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Fortra's Alert Logic MDR vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Fortra's Alert Logic MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (31st), SOC as a Service (3rd)
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Alert Logic MDR is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar1.0%
Fortra's Alert Logic MDR1.0%
Other98.0%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2191746 - PeerSpot reviewer
President at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It's a highly mature, competitively priced solution that provides total visibility into your ecosystem. FORTRA's Alert Logic has the only Cybersecurity Platform that integrates XDR+WAF+VM+DLP in one.
Alert Logic offers total visibility into the client's IT ecosystem. The solution's intrusion detection system inspects 100 percent of the network packets and installs universal agents on all physical and virtual servers for log collection. Alert Logic also aggregates logs of the client's various 3rd Party security tools into a single pane of glass. All of the analytics from those data feeds got to a 24/7 SOC with sophisticated resources. Alert Logic has massive threat intelligence resources to provide additional context to the incident response declarations. They do all the heavy lifting for clients who lack the technology and resources to operate their own SOC. The client is solely responsible for the incident response component. The macro analytics resides on Alert Logic's cloud. You have the ECM response and business application team on the client side. Everything works in tandem, which is the only way you can deal with the advanced threats we face today, especially the ransomware families. If you don't respond in minutes, you're in trouble.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We receive infrastructure security warnings from it. So, we know what is going on and what needs to be addressed."
"Everything is in one dashboard; I'm notified when there's an incident and advised on what steps to take."
"The installation and configuration were slick."
"The solution was consistently available, and I cannot recall any instances where it was down."
"Notifications and the detail of notifications are most valuable. It is a user-friendly solution."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"While I still have on-premises appliances, I can remotely monitor everything from the cloud, and Alert Logic's ease-of-access features have helped me streamline my workflow and reduce implementation time."
"The most valuable aspect of Alert Logic is its technology platform. They have SOCs in the US and Europe, giving them global visibility of the threat landscape. They detect and respond to threats in minutes. Their biggest value is human expertise. You're being attacked by a human, and you cannot respond to it unless you have a human on the other side. They have the human and technological resources to respond."
"I think it's a very stable product that provides much more visibility than the other product."
"It has a logical, user-friendly GUI."
"I have found the most important features to be the flexibility, tech framework, and disk manager."
"The tool's most valuable feature is log source management. It enables us to connect to various log sources, including content, authentications, or other customized integrations. These integrations can be tailored for use with other platforms that don’t already have built-in IBM add-ons."
"The interface is good."
"It is a very good SIEM."
"When it comes to QRadar, they can do the correlation and not only in networks but also endpoints. This is one of the good features that we have noticed."
"The dashboard is easy to use and easy to understand what's going on and what the alerts mean."
 

Cons

"The setup process was complex."
"Could be more of an endpoint protector."
"This product needs to mature more. While it is a good product, there are some areas where it needs work."
"As a user involved with the user interface, I believe there is a need to continue improving it based on feedback from our customers."
"I would like more data on the alert payload. It would be good to have the ability to customize the alert payload to add whatever data that we want on there. Right now, it is a bit limited."
"The documentation, especially with the initial setup, needs improvement."
"Alert Logic needs to expand its SOCs to serve more markets, such as the Middle East and Asia. There should be infrastructure that covers more time zones. The company should also develop an EDR that is natively integrated into their solution. Currently, a client must buy another EDR solution like CrowdStrike or Sophos. I think Alert Logic is developing this. Built-in email security could also be developed and integrated."
"Its menu is not very intuitive. I would like to see the user menu expanded a bit. The user menu is very layered, and because of the layers, you have to go down a path that is not very intuitive."
"I think the support for IBM Security QRadar needs improvement as it is a big product and needs more support engineers to help customers."
"IBM technical support is always terrible."
"Dashboards and reports could provide better visualization of SIEM activity."
"It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system."
"The user interface is a bit clunky, a bit hard to find what you need."
"The dashboard is pathetic and it takes a long time to perform a search."
"The modularity could be improved."
"The architecture could be improved. I got stuck for a long time trying to understand the architecture, as it is quite challenging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing is very reasonable considering what you get for what you pay. There is quite a good value there. Its licensing is also very logical. They've got the licensing price points at a reasonable level. It is on a monthly license but a yearly contract. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"Price of the solution was very reasonable considering the size of our organization at the time, and so it worked out perfectly."
"Our ROI would probably be zero. We don't even use it. It sits in there. We get emails and just delete them. Around the world, we don't even use it."
"Alert Logic has better competitive pricing than some of its competitors."
"Almost any product that is on the AWS Marketplace is super easy to subscribe to."
"Pricing (based on EPS) will be more accurate."
"The tool's on-premise version is expensive. However, it is cheaper than Splunk. The hybrid model offers shared instances for customers, which is not expensive. Customers with a limited budget can opt for it. You can get premium support with licenses. However, if you need customized integration, you need to buy it."
"It could be cheaper, but the value itself is far more important for us than the price. Typically, our clients have yearly subscriptions."
"The maintenance costs are high."
"It is cheaper than ArcSight."
"think the pricing is quite flexible."
"It is costlier as compared to the other alternatives available in the market."
"The solution comes with a high price tag, while some of the competitors provide identical functionality in their offerings at no extra cost."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Performing Arts
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
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 asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is great compared to the other vendor.
 

Also Known As

Alert Logic MDR, Alert Logic Managed Detection and ResponseAlert Logic Threat Manager, Alert Logic Cloud Defender, Critical Watch FusionVM
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra's Alert Logic MDR vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.