Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Portainer 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

Portainer
Ranking in Container Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
1
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
70
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 Portainer is 5.4%, up from 1.8% 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 (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud0.5%
Portainer5.4%
Other94.1%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

EB
A GUI solution that helps to administer a docker using a browser
The first time using Portainer involves a learning curve. It takes longer as you're unfamiliar with the processes and might be lazy to consult the manual. Initially, you may rely on intuition within the GUI. However, after repeating the same tasks three or four times, the process becomes much quicker.
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

"Portainer comes with the ability to take the information of docker definition. Using it, I can visually observe how the container has been created. It allows me to create networks. I can also visually generate volumes and working stacks."
"The Add data feature lets you gather any type of log and easily analyze it."
"Splunk goes beyond collecting basic metrics like CPU or memory utilization; it comprehensively gathers data from various sources, including networks, applications, and virtualization, eliminating the need for siloed solutions and enhancing the capabilities of existing engineering software."
"It is a good tool. It allows you to set alerts for application and infrastructure monitoring, and it allows you to create dashboards."
"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."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"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 ability to create custom dashboards is one of the best features and that's typically why most people deploy Splunk. Users can create dashboards for just about anything."
"We haven't really experienced any glitches or bugs."
 

Cons

"Portainer needs to be more intuitive."
"In Splunk Observability Cloud, I notice room for improvement in synthetic monitoring. It does not provide output based on server names."
"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."
"Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom."
"Splunk APM should include a better correlation between resources and infrastructure monitoring."
"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."
"In Splunk Observability Cloud, I notice room for improvement in synthetic monitoring. It does not provide output based on server names."
"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Container Management solutions are best for your needs.
867,953 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise44
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Portainer?
Portainer comes with the ability to take the information of docker definition. Using it, I can visually observe how the container has been created. It allows me to create networks. I can also visua...
What needs improvement with Portainer?
Portainer needs to be more intuitive.
What is your primary use case for Portainer?
The tool is a GUI that helps to administer a docker using a browser.
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

Information Not Available
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware and others in Container Management. Updated: September 2025.
867,953 professionals have used our research since 2012.