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Kentik vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 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
7.0
Kentik enhances network management and cost efficiency, offering data insights while reducing engineering efforts, boosting operational efficiency and security.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud enhances visibility and efficiency, resulting in faster resolutions, reduced costs, and improved KPI performance for users.
In production environments, especially for service providers on IP networks and data centers, Kentik helps in reducing the time to identify and resolve issues.
Using Splunk has saved my organization about 30% of our budget compared to using multiple different monitoring products.
Anyone working in front-end management should recognize the market price to see the true value of end-user monitoring.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
Kentik's customer service is efficient and responsive, with proactive communication and expertise, greatly enhancing user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.4
Splunk Observability Cloud support is responsive but needs faster response times and deeper expertise for improved service quality.
I have mostly used forums for any support needed because the setup is straightforward and the documentation is quite good.
They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us to determine what is needed.
They often require multiple questions, with five or six emails to get a response.
Support from Splunk is not very helpful because Splunk doesn't have a dedicated APM; they only have one APM engineer in Korea.
They did respond to us, but they did not explicitly inform us about the feature's absence.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Kentik is praised for its scalability in large, global installations, handling increased data flows and integrating with Kubernetes.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud offers scalable and flexible solutions, though concerns about cost and complexity persist among users.
Kentik's integration with Kubernetes makes scaling easier.
You can scale as many devices and tests as you want, but you should have a good number of credits in your accounts.
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
The issue is mainly about pricing because if they want to monitor more, it costs money.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Users commend Kentik for its strong stability, minimal disruptions, efficient issue resolution, and satisfactory performance, especially in lab settings.
Sentiment score
8.3
Splunk Observability Cloud is mostly stable and reliable, with users experiencing minimal issues and frequent alert notification management.
In production, however, dimensioning of the underlying platforms is something to be mindful of.
Based on stability, I would give Kentik a nine.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
Unlike NetScout or regular agents for APM, RUM has many problems during the POC phase because customer environments vary widely.
 

Room For Improvement

Kentik users desire enhanced permissions, UI, API access, integrations, AI, insights, cost-effectiveness, and alert and data features.
Users seek better integration, customization, scalability, and performance in Splunk Observability Cloud, alongside improved support and navigation features.
More work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
Improvements in dashboard configuration, customization, and artificial intelligence functionalities are desired.
Customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms.
 

Setup Cost

Kentik's pricing depends on usage factors, offering discounts for education, with annual and multi-year contracts available.
Splunk Observability Cloud's pricing is competitive and flexible, offering annual licenses with a 14-day free trial for evaluation.
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace.
Splunk is a bit expensive since it charges based on the indexing rate of data.
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
Splunk is a little expensive, however, it is in line with the current market pricing.
 

Valuable Features

Kentik offers real-time network visibility, customizable dashboards, and automation, enhancing security, performance, and user experience efficiently.
Splunk Observability Cloud offers real-time monitoring, intuitive dashboards, and machine learning for comprehensive analytics and performance optimization.
The most important feature is cybersecurity.
One of the most valuable features of Kentik, especially for service providers, is its ability to visualize all the BGP peering and the status of the BGP peering platform.
Kentik is easy to use and set up.
Splunk provides advanced notifications of roadblocks in the application, which helps us to improve and avoid impacts during high-volume days.
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
 

Categories and Ranking

Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
33rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (17th)
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Container Management (7th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON - PeerSpot reviewer
Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup
The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.
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
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.
What needs improvement with Kentik?
There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: May 2025.
859,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.