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Kubernetes 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:
 

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
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 Kubernetes is 5.1%, down from 9.3% 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

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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use this solution for the hosting of micro-services. Kubernetes helps us to orchestrate all the containers hosting these micro-services."
"The solution has many valuable features but the most impressive is the ability to scale an application and continuously monitor if all the components of the application are functioning correctly."
"The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is the integration with other solutions, such as Formative and Grafana."
"The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is its support for load balancing."
"The best thing about Kubernetes is that most of the containerized applications are centralized."
"The implementation, and the way that they can, with a few clicks, load hundreds of machines without any trouble is very useful."
"The cloud-managed Kubernetes allow us to take care of a big system and deployment and container management without having a big operational team."
"Auto-scaling and self-healing features are very good."
"The company has many systems that the customer is paying to access. Splunk APM issued via AppDynamics helps find problems in the feed. It reduces the risk of supervising all the devices. I can supervise the flow and simulate the conditions of the repository across several dashboards to show what's happening at the moment."
"The tool is efficient in collecting, monitoring and evaluating logs."
"The volume it handles is very good, including the number of metrics, the volume number of traces, and more."
"Splunk APM has helped us to standardize logging and monitoring procedures."
"It is a great resource for us because we have so many different data sources and to be able to aggregate that and put it through a concise dashboard or an alert really helps."
"It supports proactive management, enhances security, and improves operational efficiency."
"The product's deployment phase is good and very easy because it is done with OpenTelemetry for most of the parts."
"The solution overall is very valuable for me."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to improve its UI. The tool is very complex and basic."
"The price is something they need to improve."
"Kubernetes could improve by having better integration with VMware solutions."
"Lacks some scalability and more user-friendly operability."
"Kubernetes could adopt UI-based approach. A UI-based approach would be really useful in the CI/CD pipeline. They should make everything a little bit more user-friendly. For example, when I'm deploying, it would be nice to load my code and be able to see which components need to be connected."
"I think that the GUI dashboard in Kubernetes is very simple and that there are no great options."
"We would like to see more validation tools added to this solution, this would provide pre-deployment analysis that developers could use before publishing their infrastructure."
"In the financial service sector, I'd rate scalability an eight out of ten. But do it in a controlled manner, not auto-scaling. If your application has a bug and you enable the autoscaler, it will spike your costs. If someone deploys an application with a bug, that's automatically a problem."
"The cardinality is pretty low."
"It is essential for the monitoring tool to deliver quick response times when generating analytical reports, instead of prolonged delays."
"The dashboards are used mainly to visualize information about the infrastructure, but it isn't easy to construct or use the dashboards. While we tried to resolve the issue by calling support, it would be easier if they had an AI co-pilot to identify the problem and help you solve it."
"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 process terms. These categories of dashboards would be very helpful for customers."
"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."
"It's a bit difficult to use. It takes some time to get into it and to get it to do what you would like it to do. It is not straightforward to use it."
"Splunk would be better if some tools were integrated to be able to take action on security or network concerns."
"The product collects a lot of data but it does not assure that it collects all of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I am using the solution's open-source version."
"The solution is affordable."
"There is a license to use Kubernetes."
"There are no licensing fees."
"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs associated with its use."
"The solution is open source and has no fees."
"The solution requires a license to use it."
"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 offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
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 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?
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

K8
Splunk Infrastructure 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: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.