Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dynatrace vs SolarWinds AppOptics vs Splunk Enterprise Security 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dynatrace8.8%
Datadog7.2%
Sentry5.8%
Other78.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds AppOptics0.4%
Dynatrace8.8%
Datadog7.2%
Other83.6%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security9.3%
Wazuh10.9%
IBM Security QRadar7.2%
Other72.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a comprehensive view by integrating with other monitoring systems
There may be an issue since there are many tools like Splunk involved in network monitoring. From an IP perspective, Dynatrace is performing well. If they want to develop in network monitoring, they can, as it's part of their product line. It's not rocketry, so they can accomplish it. If I, as an SI, look at it from an enterprise perspective, considering the cost from the client, I prefer not to go with multiple systems, as they don't provide a complete 360-degree view. They need to improve on claims about being an enterprise system. The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.
John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.
Kyle Vernham - PeerSpot reviewer
Built-in searches and unified data access streamline alert investigation and boosts analyst efficiency
The two features I appreciate the most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the built-in searches, which have been very easy for us to get started with right out of the box, and the fact that it accesses all of our other systems. You can access it as a pane of glass rather than having to search individually. We also have the option to compare our analysts from our service to service. Splunk Enterprise Security helps our SOC team prioritize and investigate high-fidelity alerts more effectively by providing a more in-depth look and the ability to access a lot more of our data. Instead of jumping from several segmented systems, it allows us to have everything brought together in one place. For example, you have to move from our purview to our build system and to Splunk Enterprise Security, and it enables us to streamline that process. The built-in features of Splunk Enterprise Security, which we recently procured, have given us a good starting point and demonstrated the value of the product, providing an easy way to sell it to our company. The ease of getting everything into our purview helps us, and it serves as a good start for the investigation part in one location rather than what we usually have, which is jumping from system to system to system. Splunk Enterprise Security plays a role in our company's strategy to combat insider threats and advanced persistent threats by currently being in its technical test phase. We are still rolling it out, and it should help us find any insider threats based on information that our policy states should not be present in our system. Splunk Enterprise Security's risk-based alerting (RBA) has impacted our alert volume and analyst productivity because we've got many different systems feeding into it. However, it has helped to make it easier for our analysts to go through a set of events rather than 100 alerts. RBA allows us to streamline the process and customize it for our analysts. When it comes to leveraging Splunk Enterprise Security's dashboards and visualizations to communicate security posture to executives, it's pretty straightforward for any type of information. The visualization is easy to understand, but I haven't had any direct conversations with our executives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a platform that is very well-suited for marketers, but also for technology people. That is the key: the dashboard."
"Ease of problem detection and alerting, visual timeline, and user-sessions are some of the best features of Dynatrace."
"Real time monitoring helps reduce downtime. It saves a lot of time in determining what is the likely cause of an issue an end user may be experiencing."
"The NeoLoad plugin is awesome, and it gets results from load tests correlated with test scenarios."
"The move valuable feature is the AI engine, which is amazing."
"Dynatrace provide us the in-depth details to know what is wrong in the application and what are performance issues, then really quickly we are able to debug any performance issues or any other performance-related issues."
"The dashboard customization based on the performance metric requirement is one of the most exciting features."
"Dynatrace has multiple features that I need, but I love that you can analyze traffic, including any bottlenecks. I also find the tool user-friendly and has an easy-to-navigate interface."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"The product has a great dashboard."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."
"The features of Splunk Enterprise Security that I find most valuable include Mission Control, which I really appreciate, the way accelerated data functions, making it really fast to see, the integration with SOAR, which is something really cool and integrates with automated processes, and the way to ingest threat intelligence feeds, which is an amazing feature as well."
"The speed of the search engine"
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a valuable tool that allows us to monitor data from the APS daily."
"The ability to analyze huge amounts of sales data and accurate prediction of sales forecasting is the most valuable feature."
"Now with Splunk Enterprise Security, we have everything in one place—the notables are created automatically, but they can also create their own notables based on the investigation, which improved and reduced about 50% of the manual work that was done before versus what we are doing now."
"The risk-based alerting (RBA) is one of the valuable features."
"Search language is easy to understand and teach to new users."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is fast and well-documented, and user interface and user interaction are well-designed compared to other SIEM solutions."
 

Cons

"From the Dynatrace SaaS platform, they talk about the APIs. The approach they take is, "We create the APIs, you use them however you want." I like it, that gives us flexibility. But at the same time, if your company does not have a huge number of APM specialists, or it does not have the time and resources available to spend on these kind of technology developments, it would be helpful if there were out-of-the-box solutions available from the platform. I would certainly consider that, because that would make us go to market much faster, rather than redeveloping our own solutions based on those APIs."
"Add support for Ruby."
"Adding people to alerts has not been very intuitive. That's really my only negative feedback."
"This tool had a feature of doing load test in production or lower environment, which was shut down earlier this year. We are missing that feature badly and we definitely want to see that feature back."
"Even if the engine can manage a huge amount of data, requests take time to succeed."
"I find it is very difficult to train someone in using this application. As amazing as it can be, the learning curve is extensive."
"There are lots of features to share information, but we need to learn to leverage that, both on the web browser and on the mobile app."
"The user interface for the management functions is not particularly intuitive for even the most common features."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."
"The solution should be more user-friendly."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."
"Splunk could be improved by reducing the cost. The cost is one of the biggest challenges for us in keeping to our production requirements."
"My organization does not completely utilize risk-based alerting in Splunk Enterprise Security as it's not fully mature."
"Endpoint access is the only issue I can think to mention, even though the endpoint access we have with Cisco is fine."
"I think the machine learning should be emphasized. Now, it's really important to analyze Big Data, data mining. A SIEM solution, like Splunk, needs an improved data mining solution, artificial intelligence."
"Some of the search functions can be better. There has been a lot of talk at the conference about the update of SPL before each iteration. That will be a lot of help."
"You do need a lot of training and certification with this product."
"In terms of the interface, it could include some improvements for the look and feel."
"Areas of Splunk Enterprise Security that could be improved include the need for training and certifications. We are planning to do certifications, and there are many features, such as risk-based score and score detection, where the current training doesn't provide visibility to the analyst."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased a subscription for one year and it is an expensive solution for a large enterprise like ours."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"Product pricing can seem a little over complex, however this is minor and does not detract from the benefits of the solution."
"This is an expensive solution, but it is also worth the money."
"The licensing for Dynatrace is high. If you want to go for monitoring solutions, then why Dynatrace? If you have a particular budget, you can go for many other monitoring tools - apart from Dynatrace - and they can help you more and give more data than Dynatrace can. It's not worth the money that you spend for Dynatrace."
"Dynatrace is the most expensive APM that we sell, compared to competitors' products. The license pricing could be improved. My customers pay for licensing yearly."
"I would like to see them improve on their licensing and the cost. It's been a challenge for us because the way they have it broken out right now, you have to buy it by units. It's hard for us to know where to put those units because our company is broken up into all these different business units, so it's been challenging in that sense. I just would like to see them improve that model a little bit."
"It is quite costly. Dynatrace was the most expensive, compared to the other products we looked at. But it was also a lot better. If you want value for your money, Dynatrace is the way to go."
"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is an expensive solution."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive. I would rate the cost an eight out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."
"Splunk can be expensive, as its licensing is based on the daily data ingestion volume."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is not at all cost-friendly to be deployed in very small enterprises like start-ups."
"My experience with the solution's setup cost, pricing, and licensing was really good."
"Personnel costs are saved by not having to involve the domain developers from multiple teams when tracing a problem that spans multiple platforms."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is competitive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
868,570 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Government
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business77
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise289
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise257
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if yo...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire sta...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems,...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 a...
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 ingest...
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 monitor...
 

Also Known As

No data available
AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: September 2025.
868,570 professionals have used our research since 2012.