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Google Kubernetes Engine vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
9.0
Google Kubernetes Engine offers cost-effectiveness, operational productivity, and flexibility, though competitor offerings affect ROI and challenge startups.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud boosts ROI with enhanced visibility, reducing downtime and enabling faster issue resolution and improved collaboration.
By migrating from AWS to Google Cloud Platform, we have saved a lot of time and money.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
Google Kubernetes Engine's customer support is mixed; some users find it satisfactory, while others rely on alternative solutions.
Sentiment score
7.4
Splunk Observability Cloud receives high support ratings, though some users rely on in-house expertise and community resources.
Problem resolution typically takes between two and five days, which isn't very helpful.
They did not have a clear answer.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Google Kubernetes Engine offers scalable, efficient, and flexible resource management for various applications, including machine learning on cloud platforms.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud is praised for scalability, despite some cost concerns and challenges with large data sets.
The autoscaling capabilities of Google Kubernetes Engine have significantly impacted our operations.
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Google Kubernetes Engine is praised for stability, frequent updates, scalability, seamless integration, and high satisfaction ratings, despite minor challenges.
Sentiment score
8.3
Splunk Observability Cloud is highly stable, with users praising its reliability, minimal bugs, and quick resolution of minor issues.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
 

Room For Improvement

Google Kubernetes Engine needs improved security, integration, user-friendliness, monitoring, pricing, and application-level security for better user experience.
Splunk Observability Cloud needs better integration, pricing, scalability, customization, and support to improve user experience and expandability.
When looking at the web interface, it feels kind of slow due to the many features involved.
Log observability could be made easier so someone from high school can use it without having technological expertise.
It would be helpful if I could easily find log information in a particular namespace without needing to write certain labels.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
Customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms.
 

Setup Cost

Google Kubernetes Engine offers flexible, open-source pricing based on resource usage, competitive with AWS, affecting costs for high availability.
Splunk Observability Cloud is costly but valued, with variable pricing and potential for discounts or negotiations to reduce expenses.
Google is considered cheaper compared to AWS, making it suitable for smaller to medium companies concerning cost.
The on-demand nodes are quite expensive.
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
 

Valuable Features

Google Kubernetes Engine offers easy deployment, auto-scaling, robust security, seamless cloud integration, and efficient resource and traffic management.
Splunk Observability Cloud integrates data, monitors performance, and enhances visibility with user-friendly dashboards and real-time threat detection.
The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team.
What I find most valuable is the ability to focus solely on my product without worrying about the Kubernetes infrastructure itself.
GKE is easier to understand and use than Elastic Kubernetes Service.
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
Unlike other APMs, Splunk's service map is quite effective.
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Kubernetes Engine
Ranking in Container Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (11th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 2.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.5%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Immánuel Fodor - PeerSpot reviewer
The auto-scaling feature ensures that we only use resources when needed
The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team. Features like auto-scaling are highly beneficial for both handling traffic spikes and optimizing costs. Furthermore, Google's promise of good SLA availability, with the service being available in different locations, adds to its robustness.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Kubernetes Engine?
The on-demand nodes are quite expensive, so we now use spot machines.
What needs improvement with Google Kubernetes Engine?
Gemini could be more integrated with Google Kubernetes Engine ( /products/google-kubernetes-engine-reviews ). For example, it would be helpful if I could easily find log information in a particular...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...
 

Also Known As

GKE
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.