Splunk, A Simple Review

So, you are considering Splunk.

You’ll be wondering if it’s a good choice for you, if its feature set compares well to other options on the market, and if it is priced affordably enough for what you get.

This article will break all that down for you and more. 


Plus, at the end of the article you’ll find links to alternatives to Splunk as well as our top picks for the options in this category.

Or, just go straight to Our top picks for Best analytics tools

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Splunk Features

Splunk is unified security, analytics and observability platform that takes you from visibility to action. Splunk’s extensible data platform unlocks innovation, drives resilience and enhances security. Moreover, it helps you use business data to tackle problems and discover game-changing opportunities.

Here are some exclusive features of Splunk:

Cloud Platform: Splunk is hosted on the cloud and offers cutting-edge capabilities to tackle evolving use cases. You can use real-time stream processing to collect, process and distribute data to Splunk. Additionally, Splunk lets you trigger and correlate searches across your diverse data ecosystem.

Advanced Threat Detection: Splunk helps you prevent security incidents before they cause irrevocable damage through early and rapid behaviour-based detection. Splunk lets you monitor data for malicious behaviour and identify anomalies. You can then utilize the latest threat research to uncover stealthy adversaries.

Data Preparation: You can use the self-service data preparation and management app Splunk DataPrep to get your raw data cleansed and enriched for better analysis. Splunk automatically identifies data types and offers suggestions for joining datasets. Additionally, you can improve the data quality by removing invalid entries.

Application Modernization: With Splunk, you can measure the impact of software changes, understand service health and consistently deliver great customer experiences. Splunk’s real-time, directed troubleshooting ensures you get end-to-end visibility without any dead ends or blind spots.

Augmented Analytics: Splunk augments your data analysis with AI, machine learning and NLP/G for faster insights. With Splunk, you can get actionable and contextual insights that go beyond visualizations. Additionally, you can engage in colloquial conversations with Ask Zia and get relevant reports.

Unified Business Insights: Splunk enables you to unify business data across your organization. You can automatically blend data from multiple apps, define metrics that span across data from multiple departments, plus create reports and dashboards with those metrics.

Data Storytelling: Splunk allows you to tell engrossing stories with your data. You can use SplunkShow to craft immersive analytics presentations by adding rich narratives in text, images and shapes, along with reports and dashboards. Additionally, you can create purpose-built analytics portals for your users.

SOC Automation and Orchestration: Splunk empowers your security teams to work smarter, boost productivity and respond faster by automating and orchestrating security operations processes. With Splunk, you can stop being reactive and use automation to create a proactive security operations team.

IT Modernization: Splunk helps you accelerate IT innovation without compromising service reliability. You can use Splunk’s AIOps to maximize impact. It offers 360-degree monitoring with KPI-driven dashboards and predictive alerting to prevent outages from affecting end users.

Splunk Pricing

Splunk offers 4 Business solutions to help you incorporate data analysis and business intelligence.

The “Splunk Security Solutions” offers custom pricing and modernizes your security operations with advanced analytics and automated response.

The “Splunk Observability Solutions” is priced at $15/host/month upon annual billing and helps you deliver high-performing applications and better customer experiences.

The “Splunk Cloud Platform” has custom pricing and lets you search, analyze and act on your data insights.

The “Splunk Enterprise Platform” has custom pricing and offers private cloud or on-premise deployment.

Splunk Discounts and Coupons

Splunk currently does not offer any discounts or coupons for its analytics tool.

Splunk Free Trial

Splunk currently does not offer a free trial for its analytics tool.

Splunk, A short how-to guide

This guide is designed to give you an overview of how Splunk works and how to use it effectively. After completing this guide, you will be able to:

• Download and install Splunk

• Launch Splunk and open a workflow

• Configure nodes in a workflow

• Execute a workflow

• Export and share a workflow

Installing Splunk

Before you can use Splunk, you need to download and install it on your computer. Splunk is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

To download Splunk, go to the Splunk website and click the Download button.

On the next page, select the edition of Splunk that you want to install. For this tutorial, we will be using the Community Edition.

Click the Download button and select the installer for your operating system. Once the download is complete, launch the installer and follow the prompts to install Splunk.

Once you have Splunk installed, launch the application and you should see the “Welcome to Splunk” dialog.

From the “Welcome to Splunk” dialog, you can either choose to open an existing workflow or create a new workflow. For this tutorial, we will be creating a new workflow.

Creating and exporting a new workflow

To create a new workflow, click on the “Create new workflow” button.

This will take you to the workflow editor, which is where you will be spending most of your time in Splunk. The workflow editor is where you will be adding nodes and connecting them together to create your data analysis workflow.

Click on a data set to start analyzing it. You can right-click on a set and select combine to superimpose it with another relevant data set. You can save intermediate results by simply exporting the report while analyzing.

Once you login to your Splunk account, you’ll enter the home section. Here, you’ll see insights from different data sets and analytical workflows.

Click on import to input new data sets into your Splunk database. Click on a data set to start processing and analyzing it for insights.

Once done, you’ll see a visual depiction of your data that is easier to comprehend. Here, you can devise future strategies by predicting audience behaviour and trends.