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Splunk Cloud Platform vs Splunk Security Essentials comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

Splunk Cloud Platform
Ranking in Data Visualization
3rd
Ranking in IT Alerting and Incident Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Security Essentials
Ranking in Data Visualization
18th
Ranking in IT Alerting and Incident Management
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Splunk Cloud Platform is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Security Essentials is 0.3%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

UzairKhan - PeerSpot reviewer
AI-driven analytics significantly enhance operational decision-making
I am currently working with the solution, but I need to know from which NNTT. The interface is okay; its interface is good, and user interface is good. I would recommend Splunk Cloud Platform to other users and organizations because it adds value to the organization; you can do different things with it because it's a pure analytical tool, not only a SIEM tool. I am mostly focused on Splunk Cloud Platform because I chose this vendor due to the feature set that was offered by Splunk Cloud Platform; it was not being offered by any other vendor. Splunk Cloud Platform is the vendor I am referring to, not NNTT. Maintenance for Splunk Cloud Platform has been done manually, not automatically. Usually, one person takes part in maintenance. Regarding the number of users for Splunk Cloud Platform, it involves discussing the number of organizations or the number of people working in those organizations. In general, I would rate Splunk Cloud Platform a nine.
Srinivas Prudhivi Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to examine the parameters of the events found and take appropriate actions as necessary
Once we've configured our logs, for example, if we need to monitor processes and IP addresses, we ensure these logs are being ingested into our Splunk instance. The logs gathered from various endpoints are then consolidated into our Splunk platform. Once the data is collected, we can create searches and dashboards to analyze it. With these searches and dashboards, we gain insights into events and can make informed decisions based on them. We'll examine the parameters of these events and take appropriate actions as necessary.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Splunk Cloud Platform is the alerting feature."
"Index manager is most valuable because we do not have to bother about internal storage. It is all managed by the Splunk team."
"Splunk has sped up our response and reduced the time we spend manually monitoring any logs for ticketing tools or servers. It saves us around two hours daily."
"The Splunk search is powerful compared to similar solutions. We get millions of data points within seconds."
"The Splunk Cloud Platform has reduced our mean time to resolve. It has easily saved 20 to 30 minutes every time someone gets locked out. We get 10 or 15 instances per day where people get locked out. It definitely saves a few hours per day."
"The most valuable feature of Splunk Cloud Platform is its robustness and ability to ingest logs."
"There is definitely the ease of the infrastructure administration. It frees up a lot of time."
"The data management and instant search features are the most valuable ones for us, as they allow us to instantly retrieve information needed for reports and security compliance."
"The network monitoring feature is particularly valuable for gathering information about users, login times, and other statistics."
"I would have to rate Splunk Security Essentials a 10 out of 10 because it's free and there's tons of usable content."
"We are focusing on security to ensure incidents are reported efficiently. In addition to that, for reporting purposes, we are utilizing our dashboards or creating new ones. We will be using free visualization tools for this purpose."
"They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks."
 

Cons

"First-time users may struggle with the user interface. When I first used Splunk, I entered my username and password. After that, we get a dashboard on the left side with apps. At the top, you can click the gear icon to view the settings. Within those settings, there's a distributed console option with several settings. It's a bit overwhelming for a beginner. The user knows what they want and can search for it in the search bar. If I see several apps, my first instinct is to scroll down to find the app, or perhaps you will find that search and report. That bugged me when I was learning."
"Splunk should offer various options for real-time monitoring."
"The security connection should have a seamless integration. Other than that, the way we are using it, so far, it seems quite good."
"We're interested in learning more about the new AI features, especially the natural language to SPL conversion."
"The only thing that is missing from Splunk Cloud is the command-line interface."
"Its stability and performance can be better. Very rarely does a day go by when we do not see an error in the console, such as a health check error. Because it is cloud-hosted, we do not have access to the backend to figure it out ourselves. We are reliant on their support to figure it out, and a couple of days later, the error comes back or it is a different error. It is a never-ending cycle of support tickets. Their support is also not great."
"Although there is documentation available, it is really hard for me to find relevant topics on what it is that I'm searching for."
"I think the tool has some scalability issues, especially when used in larger organizations."
"The price could be improved."
"The reporting feature needs to be more user-friendly."
"They could add more AI content or AI and machine learning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The certifications are costly."
"The lack of transparency around the SVC licensing makes it difficult to explain the costs to our clients."
"The pricing was negotiated through Trustwave and for our first contract in three years, we got a good deal."
"Splunk Cloud Platform's pricing is a little on the higher end."
"The price for Splunk Cloud Platform is the same as our maintenance costs for Splunk Enterprise on-premises."
"It is not that expensive."
"The cost of the Splunk Cloud Platform is high, and in addition to the standard licensing fee, we also have a premium support fee."
"It is a touchy subject because we are locked into it. That goes back to the rehydrating data. We cannot have the retention that we want to store for legal and compliance purposes because that is seven years' worth of data for some of the indexes, so we ship them off into S3 buckets and install them there, at which point they are invisible to Splunk, so we have to rehydrate them, but we cannot rehydrate those pockets into Splunk Cloud. We have to rehydrate them into a self-hosted version of Splunk, which can take days to set up and get going. I would not call Splunk's licensing and pricing predatory, but they have made it very difficult to maintain the independence of your own data."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
30%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
University
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Splunk Cloud Platform?
Splunk has sped up our response and reduced the time we spend manually monitoring any logs for ticketing tools or servers. It saves us around two hours daily.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Cloud Platform?
If I were to rate the price for the product from 1 to 10, I would rate it nine.
What needs improvement with Splunk Cloud Platform?
The disadvantage of Splunk Cloud Platform is that its integration process should be improved. The challenges I have encountered while integrating Splunk Cloud Platform include that integration is a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Security Essentials?
Our SecOps manager and CISO were more familiar with Splunk, and the price was right. That was probably the primary driver, and we did evaluation as well with strict criteria and Gartner ratings.
What needs improvement with Splunk Security Essentials?
I have not used Splunk Security Essentials' customizable dashboards. I have not taken advantage of the pre-built security use cases in Splunk.
What is your primary use case for Splunk Security Essentials?
We use Splunk Security Essentials. We have projects, though not many projects per year. The solution is used to resist cyber attacks. They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mindtouch
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Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk Cloud Platform vs. Splunk Security Essentials and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
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