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Splunk Security Essentials vs xMatters comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 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 Security Essentials
Ranking in IT Alerting and Incident Management
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (12th), Security Incident Response (9th)
xMatters
Ranking in IT Alerting and Incident Management
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the IT Alerting and Incident Management category, the mindshare of Splunk Security Essentials is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of xMatters is 4.2%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Alerting and Incident Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
xMatters4.2%
Splunk Security Essentials1.8%
Other94.0%
IT Alerting and Incident Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2836941 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Centralized monitoring has given our SOC real-time visibility into security and application activity
When I first implemented Splunk Security Essentials in this environment, it took a week for each log source to onboard and to create use cases and implement the data model, CIM, etc., for production readiness. Training is mandatory, and we need at least the Splunk Security Essentials User certification because it is a very critical resource in the organization, as we are handling security logs. In my organization, Splunk Security Essentials is used not only by the SOC but also for monitoring logs across different teams, as it is important for handling both security and application logs, given its capability to manage unstructured logs. Splunk Security Essentials has dramatically impacted my organization, as without it, we were blind to what is happening from both a security and application perspective, and it provides vital visibility into the organization's operations.
Dean-Robinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Developer at a media company with 10,001+ employees
A versatile solution with excellent logging capabilities that reduced our time to resolve
The reporting functionality could be improved, though I know that's something xMatters, inc. is working on. For example, sometimes I need to go into the platform and find users who aren't in groups that have been created recently, haven't logged in and so on. Previously, this was hard work, but they added loads of filters, making it more accessible. Still, the ability to create custom-designated reports that I could run and schedule would be fantastic for me. It would be good if they keep improving the reporting functionality, as it can be somewhat restrictive sometimes. There are a couple of improvements that xMatters could make to the incident hub, where we can manage high-priority incidents. More sharing capability between collaborating incident managers would be good to see, including the ability to whiteboard. That would allow them to share and sketch out ideas while looking for a solution. Those two features are essential, and that's why we want to use the solution in conjunction with Everbridge because xMatters doesn't have them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The network monitoring feature is particularly valuable for gathering information about users, login times, and other statistics."
"They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks."
"I would have to rate Splunk Security Essentials a 10 out of 10 because it's free and there's tons of usable content."
"Splunk Security Essentials has dramatically impacted my organization, as without it, we were blind to what is happening from both a security and application perspective, and it provides vital visibility into the organization's operations."
"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."
"Splunk Security Essentials has impacted my organization in that we have been getting the results that we wanted."
"After implementing the solution and updating the groups/on-call list we have seen a huge volume of increase in the Time of React, which helps us to alert the right resources within a fraction of seconds (after the alert is generated) and allows for quick notification and a faster restoration process."
"Using xMatters to notify our IT and Emergency Management partners is vital for bringing back IT services and notifying our partners about emergencies."
"For our major incident management, it has expanded what we can do in terms of the format of the communication. People can subscribe, and they can receive delivery on multiple platforms, whether it's a voice message, email, or mobile app message. It enables us to deliver the right communication to the right people in the format they want."
"The most valuable feature is getting alerts out to my user base. xMatters is the only solution that I know that has robust scheduling, calendaring for groups, and that provides very good delineation of who gets alerted and on which devices they receive their alerts."
"The most valuable features are the ability to have groups and then have an on-call rotation in the groups. Outlook lacks both these features. Outlook gives you the ability to contact an individual or groups, but you can't contact them based on an on-call rotation, and you can't have built-in timing escalations inside of that. xMatters gives you the ability to do that, which is important when you have 50 or so people in the team, but you only want to contact the person who is on-call. You don't create any unnecessary noise. xMatters allows you to page the right person who is on-call versus just creating excessive noise."
"It has improved our time to respond; prior to the use of xMatters, it might take hours or even a day to get someone involved on a problem, and now it's down to minutes."
"Simple features create flow sets and build APIs for integrations."
"The ability to have the rota and then configure notifications that you can directly fire them into the group is most valuable. The India shift is from 2:00 AM to 9:00 AM, and then it is the UK shift from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM UK time, and then there is also a defined US shift and on-call hours. It allows us to make sure that everyone is going to get notified when they need to be about an issue. We can target specific locations or users with notifications."
 

Cons

"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."
"If I could change one thing about Splunk Security Essentials, it would be pricing. I believe they are still very costly as compared to the competition."
"It takes a lot of time to install Splunk Security Essentials. It's not very difficult, but it requires time."
"The biggest friction points I have with Splunk Security Essentials are the high license costs and user behavior that causes performance issues due to inappropriate wildcard searches."
"The user interface could be more intuitive. When you are not familiar with integrations and you're starting fresh, looking for where to begin, it is a bit daunting and not as clear as it could be."
"When you are not using the conference bridge from xMatters and you are using an external one, it is a little bit hard to get the person whom xMatters calls to jump directly to the external bridge. They need to hang up the phone and then get to the email to get the URL so that they can jump on the bridge. There is no direct connection from xMatters to that external bridge, but I understand that part of the business."
"The only thing that has caught us out a little bit is that on certain screens, you don't have the same admin options."
"The reporting functionality could be improved, though I know that's something xMatters, inc. is working on. For example, sometimes I need to go into the platform and find users who aren't in groups that have been created recently, haven't logged in and so on. Previously, this was hard work, but they added loads of filters, making it more accessible. Still, the ability to create custom-designated reports that I could run and schedule would be fantastic for me. It would be good if they keep improving the reporting functionality, as it can be somewhat restrictive sometimes."
"​Integrations seem to be the most difficult part. Once setup though, they work well.​"
"If you are not one of the big players of their customers, the chance that one of your minor wishes will granted are very small."
"​The REST API is still missing some important functionality, which we require."
"We have had outages with the product. We have experienced functionality (defects), such as conference bridges can only be opened for four hours at a time and people get kicked out."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing and licensing are okay. I wish that the user licenses were cheaper but the stakeholder licenses are at a reasonable cost."
"xMatters is pricey, but you have to consider what a critical incident costs your organization."
"It seemed comparable or more reasonable than some of the other solutions, at least when we evaluated it. There are no extra costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. Its cost is good, given the breadth of features provided by xMatters."
"I'm not really involved with the cost standpoint. I've only heard rumors of how much it costs, and if it costs what I think it costs, its cost is very high as compared to a lot of other tools that we're using here. It seems on the higher end from a cost standpoint."
"We're currently per license. We're paying around $44,000 per year for 80 full users and 300 standard users. For a new implementation, we also need to pay for an expert."
"I would definitely say it's worth the value. I wouldn't say it's expensive, but most people who pick xMatters are not going to select xMatters based on price. There are other lower-priced competitors that are out there. But I would say for what we're getting, it's worth the money."
"The pricing is tiered so we took that into account. If we were to license 10 or 20 people, that would be a certain price. And if we were to license 50 or 100, there would be a little bit of discounting. But the per-user license was right in line with what we were expecting."
"It is worth the cost. You need to know the number of users that are going to use it, which is usually pretty easy to calculate. It's on a per-user license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

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?
The biggest friction points I have with Splunk Security Essentials are the high license costs and user behavior that causes performance issues due to inappropriate wildcard searches. Additionally, ...
What is your primary use case for Splunk Security Essentials?
My main use case for Splunk Security Essentials is for Enterprise Security, specifically the ES app. Splunk Security Essentials is my primary tool for threat detection and monitoring because as a S...
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Also Known As

No data available
xMatters IT Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Over 2.7 million users trust xMatters daily at successful startups and global giants including athenahealth, BMC Software, Box, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Experian, NVIDIA, ViaSat and Vodafone. xMatters is headquartered in San Ramon, California and has offices worldwide.  Visit our website to see how business like yours found solutions with xMatters.
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk Security Essentials vs. xMatters and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.