Confluent Reviews

Name: Confluent
Brand: Confluent
Rating: 4.1 (23 reviews)

Vendor: Confluent

4.1 out of 5

23 reviews
95% willing to recommend

569 followers

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What is Confluent?

Confluent is an enterprise-ready, full-scale streaming platform that enhances Apache Kafka.

Get the Confluent Buyer's Guide and find out what your peers are saying about Confluent, Databricks, Apache Kafka and more!

Confluent is the #4 ranked solution in Streaming Analytics tools. PeerSpot users give Confluent an average rating of 8.2 out of 10. Confluent is most commonly compared to Databricks: Confluent vs Databricks. Confluent is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 71% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 19% of all views.

Helped 839,422 peers since 2012

Featured Confluent reviews

Yantao Zhao

Software Integration Engineer at Thales

Confluence is easy to use and modify. However, sometimes there are too many pages. We have to reorganize the folder or parent account. Since everyone can create a page, the same knowledge might be created in multiple places by different people. This leads to redundancy and makes it difficult to find information. It's not centralized. So it could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful. It's very easy to use, so everyone can create knowledge. But it would be good to synchronize and organize that information a bit better. Another improvement would be in Confluence search. You can search for keywords, but it's not like AI, not even ChatGPT or OpenAI. It would be nice to get more relevant or organized answers. If you're outside the company, you just get some titles containing the keyword you input. But if Confluence were like a database, you could input something and get a well-organized search offering from multiple pages.

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Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos

Software Architect at C&A Brasil

Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance. It helps us understand the various requirements of multiple customers and validates the information for different versions. We can automate the tasks using Confluent Kafka. Thus, it guarantees us the data quality and maintains the integrity of message contracts.

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Neill Walker

Enterprise Agile Consultant at Secret

Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud. Having more control over the page layout in Confluence would be helpful, as it currently feels somewhat limited in terms of style. Additionally, we have experienced some issues with the solution's functionality, particularly with regard to document management and version control. Preferably having access to more pre-set business processes and style functions, rather than having to create everything from scratch each time we deploy. It's important to keep in mind that Confluence is not a traditional document management system but rather a wiki-style platform. As such, it can be too open for certain business processes and requires careful attention to prevent files and content from becoming disorganized.

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Confluent mindshare

As of March 2025, the mindshare of Confluent in the Streaming Analytics category stands at 8.6%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics

PeerAnalyst reports based on Confluent reviews

Type	Title	Date
Category	Streaming Analytics	Mar 4, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Mar 4, 2025	Download
Comparison	Confluent vs Databricks	Mar 4, 2025	Download
Comparison	Confluent vs Amazon Kinesis	Mar 4, 2025	Download
Comparison	Confluent vs Azure Stream Analytics	Mar 4, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Databricks	4.1	14.3%	96%	88 interviews Add to research
Apache Kafka	4.1	2.4%	95%	86 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

Confluent offers scalability, stability, and a user-friendly interface. It features powerful Kafka Connectors and framework, extensive integration options, real-time data streaming, and seamless management of Kafka. Its open-source nature allows easy customization and transparency. Users value monitoring capabilities, professional support, access control, data replication, and Jira integration. Confluent Cloud alleviates infrastructure concerns, and the UI enhances documentation and collaboration. It supports high data volumes, flexible configurations, and simplifies real-time data processing.

"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."
"We ensure seamless management of Kafka through Confluent, allowing all of our Kafka activities to be handled by a third party."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."

Room for Improvement

Confluent requires more themes and reporting plugins. It challenges non-tech users with HTML. VPN options and plugin improvements are necessary. Security and documentation need enhancements. More integration with platforms and tools is required. Dead Letter Queue support in Kafka is lacking. Formatting and access management need upgrades. Pricing and professional services require attention. Storage and offset management need improvement. Users find it expensive, with limited customization and redundancy issues. Access control for Kafka topics needs better management. Technical support is lacking.

"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."

Pricing

Confluent's pricing is perceived as premium, often considered high, especially for larger organizations that require scalability. Users note that while the cost is competitive for the features offered, such as integration capabilities, the model should allow feature flexibility to address unnecessary expenses. Pricing impacts vary by deployment scale, with cloud services incurring additional costs. Although competitive in certain scenarios, some users prefer open-source alternatives like Apache Kafka for cost efficiency.

"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."

Popular Use Cases

Confluent is utilized for documentation, data streaming, and integration. Its users leverage it for creating and managing documentation, automating tasks, and integrating with tools like Jira. It's employed in real-time data processing, task management, knowledge base management, fraud detection, and AI workloads. It offers features for communication, managing Kafka, and handling large-scale data across various domains including finance and insurance, with on-premise and cloud deployment options available.

Service and Support

Confluent's customer service is praised for being responsive and efficient, with good handling of queries and effective ticket resolution via video sharing. Users appreciate the structure of their tech support, which includes various levels. Some users find support lacking in guidance and best practices. Feedback shows satisfaction with enterprise support and uptime SLA for dedicated services in Confluent Cloud. Ratings vary, with technical support rated between six to seven out of ten.

Deployment

Many found Confluent's initial setup straightforward and simple when following documentation or using Confluent Cloud for plug-and-play deployment. Challenges arose with non-containerized platforms, needing Ansible scripts or Kubernetes. Team sizes varied from three to five for on-premises setups, depending on complexity. Some faced difficulties with broker configuration using Terraform. Implementation times ranged from minutes to weeks. Deployment ease varied widely, often dictated by cluster size and use case. Cloud deployment was quick with license purchase.

Scalability

Confluent is highly scalable, appreciated for its ability to handle large volumes despite some complexities with certain integrations and costs. Users across various industries, from small teams to large corporations, frequently employ it. High ratings are common, though scaling down can result in data loss, and better replication capabilities can improve multi-cloud deployments. Scalability costs might be a consideration for increased usage, but hardware upgrades can enhance Kafka performance.

Stability

Confluent exhibits high reliability with no freezing or crashes, though the latest version is advised for optimal performance. Some report the cloud version experiences occasional outages. Ratings vary, with stability often noted as seven to nine out of ten. Azure and Oracle integrations face downtime issues on weekends for maintenance. Users note occasional challenges in resolving stability matters swiftly due to dependency on external systems, affecting uptime during maintenance and system upgrades.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Confluent Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Review data by company size

By reviewers

By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Retailer

Government

Energy/Utilities Company

Healthcare Company

Media Company

Educational Organization

University

Real Estate/Law Firm

Comms Service Provider

Hospitality Company

Non Profit

Construction Company

Wholesaler/Distributor

Outsourcing Company

Transportation Company

Pharma/Biotech Company

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Logistics Company

Legal Firm

Performing Arts

Consumer Goods Company

Recruiting/Hr Firm

Compare Confluent with alternative products

Learn more about Confluent

Confluent has integrated cutting-edge features that are designed to enhance these tasks:

Speed up application development and connectivity
Enable transformations through stream processing
Streamline business operations at scale
Adhere to strict architectural standards

Confluent is a more complete distribution of Kafka in that it enhances the integration possibilities of Kafka by introducing tools for managing and optimizing Kafka clusters while providing methods for making sure the streams are secure. Confluent supports publish-and-subscribe as well as the storing and processing of data within the streams. Kafka is easier to operate and build thanks to Confluent.

Confluent's software is available in three different varieties:

A free, open-source streaming platform that makes it simple to start using real-time data streams
An enterprise-grade version of the product with more administrative, ops, and monitoring tools
A premium cloud-based version.

Confluent Advantage Features

Confluent has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Multi-language
- Clients: C++, Python, Go, and .NET
- REST proxy: Can connect to Kafka from any connected network device
- Admin REST APIs: RESTful interface for performing administrator operations

Pre-built ecosystem
- Connectors: More than 100 supported connectors, including S3, Elastic, HDFS, JDBC
- MQTT proxy: Gain access to Kafka from MQTT gateways and devices
- Schema registry: Centralized database to guarantee data compatibility

Streaming database
- ksqlDB: Materialized views and real-time stream processing

GUI management
- Control panel: GUI for scalable Kafka management and monitoring
- Health+: Smart alerts and cloud-based control centers

DevOps automation that is flexible
- Confluent for Kubernetes: Complete API to deploy on Kubernetes
- Automated Ansible deployment on non-containerized environments

Dynamic performance
- Self-balancing clusters: Automated partition re-balancing across brokers in the cluster
- Tiered storage: Older Kafka data offloading to object storage with transparent access

Security that is enterprise-grade
- Role-based access control: Granular user/group access authorization
- Audit logs that are structured: Logs of user actions kept in dedicated Kafka topics
- Secret protection: Sensitive information is encrypted

Global resilience
- Linking clusters: A real-time, highly reliable, and consistent bridge across on-premises and cloud environments
- Multiple-region clusters: Single Kafka cluster with automated client failover distributed across multiple data centers
- Replicator: Asynchronous replication that is based on the Kafka Connect framework

Support
- Round the clock enterprise support from Kafka experts

Reviews from Real Users

Confluent stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its robust enterprise support and its open source option. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Ravi B., a solutions architect at a tech services company, writes of the solution, “KSQL is a valuable feature, as is the Kafka Connect framework for connecting to the various source systems where you need not write the code. We get great support from Confluent because we're using the enterprise version and whenever there's a problem, they support us with fine-tuning and finding the root cause.”

Amit S., an IT consultant, notes, “The biggest benefit is that it is open source. You have the flexibility of opting or not opting for enterprise support, even though the tool itself is open source.” He adds, “The second benefit is it's very modern and built on Java and Scala. You can extend the features very well, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to do so.”