For older organizations that have been operating for decades, their log system goes back many years. Understanding a historic log system can be messy and challenging. Navigating through the information, reviewing, and filtering takes a long time, and without secure protection on the logs, there can be room for cybersecurity breaches and potential digital threats. Employing a log monitoring software for your organization is a smart choice for a number of reasons. For starters, it is a professional way to track activity, team operations, and IT processes. Through the implementation of log aggregation, log analytics, automated functions, and overall management, it helps companies to make sense of logs and maintain them for audits or historical archives. Beyond that, it will save an organization a lot of time, making it an extremely efficient and convenient solution to help optimize the workplace.

By looking at this list of the 5 best log monitoring software that breaks down the key features and reasons to buy or avoid the software, you will be able to decide which software is the best for you:

Top 5 Best Log Monitoring Softwares=

  1. DataDog – Best Log Monitoring Software for Great User Experience
  2. Logz.io – Best Log Monitoring Software for Ease of Use
  3. SolarWinds Log Analyzer – Best Log Monitoring Software for Orion Application Integration
  4. Graylog –  Best Log Monitoring Software for Seamless Data Collection
  5. New Relic –  Best Log Monitoring Software for Full Stack Observability

1. DataDog – Best Log Monitoring Software for Great User Experience

PRICING: This log monitoring system offers a 14-day free trial. The starting price for DataDog is $0.10 USD per month per ingested or scanned GB.

DataDog helps organizations of all sizes to monitor, analyze, and archive logs involved in workplace IT operations and developer processes. This log monitoring software allows for a seamless transformation of digital records, cloud migration, and collaboration on a centralized drive, all of which helps to improve team operations. This popular solution makes the list of best log monitoring software because, with a multitude of secure applications and excellent automated infrastructure, DataDog offers a tremendous user experience.

KEY FEATURES: 

  • Infrastructure monitoring, security, and analytics platform
  • SaaS platform
  • Applicable for Windows, Linux, Mac 
  • Useful for historical analysis or audits
  • Notification alerts that signal when the threshold is reached

REASONS TO BUY: 

  • Great user experience
  • Works quickly and efficiently
  • Centralized view
  • Many integrations like Azure, AWS, and GCP, amongst others

REASONS TO AVOID: 

  • The platform can easily grow to be costly
  • Customer support needs improvement

2. Logz.io – Best Log Monitoring Software for Ease of Use

PRICING: Pricing for Logz.io depends on your needs. There is a basic free plan known as the Community plan that gives you one day of log retention. The starting price for the Pro package includes 7 days of log retention costs $0.92 per ingested GB. Custom pricing is also available upon request. 

Logz.io is an industry-leading, cloud-based log monitoring software that is employed by many organizations for a fully managed service, including monitoring, troubleshooting, and securing logs, applications, and infrastructure. With a portfolio of notable companies, like Siemens and ZipRecruiter, using this platform, it makes the list of best log monitoring software because of its accessible way of grasping the way it works, making it a fairly simple solution and suitable choice for any company. 

KEY FEATURES: 

  • Log archiving, aggregation, filtering, and retention
  • Maintains an archive in the case of audits
  • Data visualization
  • Alerts for going beyond the threshold
  • Compliance reporting

REASONS TO BUY: 

  • Easy to use and convenient
  • Great support staff
  • Efficient training materials when starting out

REASONS TO AVOID: 

  • The user interface for dashboards could be more intuitive

3. SolarWinds Log Analyzer – Best Log Monitoring Software for Orion Application Integration

PRICING: While SolarWinds Log Analyzer offers a 30-day free trial, it has a higher starting price at $870.00 USD.

SolarWinds Log Analyzer is a platform designed for log monitoring and analysis within organizations. The log monitor function allows for greater visibility into IT operations and processes, while the analyzer allows for collecting, filtering, and seamlessly archiving log information. SolarWinds Log Analyzer makes the list of best log monitoring software because it easily integrates with the Orion application, including all platforms, tools, and functions that are a part of Orion.

KEY FEATURES: 

  • Log monitor, analyzer, and filter
  • Integration with Orion platforms
  • Customizable alerts
  • Flat log file ingestion
  • Performance visibility 
  • Log forwarding and exporting

REASONS TO BUY: 

  • Very efficient at log monitoring
  • Responsive customer support

REASONS TO AVOID: 

  • Room for improvement in user interface and user experience
  • High price for the software

4. Graylog – Best Log Monitoring Software for Seamless Data Collection

PRICING: Graylog offers a 30-day free trial. More information on pricing is available upon request on their website. 

Graylog is a top-of-the-line log monitoring software for organizations to implement into their processes. It has the capabilities of finding, storing, and allowing for real-time analysis of machine data and can improve security, compliance and DevOps processes, standards, and operations. Eliminating the complexity of processes in data analytics and auditing, Graylog makes the list of best log monitoring software because of its proven ability and leading standard of seamlessly collecting and storing data.

KEY FEATURES: 

  • Log archiving, aggregation, and retention
  • Provides a historic audit trail
  • Keeps event logs and server logs 
  • Provides threshold alerts and compliance reporting

REASONS TO BUY: 

  • Intuitive and highly visual user interface and dashboard
  • Lots offered in the free version of the platform
  • Quick speed in processes
  • Good for finding errors

REASONS TO AVOID: 

  • Has a slight learning curve when starting
  • Lacks learning tutorial material
  • Requires higher RAM to use efficiently

5. New Relic Logs  – Best Log Monitoring Software for Full Stack Observability

PRICING: The standard package for New Relic Logs starts for free, while the Pro and Enterprise packages have prices available on request. 

New Relic Logs is a comprehensive, cloud-based log monitoring software that improves digital experiences for organizations. It supports log analytics, event logs, and log correlation, to easily locate errors and navigate solutions. Similarly, New Relic Logs offers applied intelligence, machine learning which helps to detect errors and resolve them much faster, and a telemetry database, which, through a series of open-source tools, provides alerts on all metrics, events, and logs. This software offers Full Stack observability that allows for essential visualization and an ability to analyze and troubleshoot data, putting it on the list of best log monitoring software.

KEY FEATURES: 

  • Cloud-based log monitoring software
  • Log analyzer and event logs
  • Telemetry data platform
  • Applied intelligence 
  • Full stack observability

REASONS TO BUY: 

  • Top-tier log monitoring performance
  • Strong error reporting
  • Good user interface
  • Robust features and product offering
  • Highly visual platform

REASONS TO AVOID: 

  • Less variety in application integrations
  • Not as intuitive sometimes

References and Links

  • https://www.g2.com/categories/log-monitoring
  • https://www.atatus.com/blog/best-log-monitoring-tools-and-event-logging-software/
  • https://www.datadoghq.com
  • https://www.g2.com/products/datadog/reviews
  • https://logz.io
  • https://www.g2.com/products/logz-io/reviews
  • https://www.solarwinds.com/log-analyzer
  • https://www.g2.com/products/solarwinds-loggly/reviews
  • https://www.graylog.org
  • https://www.g2.com/products/graylog/reviews
  • https://newrelic.com
  • https://www.g2.com/products/new-relic-one/reviews