng comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

Devo
Ranking in Log Management
28th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (25th), IT Operations Analytics (9th), AIOps (21st)
syslog-ng
Ranking in Log Management
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Devo is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 1.8%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
syslog-ng1.8%
Devo0.9%
Other97.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

FR
Strategic Account Executive at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Has improved investigative workflows with interactive dashboards and simplified data correlation
The data analytics cloud component focuses on real-time analytics, which is very impressive. The SIEM collects and correlates logs data from different sources and can integrate with ServiceNow, hardware asset management, and software asset management. The security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) is another valuable feature. The security data platform serves as the foundation of Devo. Regarding advanced query capabilities, Devo offers several models including query logs, visual query builder, language integrated query, and SQL, with SQL being the most frequently used querying data capability. The single pane of glass that Devo offers is the SOC. The tools in Devo's active ports are for investigating, not just viewing data. They are more interactive than other market solutions. The drill-down reports capabilities allow analysts to click on any element in a widget. When they see a spike in a line chart for a failed login, which could be a true or false attempt, they can click that spike, and a table widget on the same active board instantly populates with raw logs of data for those specific failed logins. This is particularly important for enterprise companies with numerous endpoints and users. The dynamic filtering of inputs significantly reduces the time cybersecurity analysts spend trying to figure out failed logins and identifying false positives.
OC
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Devo has a really good website for creating custom configurations."
"The strength of Devo is not only in that it is pretty intuitive, but it gives you the flexibility and creativity to merge feeds. The prime examples would be using the synthesis or union tables that give you phenomenal capabilities... The ability to use a synthesis or union table to combine all those feeds and make heads or tails of what's going on, and link it to go down a thread, is functionality that I hadn't seen before."
"The user interface is really modern. As an end-user, there are a lot of possibilities to tailor the platform to your needs, and that can be done without needing much support from Devo. It's really flexible and modular. The UI is very clean."
"The ability to have high performance, high-speed search capability is incredibly important for us. When it comes to doing security analysis, you don't want to be doing is sitting around waiting to get data back while an attacker is sitting on a network, actively attacking it. You need to be able to answer questions quickly. If I see an indicator of attack, I need to be able to rapidly pivot and find data, then analyze it and find more data to answer more questions. You need to be able to do that quickly. If I'm sitting around just waiting to get my first response, then it ends up moving too slow to keep up with the attacker. Devo's speed and performance allows us to query in real-time and keep up with what is actually happening on the network, then respond effectively to events."
"Devo provides a multi-tenant, cloud-native architecture. This is critical for managed service provider environments or multinational organizations who may have subsidiaries globally. It gives organizations a way to consolidate their data in a single accessible location, yet keep the data separate. This allows for global views and/or isolated views restricted by access controls by company or business unit."
"It's very, very versatile."
"The most powerful feature is the way the data is stored and extracted. The data is always stored in its original format and you can normalize the data after it has been stored."
"Those 400 days of hot data mean that people can look for trends and at what happened in the past. And they can not only do so from a security point of view, but even for operational use cases. In the past, our operational norm was to keep live data for only 30 days. Our users were constantly asking us for at least 90 days, and we really couldn't even do that. That's one reason that having 400 days of live data is pretty huge. As our users start to use it and adopt this system, we expect people to be able to do those long-term analytics."
"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."
"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."
"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."
"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."
"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."
"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."
"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

"Their documentation could be better. They are growing quickly and need to have someone focused on tech writing to ensure that all the different updates, how to use them, and all the new features and functionality are properly documented."
"Some basic reporting mechanisms have room for improvement. Customers can do analysis by building Activeboards, Devo’s name for interactive dashboards. This capability is quite nice, but it is not a reporting engine. Devo does provide mechanisms to allow third-party tools to query data via their API, which is great. However, a lot of folks like or want a reporting engine, per se, and Devo simply doesn't have that. This may or may not be by design."
"The price is one problem with Devo."
"They can improve their AI capabilities"
"Technical support could be better."
"There's always room to reduce the learning curve over how to deal with events and machine data. They could make the machine data simpler."
"There are some issues from an availability and functionality standpoint, meaning the tool is somewhat slow. There were some slow response periods over the past six to nine months, though it has yet to impact us terribly as we are a relatively small shop. We've noticed it, however, so Devo could improve the responsiveness."
"From our experience, the Devo agent needs some work. They built it on top of OS Query's open-source framework. It seems like it wasn't tuned properly to handle a large volume of Windows event logs. In our experience, there would definitely be some room for improvement. A lot of SIEMs on the market have their own agent infrastructure. I think Devo's working towards that, but I think that it needs some improvement as far as keeping up with high-volume environments."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."
"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."
"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is based on the number of gigabytes of ingestion by volume, and it's on a 30-day average. If you go over one day, that's not a big deal as long as the average is what you expected it to be."
"Devo was very cost-competitive... Devo did come with that 400 days of hot data, and that was not the case with other products."
"The way Devo prices things is based on the amount of data, and I wish the tiers had more granularity. Maybe at this point they do, but when we first negotiated with them, there were only three or four tiers."
"Our licensing fees are billed annually and per terabyte."
"I like the pricing very much. They keep it simple. It is a single price based on data ingested, and they do it on an average. If you get a spike of data that flows in, they will not stick it to you or charge you for that. They are very fair about that."
"It's very competitive. That was also a primary draw for us. Some of the licensing models with solutions like Splunk and Sentinel were attractive upfront, but there were so many micro-charges and services we would've had to add on to make them what we wanted. We had to include things like SOAR and extended capabilities, whereas all those capabilities are completely included with the Devo platform. I haven't seen any additional fee."
"It's a per gigabyte cost for ingestion of data. For every gigabyte that you ingest, it's whatever you negotiated your price for. Compared to other contracts that we've had for cloud providers, it's significantly less."
"Devo is definitely cheaper than Splunk. There's no doubt about that. The value from Devo is good. It's definitely more valuable to me than QRadar or LogRhythm or any of the old, traditional SIEMs."
"Syslog-ng is open-source."
"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
6%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Devo?
Compared to Splunk or SentinelOne, it is really expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Devo?
The single pane of glass that Devo offers could be improved. The tools in Devo's active ports need enhancement in their investigative capabilities. The drill-down reports capabilities, while useful...
What is your primary use case for Devo?
During my time at MetaBase Q and as a partner integrator of ServiceNow, I had the chance to understand and be part of projects integrating SOCs, NOCs, and Security Operation Centers with Devo. Most...
What needs improvement with syslog-ng?
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 thin...
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. ...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United States Air Force, Rubrik, SentinelOne, Critical Start, NHL, Panda Security, Telefonica, CaixaBank, OpenText, IGT, OneMain Financial, SurveyMonkey, FanDuel, H&R Block, Ulta Beauty, Manulife, Moneylion, Chime Bank, Magna International, American Express Global Business Travel
Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath
Find out what your peers are saying about Devo vs. syslog-ng and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.