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Elastic Security 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

Elastic Security
Ranking in Log Management
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (7th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (19th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (11th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (12th)
syslog-ng
Ranking in Log Management
18th
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 June 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.3%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 1.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.3%
syslog-ng1.4%
Other95.3%
Log Management
 

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.
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

"This solution enables us to monitor application performance from Elasticsearch and we can predict some behaviors for applications using ELK."
"Enables monitoring of application performance and the ability to predict behaviors."
"We like the detailed investigation features of the platform as you're able to get a lot of detail as to what's going on on the host when you do investigations."
"Overall, this product does what it is supposed to do, although there is always room for improvement."
"I can look at events from more than one source across multiple different locations and find patterns or anomalies. The machine learning capabilities are helpful, and I can create rules for notifications to be more proactive rather than responding after something has gone wrong."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to collect authentication information from service providers."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Security is that you can install agents, and they are not separately licensed."
"The intelligence of the system has been very impressive; it's pretty accurate and gives you good details to create an intelligence report and present that to your C-level management."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."
"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."
"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."
 

Cons

"The tool should improve its scalability."
"Authentication is not a default in Kibana. We need to have another tool to have authentication and authorization. These two should be part of Kibana."
"We had issues with scalability. Logstash was not scaling and aggregation was getting delayed. We moved to Fluentd making our stack from ELK to EFK."
"They don't provide user authentication and authorisation features (Shield) as a part of their open-source version."
"The signature security needs improvement."
"This solution cannot do predictive maintenance, so we have to build our own modules for doing it."
"Email notification should be done the same way as Logentries does it."
"If the documentation were improved and made more clear for beginners, or even professionals, then we would be more attracted to this solution."
"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."
"In syslog-ng, I think a GUI would be beneficial. I am unsure if the premium module has a GUI to administer it."
"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."
"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."
"The filtering has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"The licensing cost of Elastic Security is based on the daily ingestion rate. I can't recall the exact figure, but for 10GB of log action daily, it would cost around $20,000."
"Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
"Elastic Security is free to use."
"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."
"The product offers an amazing pricing structure. Price-wise, the product is very competitive."
"The solution is not expensive and costs around ten dollars a month."
"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."
"Syslog-ng is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

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 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...
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. syslog-ng and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.