We compared Graylog and Grafana Loki based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Graylog and Grafana Loki both offer efficient log management solutions with positive feedback on customer support and reasonable pricing. Graylog focuses on powerful search functionality, ease of use, and extensive customization options, while Grafana Loki excels in log storage and searching capabilities. Graylog users praise its scalability and efficient data handling, while Grafana Loki users appreciate its integration with Grafana tools and ease of setup. Graylog users report improvements in log management, troubleshooting, and security, while Grafana Loki users highlight its cost-effectiveness and efficiency. Both platforms have areas for improvement, with Graylog users suggesting enhancements in search functionality and speed, user interface, scalability, stability, and documentation, while Grafana Loki users recommend improved query capabilities, documentation, scalability, alerting, and integration with external tools for better log aggregation and visualization.
Features: Graylog stands out for its powerful search functionality, extensive customization options, and robust alerting capabilities. Users also appreciate its scalability and efficient handling of large data volumes. On the other hand, Grafana Loki is highly regarded for its efficient and scalable log storage and searching capabilities. Users also appreciate its seamless integration with other Grafana tools and easy setup process.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Graylog is praised for its ease and straightforwardness, allowing for a smooth installation process. Users also express satisfaction with its licensing options. Similarly, Grafana Loki is deemed reasonably priced, with a straightforward and hassle-free setup cost, and fair and accommodating licensing options., Graylog has been praised for its positive contributions to ROI, including improved log management, enhanced troubleshooting, and cost savings. On the other hand, Grafana Loki is favored for its cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and seamless integration with Grafana, proving its worth in optimizing operational processes.
Room for Improvement: Graylog: Users recommend improvements to search functionality and speed, a more intuitive user interface, enhanced scalability and stability, better documentation, and comprehensive tutorials. Grafana Loki: Users seek enhanced query capabilities, better documentation, improved scalability and performance, enhanced alerting capabilities, and integration with external monitoring tools. Continuous development is emphasized.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user reviews, implementing Graylog generally takes 3 months for deployment and an additional week for setup. On the other hand, Grafana Loki's deployment and setup phases can also take around 3 months, but some users were able to accomplish both in just a week., Graylog has received positive feedback for its prompt and knowledgeable customer service. Users appreciate the effective solutions provided by the helpful and responsive team. In comparison, Grafana Loki's customer service offers extensive guidance and satisfactory assistance, valued by users for its responsiveness.
The summary above is based on 18 interviews we conducted recently with Graylog and Grafana Loki users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The solution's stability has never been a problem. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."
"Loki also utilizes the same service discovery mechanism as used by Prometheus. So, whatever labeled metadata you see in Prometheus, you have the exact same metadata in the Loki system. Given this level of intricacy and the attempt to address these challenges, I firmly believe that Loki deserves praise for the work."
"The log collection feature is good and the solution is easily understandable. v"
"The most valuable feature is the capability to set up alerts, which becomes necessary when we need to receive notifications for specific events."
"I appreciate the capability to process logs from microservices and seamlessly integrate them into Grafana."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Loki is the dashboards which are really simple to create."
"The best feature of Grafana Loki is that it integrates well with our other tool."
"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
"What I like about Graylog is that it's real-time and you have access to the raw data. So, you ingest it, and you have access to every message and every data item you ingest. You can then build analytics on top of that. You can look at the raw data, and you can do some volumetric estimations, such as how big traffic you have, how many messages of data of a type you have, etc."
"We have scaled from a single machine installation (a VM with a Graylog + ES + MongoDB) to (2 Graylog + 2 ES + 3 MongoDB). This was done smoothly with a minimal impact on logging."
"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"UDP is a fast and lightweight protocol, perfect for sending large volumes of logs with minimal overhead."
"It is used as a log manager/SIEM. It provides visibility into the infrastructure and security related events."
"Enhancing speed could be a game-changer, and while it might vary depending on the application, it's a factor worth exploring."
"The correlation of requests is not simple in Grafana Loki and can be improved."
"My main concern is the recommended production-grade setup. They suggest using tools like Tanka or Jsonnet. They should simplify the process to increase adoption."
"There is a need for some change in the alerting types of the product. In short, a few changes in the alert area are needed due to minor shortcomings."
"The product must improve its UI."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
"The solution's scalability depends on the team managing the Grafana instance."
"We had a well-structured dashboard with a functional query. However, an issue arose when the Kubernetes pod restarted. The statistics from our Grafana query would reset, dropping to zero and starting anew. This was particularly noticeable with linear graphs, which are expected to show consistent growth."
"Lacks sufficient documentation."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"Graylog could improve the process of creating rules. We have to create them manually by doing parses and applying them. Other SIEM solutions have basic rules and you can create and get more events of interest."
"Since container orchestration systems are popular and Graylog fits the niche well, perhaps they could officially support running in docker containers on Kubernetes as a StatefulSet as a use case. That way, the declarative nature of Kubernetes config files would document their best case deployment scenario-"
"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."
"More customization is always useful."
Grafana Loki is ranked 14th in Log Management with 12 reviews while Graylog is ranked 11th in Log Management with 18 reviews. Grafana Loki is rated 8.0, while Graylog is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Grafana Loki writes "Effective for Logging, recovery from node failures is fast and single UI supports metrics, logs, and even tracing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Graylog writes "Great detailed search features and easy Java integration, but needs improvement in integration with Python". Grafana Loki is most compared with Wazuh, syslog-ng, Splunk Enterprise Security, Fortinet FortiAnalyzer and Datadog, whereas Graylog is most compared with Wazuh, syslog-ng, Splunk Enterprise Security, Fortinet FortiAnalyzer and Elastic Security. See our Grafana Loki vs. Graylog report.
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