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Using Sumo Logic, you can analyze both metrics and logs simultaneously. Developed in 2010, this solution provides a powerful query language and scheduling support. Sumo Logic's production monitoring features provide visibility into production issues. Instead of manually writing alerts, the platform offers pre-configured alert templates (which Logit.io also offers), which makes setting up alerts easier and faster.
In light of the fact that some platform users mention Sumo Logic can be quite slow when it comes to ingesting data, you may want to consider some of the best alternatives around. Below, we'll explore the leading alternatives to Sumo Logic.
Contents
What is Sumo Logic?
Sumo Logic is a cloud-native machine data analytics platform designed to provide real-time insights into the performance, security, and reliability of IT infrastructures. It helps organizations collect, manage, and analyze large volumes of log and event data generated by applications, infrastructure, and security systems. By offering powerful analytics and visualization tools, Sumo Logic enables businesses to gain actionable insights, improve operational efficiency, and ensure compliance.
What is Sumo Logic used for?
Sumo Logic is used for a variety of purposes across modern IT environments, including:
Log Management and Analysis: Collecting and analyzing log data from various sources to troubleshoot issues and optimize system performance. Security Monitoring: Detecting and responding to security threats and vulnerabilities in real-time to protect sensitive data and maintain compliance.
Performance Monitoring: Monitoring the performance of applications and infrastructure to ensure they run smoothly and efficiently.
Operational Intelligence: Providing insights into operational metrics and trends to help improve business processes and decision-making.
Compliance and Auditing: Ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations by maintaining detailed logs and reports.
Sumo Logic's comprehensive capabilities make it a valuable tool for IT operations, security, and development teams looking to enhance visibility and control over their digital environments.
Why are users searching for alternatives to Sumo Logic?
While Sumo Logic is a popular cloud-based data analytics platform, it has its own set of drawbacks which users may run into when using this tool.
1. Cost
Sumo Logic can be expensive, particularly for organizations with large volumes of data. The pricing model can become cost-prohibitive as data ingestion and retention needs increase.
2. Learning Curve
New users may find Sumo Logic's interface and query language challenging to learn. The platform requires a certain level of expertise to fully leverage its capabilities, which can be a barrier for smaller teams or less experienced users.
3. Limited Integrations
While Sumo Logic integrates with many popular tools and services, it may not have the same breadth of integrations as some competitors. This can limit its usefulness in highly diverse or specialized IT environments.
4. Performance Issues
Some users have reported performance issues, such as slow query response times, especially when dealing with large datasets. This can hinder real-time analysis and affect overall efficiency.
5. Customization Limitations
Although Sumo Logic offers dashboards and visualization tools, the customization options may be limited compared to other platforms. Users seeking highly tailored reports and dashboards might find Sumo Logic lacking in flexibility.
6. Alerting System
The alerting system in Sumo Logic, while functional, can sometimes lead to alert fatigue if not carefully managed. Configuring alerts to minimize noise and prioritize critical issues can be complex and time-consuming.
7. Data Retention Policies
Sumo Logic's data retention policies may not be suitable for all organizations. Some users might require longer retention periods than what is available by default, necessitating additional storage solutions.
8. Complexity in Setup
The initial setup and configuration of Sumo Logic can be complex and time-consuming, requiring a deep understanding of the system and its components. This can delay deployment and increase the time to value.
Sumo Logic Alternatives
Logit.io
Logit.io provides a comprehensive alternative to Sumo Logic, built on the ELK stack (now OpenSearch) to offer an efficient, open-source solution for data analysis, reporting, and alerting on critical performance issues—saving time and reducing costs compared to traditional log management. With integrated OpenTelemetry, Logit.io standardizes data across diverse sources, enabling automated analysis that significantly conserves engineers’ time each month. Rated 5 out of 5 stars on Capterra (outperforming Sumo Logic's 4.6 rating), Logit.io delivers exceptional value and reliability. Interested? Reach out to learn more or start a 14-day free trial to experience the platform firsthand.
Request a Demo
Want to learn more about Logit.io’s powerful observability platform? Book a demo and we’ll walk you through the extensive capabilities and discuss your requirements in detail.
Splunk
Data analytics tool Splunk indexes and analyses machine data (including logs, events, and metrics) to reveal valuable insights. Splunk is a proprietary "data to everything" platform that offers enterprise-level SIEM solutions. PagerDuty, GuardDuty, OverOps, and Rsyslog are among common Splunk integrations.
A comparison of Splunk vs Sumo Logic based on real user feedback reveals that Splunk is rated slightly lower than Sumo Logic at 4.3 compared to the former’s 4.4 rating (Gartner, Nov, 22). However, Splunk scored higher for its analytics capabilities and based on its availability of 3rd party integrations.
Datadog
Datadog is a highly-rated tool for monitoring networks, applications and logs. Engineers appreciate the platform's wide range of useful features and support of custom configurations and reports. With Datadog, logs, metrics, and trace data are collected centrally for analysis. A wide range of native integrations and user customizations make Datadog a powerful product. The Datadog agent can also leverage and process OTLP telemetry data.
Comparing Sumo Logic vs Datadog, we found that both solutions are rated equally at 4.5 stars each (G2, Nov, 22). It may be worth taking into account that Datadog has more reviews than Sumo Logic due to having a larger user base. In particular, Datadog was rated higher for its ease of setup in comparison to Sumo Logic. Both solutions were rated equally high for ease of use and administration.
ELK
The log management and analytics platform ELK combines Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana into a robust platform that provides a single source of truth.
When we compared Sumo Logic vs ELK it is important to note that Logit.io provide completely centralised hosted ELK alongside our offering of hosted Grafana and Prometheus. This makes Logit.io an extensive solution for all observability use cases. With its extensive native integrations, Logit.io also offers a faster onboarding and data ingestion experience than Sumo Logic.
When compared as a Sumo Logic alternative, Logit.io is rated 5 out of 5 stars on Software Advice compared to the former tool’s 4.6 rating (Software Advice, Nov, 2022).
Dynatrace
Dynatrace simplifies cloud complexity so organizations can move toward digital transformation faster. With Dynatrace, engineers can simplify troubleshooting and error resolution in cloud environments. Similarly to Datadog, Dynatrace also offers out-of-the-box integrations with OpenTelemetry.
On the other hand, getting onboard with Dynatrace and its distributed tracing offering can be quite a challenge due to the sheer volume of documentation required to learn the platform fluently. Based on a comparison of Sumo Logic vs Dynatrace, both solutions are rated equally at 4.5 each (according to G2, November 2022). However, for ease of setup and use, Dynatrace still scores higher than Sumo Logic.
Loggly
With Loggly's server log management platform, you can ingest data from a variety of sources. A wide range of application use cases are supported by Loggly, including Meteor, Java, IIS, Docker and Apache analysis. Using Loggly you can ingest logs directly over HTTP/HTTPS or Syslog without an agent. For unsupported formats, DevOps can create custom parsing rules. Additionally, Loggly allows you to search, filter, and summarise logs.
On the basis of aggregated user feedback for Loggly vs Sumo Logic, it is clear to see that Loggly is rated slightly lower than Sumo Logic at 4.3 stars in comparison to Sumo Logic at 4.6 stars (GetApp, November 2022). It is worth taking into consideration that for value for money, Loggly scored higher on this point.
Logrhythm
The next tool we will be looking at is LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Tool. Three separate tools are included in this tool: LogRhythm RespondX, LogRhythm DetectX, and LogRhythm AnalytiX, all part of the LogRhythm XDR stack. With LogRhythm NextGen SIEM, users can scale their data collection and analysis activities by storing logs centrally, creating dashboards, using artificial intelligence, and setting alarms. LogRhythm's logging analysis tool allows users to scale data collection and analysis.
External reviews show for LogRhythm vs Sumo Logic that LogRhythm is rated at 4.3 stars (compared to LogRhythm’s 4.4 out of a possible five stars) according to Gartner, November 2022. For one criteria, LogRhythm was rated higher than Sumo Logic for its analytics capabilities.
Papertrail
The creators of Loggly are also behind Papertrail, another Solar Winds-backed solution. Users who require comprehensive log data aggregation can benefit from Papertrail's cloud-based log management. In addition to providing cloud-based log management, Papertrail offers seamless aggregation of log files for Sysadmins and DevOps. With this logging application, you can manage DigitalOcean applications, analyze WordPress logs, and troubleshoot Kubernetes issues.
Taking a look at Papertrail vs Sumo Logic, we see that Sumo Logic is rated higher than Papertrail at 4.6 over 4.4 respectively, (according to Gartner, November 2022). However, for ease of use and based on the strength of its customer support, Papertrail does take the lead in those areas.
Graylog
Thousands of Sysadmins and DevOps engineers worldwide use Graylog to manage logs and track issues. The platform collects log data from different locations within your network infrastructure. An example of some events which will trigger notifications for this service includes performance counter hits and HTTP response errors.
Graylog's users can choose between two platforms: an open-source platform and a proprietary platform (with the latter being primed for enterprise use cases). When comparing Sumo Logic vs Graylog we can see that both solutions are rated equally at 4.5 each (G2, Nov 2022). For ease of use and setup Graylog was rated higher than Sumo Logic.
LogicMonitor
The LogicMonitor platform focuses on monitoring data centres as the primary focus of its automated observability platform. Log visualisation in LogicMonitor allows you to analyze and alert upon a wide range of log files, including OS, MySQL, Tomcat and other data sources. With this platform, MSPs and enterprise-level clients can monitor complex IT environments in a fully automated hybrid manner.
If we were to look at reviews comparing LogicMonitor vs Sumo Logic on GetApp it is clear to see that LogicMonitor has more reviews than Sumo Logic and is also rated higher at a full five stars compared to Sumo Logic’s 4.5 stars.
New Relic
With New Relic, you can simplify enterprise cloud complexity, accelerate digital transformation, and simplify cloud management. In addition to AIops and distributed tracing, their company also offers browser monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and synthetic monitoring to over 10,000 companies worldwide. New Relic lets you send logs from cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and others. Among other popular frameworks, New Relic's APM solution supports Python, C SDK, Ruby, and PHP logging, among other languages. Additionally, their platform supports distributed tracing, instant observability, and synthetic monitoring.
When evaluating Sumo Logic vs New Relic it is clear to see that both of these solutions are rated equally at 4.5 each (according to Gartner, November 2022). For the quality of end-user training and ease of integration using standard APIs, New Relic takes the lead and is rated as stronger in these areas.
If you found this article informative then why not read our guide to Grafana dashboards or all about what is telemetry?