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Elastic Stack vs NetWitness Platform 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 Stack
Ranking in Log Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
34th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Stack is 4.4%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Stack4.4%
NetWitness Platform0.5%
Other95.1%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

LB
Senior Consultant at Skillfield
Offers robust out-of-the-box integrations and streamlines logging processes effortlessly
There are improvements needed for Elastic Stack. It is mostly based on Lucene, and the heart of Elastic Stack is Lucene, which has some limitations. Anything built on top of Lucene often feels an add-on, and that includes vector databases. Elastic Stack can store vector embeddings as well and perform AI and machine learning tasks out of the box without excessive configuration. The main improvements involve increasing speed and compression capabilities; I have seen databases that claim to achieve significantly better compression. While Elastic Stack can manage vast amounts of data, if the mapping is not specified correctly, the indexing time can be slow, especially with many events per second. Improper mapping usually means that every document received gets indexed for all fields, which is not desired. Elastic consultants typically optimize this, but out of the box, as data volume increases, scaling becomes necessary. They are working on these improvements in new versions.
MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
CISO at One Bank Limited
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."
"The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it performed admirably. The alerting system is excellent, and searching through logs is incredibly efficient. What's impressive is that all three products or options are integrated into one solution. This means I don't need separate logging, monitoring, or antivirus solutions."
"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
"I think the ecosystem is well supported, and for logs, it was faster compared to our previous previous log management."
"The tool's most powerful aspect is its search engine capability. It's a highly effective and powerful solution for searching. We use it in professional and student projects at universities, and it delivers promising results."
"The only beneficial aspect of Elastic Stack is that it's open source."
"The detection rules in Elastic Stack are the most valuable feature. The search capabilities are excellent and fast. As we collect logs from workstations and devices, the detection rules run on top of the logs and detect any suspicious activity, raising alerts accordingly. Integration with Elastic Stack depends on the specific integration. Elastic provides some bridging integrations that make it easy, but require custom integration. Most integrations are simple, but customization can be challenging because we need to do some parsing. There's something called Elastic Common Schema, and we need to parse the source logs to match this schema, which can be a bit challenging."
"It is a very scalable solution...I didn't face any problem with this scalability part of the solution since we only have a few pieces of equipment in our company."
"The most valuable features are the integration and ease of use."
"It gives the capability for the incident response team to correlate logs to identify any kind of problem like malware and incidents in a general sense, both for logs and packets."
"Possibility to investigate incidents based on logs and raw packets, such as extracting files sent over the network"
"The development of use cases on the SSA console is quite user friendly. This means that the security analyst or the researcher does not have to learn another language."
"The software is scalable to whatever is required, and you can also put a lot of resources in the cloud."
"The most valuable features are the packet decoder, log decoder, and concentrator."
"I can have enterprise security, email security, next generation firewall security log, HIDS and NIDS logs, etc. all on the same dashboard. It makes it easy to pinpoint or correlate our server to this. I can find out if there is lateral movement. This is the biggest advantage of this solution."
"The most valuable feature of RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets are the alerts and correlations tools."
 

Cons

"Agent deployment is a little tough in the on-premise version."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets."
"The implementation of dashboards in the solution needs to be made easier...I had some issues with the ports and configuration since it was kind of complex to implement with Docker."
"There could be better documentation."
"AI-enablement would be a big improvement in Elastic Stack...If there is room for an ML model in Elastic Stack, then it would be good."
"Elastic Stack's search capabilities can be challenging, especially when searching for precise data from past years, such as two or ten years ago. Its indexing performance for exact data retrieval may decrease as the data volume grows. Therefore, I believe there is room for improvement in the product's search functionality. It needs to improve its pricing as well."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features."
"Improving integration capabilities, especially with authentication systems, firewalls, and security controls, is a crucial area for improvement in Elastic Stack. Additionally, enhancing functionality to handle large Yara queries more efficiently would be beneficial, as many EDR solutions can run such queries faster than Elastic Stack's current limitations."
"Sometimes, it gives me static when integrating Windows-based systems. It should produce a precise log of sorts as to where the problem is. For example, a few days ago because of the McAfee application firewall, I couldn't get access to the particular Windows machine. So, my team and I had to figure out by ourselves that there was a virus responsible for the obstacle. This solution should trigger a meaningful log or message indicating the reason the user or implementer can't get into the machine."
"Its technical support could be better."
"They should implement algorithms to digest that data and produce additional, more advanced reporting, alerting and support of internal security teams."
"Technical support could be improved."
"An area for improvement would be better automation and more inbuilt use cases."
"The system architecture is complex and sometimes it’s hard to troubleshoot potential problems."
"Nowadays, their support is a little subpar compared to other solutions. I rate RSA support six out of 10."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets can improve the threat level aspect, it is lacking compared to other solutions. Whenever any hacking activity or any other threat factor occurred they used to provide the coverages very fast when comparing RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets. I heard the other three solutions, from a discussion with my team members who had experience in other solutions, they used to say that. Whenever any issues happened across the globe RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets are a little bit slow improving those detection mechanisms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"The product is expensive."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets do not have a subscription model, it's a one-time purchase. There is only a perpetual license."
"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
"The product is expensive."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Stack?
The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it per...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Stack?
My experience with Elastic Stack pricing indicates that it is node-based. While I do not have complete pricing details, they are available online. If I choose Elastic Cloud, it includes licensing a...
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
There are improvements needed for Elastic Stack. It is mostly based on Lucene, and the heart of Elastic Stack is Lucene, which has some limitations. Anything built on top of Lucene often feels an a...
What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
 

Also Known As

No data available
RSA Security Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Stack vs. NetWitness Platform and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.