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Kubernetes vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

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

Kubernetes
Ranking in Container Management
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (8th), Network Monitoring Software (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Kubernetes is 6.3%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Kubernetes6.3%
Splunk Observability Cloud0.5%
Other93.2%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Venu Boddu - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage infrastructure automation and smooth application deployment with robust auto-scaling capabilities
Kubernetes is highly valuable for its node-based setup, which allows for the running of multiple pods. This feature is essential for infrastructure automation and application deployment. Kubernetes also offers rollback control and auto-scaling capabilities, which are crucial for maintaining an application's availability even if nodes or pods go down. Additionally, Kubernetes supports load balancing to distribute traffic efficiently across multiple pods.
Taiwo Ige - PeerSpot reviewer
Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact
Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having fast storage classes is very important."
"Auto-scaling and self-healing features are very good."
"The best thing about Kubernetes is orchestration. It is very good. We will not see much downtime unless there are some human errors. We do not see much downtime or issues with the container or automation."
"The cloud-managed Kubernetes allow us to take care of a big system and deployment and container management without having a big operational team."
"The most valuable feature is the support for Docker containers."
"Kubernetes provides scalable clustering for containers and other means of deployment."
"The most valuable features of Kubernetes have been autoscaling and its resilience mechanisms."
"The most valuable features of Kubernetes are the integration with Docker and there is plenty of documentation available. We work with Docker as a container, and it is more integrated with Docker than VMware Tanzu."
"I manage six tools, but Splunk Observability Cloud is one of my favorites, and I aspire to build my career specializing in it because it has great features, more attention in the market, and is a relatively new tool with promising growth."
"I like the fact that Splunk APM makes it easy to connect to the application database and run queries against the data."
"I have definitely seen a return on investment with Splunk Observability Cloud, particularly through how fast it has grown and how comfortable other teams are in relying on its outputs for monitoring and observability."
"The dashboards are the features of Splunk Observability Cloud that I appreciate the most, providing visual representation of all data and text, which has benefited my organization by speeding up people's jobs and allowing a place to monitor all logs, as there are usually thousands of entries coming in which can become very disorderly."
"I find the monitoring console very helpful. With one click, I can see how we are performing, and at the same time, I can see what data is flowing."
"I have primarily used it to go back into the past and understand why something happened. It provides enough information to do research and figure things out."
"We utilize the APM and auto-detectors, as the core metrics and core alerts are available for us, which are the features of Splunk Observability Cloud that I appreciate the most."
"The solution's basic visibility is one of its most valuable features. So, it is a solution that is easy to use...The solution's initial setup process was straightforward."
 

Cons

"They should update Kubernetes more regularly."
"This product should have a more advanced built-in scheduler that uses real application metrics in the scheduling strategy."
"The virtual machines should be GUI-based"
"The pricing could be improved. It would be ideal if it was a bit less."
"Having a thread dump and memory dump, and seeing how many objects were created would be useful."
"It would be nice if they could make it easier for developers and infrastructure staff to automate some of the pieces that they have to do manually at the moment."
"The Kubernetes dashboard can be improved. It is currently a mess. We were using Rancher earlier, and everyone was happy with the dashboard. Right now, we are using Kubernetes, and it's not working with Microsoft workstations. We still have problems with the dashboard. It's terrible."
"We faced a challenge while migrating and upgrading versions of Kubernetes."
"Once you see the issues related to the scalability part, you need to understand that it is a warning triangle. After seeing the warning triangle, you need to realize that you cannot trust any of the numbers you see in the chart because it is not a complete, full data set."
"It does not have a user-friendly interface and it is difficult to use."
"Technical support is good but could be improved, particularly concerning the time taken for ticket resolution."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with the automation."
"We have both on-prem and cloud, and the challenge is getting all our log data aggregated or streams aggregated so that it is real-time. We do a pretty good job of that, but our organization is not using it as a security platform when it can do a great job of that."
"The user interface of Splunk Observability Cloud needs a lot of work."
"The initial setup of Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) was easy. The solution is deployed on-premises."
"We never had any issues when it comes to the type of use cases we are using it for. We did not need more advancement on it, but I know that, in general, everything can be updated. There are tiny little tweaks that can be made regardless of whether it looks better or has a different flow to it than it does right now, but it works pretty well for what we use it for."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kubernetes is open source and is an orchestration platform. It is a cost effective solution and its pricing depends on your company and how you use it"
"Microsoft provides reasonable costs for Kubernetes."
"In addition to Kubernetes, you have to pay for support."
"The price of Kubernetes could be lower. However, it is less expensive than VMware Tanzu. Additionally, technical support is expensive. The overall cost of the solution is approximately $1,000 annually."
"I am using the solution's open-source version."
"Kubernetes is free; it's open-source software."
"The solution is affordable."
"The management layer is free, which is perfect. You don't need to pay money for the management layer, but in AWS develop service, you need to pay. I think it is €75 per month for the management layer. It is free here, so you can have as many Kubernetes clusters as you need. You are paying just for the workload, that is, for the machine, CPU, memory, and everything."
"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten. The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"Splunk can be expensive, as its licensing is based on the daily data ingestion volume."
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It is expensive."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise44
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kubernetes?
There are many good features. I feel that the scale-out features, like replica sets, are very good. The number of running containers can be autoscaled.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
Since we use Kubernetes on-premises, the costs are related to our expertise and the personnel we hire.
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
Although we face issues when migrating to new versions of Kubernetes, such as misunderstandings on using new features or integration with proxy services, these issues can be addressed with proper p...
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

K8
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Kubernetes vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,304 professionals have used our research since 2012.