No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Elastic Security vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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

Elastic Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (13th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (23rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (12th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
37th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.4%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.4%
SolarWinds Security Event Manager1.0%
Other95.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
Yashokanth Partkunan - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed Services Engineer at Loop1 Systems
Has supported client needs efficiently but requires deeper analysis features and faster support
The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment. More modification and enhancements are required on the dashboard side in order to make it closer to optimal performance. From observation and feedback from users, they need more functionality related to monitoring, and in-depth analyzing needs to be improved.

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 are the speed, detail, and visualization. It has the latest standards."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the prevention methods and the incident alerts."
"It is the best open-source product for people working in SO, managing and analyzing logs."
"This solution enables us to monitor application performance from Elasticsearch and we can predict some behaviors for applications using ELK."
"Overall, the product is very stable and it is well-liked."
"I use the stack every morning to check the errors and it's just so clear. I don't see any disadvantage to using Logstash."
"Elastic is straightforward, easy to integrate, and highly customizable."
"Elastic Security is very customizable, and the dashboards are very easy to build."
"Some of the rules are most valuable because you can be notified about various things, such as spyware or things that are going on in the internal network."
"User-friendly configuration is key, and the configurations are simple, not complex."
"SolarWinds is easy to configure, and it provides timely alerts."
"If you have no monitoring tool in place, SolarWinds SIEM is a good place to start and very inexpensive."
"SolarWinds is effective for server, network, and log monitoring. It's also good for IP address management. We also have a patch manager, but we're still working on getting that operational."
"The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers."
"This tool is simple to use."
"It has in-depth monitoring capabilities and an easy way for setting up dashboards. I can expand in various areas, or I can reduce areas. It supports different types of breakdowns, filters, and rules. It is very simple for an out-of-the-box type of product. It doesn't take a lot of time to figure it out, which is unlike some of the solutions that I have looked at. It meets all the aspects."
 

Cons

"I would like more ways to manage permissions and restrict access to certain users."
"There isn't really a very good user experience. You need a lot of training."
"It is difficult to anticipate and understand the space utilization, so more clarity there would be great."
"The problem with ELK is it's difficult to administer. When you have a problem, it can be very, very difficult to rebuild indexes."
"This solution is very hard to implement."
"The solution needs to be more reactive to investigations. We need to be able to detect and prevent any attacks before it can damage our infrastructure. Currently, this solution doesn't offer that."
"We'd like to see some more artificial intelligence capabilities."
"The process of designing dashboards is a little cumbersome in Kibana."
"Under the new system, it is not upgradable the way they say. When you try to do an upgrade, it doesn't really work unless you dump everything and start from scratch."
"We need to post events on the end of the devices. Sometimes, the event does not respond."
"It is a very technical program. They can simplify it so that it isn't so hard to deal with."
"We have automated threat detection in the Alliance Security, Antoinette. However, if these features could be further enhanced, it would simplify my work, potentially allowing me to allocate more time to address complex issues."
"The solution was a little slow when running some larger queries."
"I would like to be able to dig deeper into the visibility of events or incidents to determine whether they are malicious, such as by doing behavior analysis."
"SolarWinds should improve its correlation capabilities. The correlation does not automatically detect and reduce the events fast enough. You have to manually do a correlation report, which means the tool is not scalable in many ways."
"The solution's technical support is okay, but we don't have an SLA, and sometimes the response times are very slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"The solution is free."
"We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."
"Its price is fine. Its licensing works on a yearly basis. We have to renew the license every year. I also have a good experience with Darktrace. When we buy Darktrace, we get training free of cost, which is not there in Elastic. We have to pay extra for training. There is certainly room for improvement."
"I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10."
"The base product is open-source but if you need advanced security features then you need to pay for the subscription. Elastic Security's price is reasonable in some cases and in other cases it's not."
"The price is reasonable. It probably costs the same as ArcSight and LogRhythm SIEM. FortiSIEM might cost less than Elastic Security. There are no hidden or additional costs."
"When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
"The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
What needs improvement with Elastic Security?
I do not have any specific recommendations for improvements in Elastic Security, but I feel that the AI module should get more mature. These machine learning algorithms become better with time; as ...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The log analyzing capability of SolarWinds Security Event Manager should go into more depth than the current environment. More modification and enhancements are required on the dashboard side in or...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
I work with all SolarWinds products mostly, including Network Configuration Manager and NPM. I am a reseller. I usually recommend SolarWinds products for Loop1. It's for the bigger ones; we are the...
What advice do you have for others considering SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
I am still dealing with SolarWinds products and use most of their solutions. User-friendly configuration is key, and the configurations are simple, not complex. The only important part is what we d...
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.