When comparing Splunk vs Timber, the Slant community recommends Splunk for most people. In the question“What are the best log management, aggregation & monitoring tools?” Splunk is ranked 11th while Timber is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Splunk is:
It's human readable, intuitive, fast and with auto-complete to boot. And if you need more advanced functionality out of your queries, [120+ page search manual](http://docs.splunk.com/index.php?title=Documentation:Splunk:Search:Whatsinthismanual:6.0beta&action=pdfbook) will give you an insight in how much is actually possible.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to use, powerful search
It's human readable, intuitive, fast and with auto-complete to boot. And if you need more advanced functionality out of your queries, 120+ page search manual will give you an insight in how much is actually possible.
Pro Widely used
De facto standard for log aggregation, monitoring, analysis and reporting.
Pro Scales effortlessly
It is built for enterprise use, meaning it scales easily.
Pro Real-time graphs
You can create visualizations that update in real time.
Pro Cross-platform
OS X, Linux & Windows are supported. You can also access Splunk from iOS and Android devices.
Pro Free version
With restrictions on log size and devices a free version is available.
Pro Alerts
Splunk can turn searches into alerts.
Pro Understands data in any format or language
Pro Extendable via a large selection of apps
Additional functionality can be added with over 500 apps.
Pro Beautiful, modern, easy interface
The Timber interface stands out in the space:
- It's beautiful, easy, and modern.
- It's fast. It uses advanced front-end technologies to maximize performance and usability (react, redux, etc).
Pro Great search
Timber offers a really great simple search, with a support for advanced features like: term negation, condition grouping (parenthesis), regex, field searches and conditions, etc.
Pro SQL query your logs (w/ join support)
Timber allows you to SQL query your logs just like you would a traditional database. The JOIN support is very powerful.
Pro Six month searchable retention
The retention Timber offers is exceptionally longer. The default is generally 2 - 4 weeks, Timber offers 6 months.
Pro Real-time graphing
Because Timber fully embraces structured data, graphing is simple, real time, and fast. They provide a number of aggregates you can graph on.
Pro Automatic context & structured data
Timber provides native libraries that automatically attach metadata to your logs. They've designed a schema that defines events and context, which normalizes the data and makes querying, alerting, and graphing simple and reliable.
Pro Easy installation
Timber can be installed in < 1 min and usually with a single command. It asks your for your application details and provides 1 set of simple instructions.
Pro Simple pricing and plans. No feature matrices.
Besides the free plan, Timber doesn't impose limits on the number of users, alerts, etc. It's entirely based on the amount of data allowed for the plan. It's refreshingly straightforward.
Pro Real-time alerts with thresholds
The alerts are real-time and the approach is thoughtful. Instead of blasting you with alerts every time it's triggered, they change the state of the alert once, notify you once, and then notify you again when the alert is no longer an issue.
Pro Excellent documentation
Timber's docs are detailed and thoughtful, both for the service as well as the libraries they offer.
Pro No rate limiting
Beyond the space your plan is allowed to use, there is no rate limiting.
Pro Logs show up quickly
Logs show up < 3 seconds of when they are generated
Cons
Con Expensive
Splunk is pretty expensive compared to other solutions.
Con Antiquated
The interface and service are very antiquated
Con Seriously SLOW ingest
Their docs and sales say it will ingest up to 20k EPS, but reality is more like 1k eps per server.
Con Complex set up process
Con Not really a centralized log management tool
It only takes in events from specified "apps", not all unstructured data. And, if you select "other" (apps), it just says:
Bummer! We don't support apps of this type yet.