Confluent Reviews

Name: Confluent
Brand: Confluent
Rating: 4.1 (22 reviews)

Vendor: Confluent

4.1 out of 5

22 reviews
100% willing to recommend

567 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, Azure Stream Analytics and more!

Confluent is the #3 ranked solution in Streaming Analytics tools. PeerSpot users give Confluent an average rating of 8.2 out of 10. Based on the analysis of the 22 most recent Confluent reviews, the overall sentiment is positive, with a sentiment score of 6.8. 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 824,067 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

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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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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Ahmed_Emad

Territory Sales Leader at Sumerge

The professional services team must be improved. There is no local support team in Saudi Arabia. Whenever we require some implementation, we use the professional service. We used it in only one project, but the service wasn’t good. The team doesn’t have a local presence, and they do not understand our culture. It's not a technology issue. It's a service issue. The solution is not compatible with IBM Power. It caused an issue for us.

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Confluent mindshare

As of December 2024, the mindshare of Confluent in the Streaming Analytics category stands at 9.1%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics

PeerAnalyst reports

Type	Title	Date
Category	Streaming Analytics	Dec 22, 2024	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Dec 22, 2024	Download
Comparison	Confluent vs Databricks	Dec 22, 2024	Download
Comparison	Confluent vs Amazon Kinesis	Dec 22, 2024	Download
Comparison	Confluent vs Azure Stream Analytics	Dec 22, 2024	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Databricks	4.1	14.3%	96%	84 interviews Add to research
Azure Stream Analytics	4.0	12.5%	91%	24 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

Confluent offers valuable features like stability, scalability, and user-friendly dashboards. KSQL and Kafka Connect frameworks aid in real-time data processing. Its open-source nature allows customization and transparency. Users benefit from data replication, flexible configurations, and professional support. The platform excels in data streaming, monitoring, and integration with Kafka. Useful features include connectors, client APIs, and documentation enhancements, making Confluent user-centric for managing infrastructure and workflows efficiently.

"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"The client APIs are the most valuable feature."
"The benefit is escaping email communication. Sometimes people ignore emails or put them into spam, but with Confluence, everyone sees the same text at the same time."

Room for Improvement

Confluent requires enhancements in theme selection and plugin capabilities. Users struggle with HTML formatting and need training sessions. Security improvements and better documentation for the SaaS version are needed. Integration with third-party platforms and more technical forums are desired. Issues exist in document management, version control, external sharing, and professional services. Cost and customization limitations arise, and redundancy and search function enhancements for Confluence are requested. Multi-storage support and more application-specific connectors are demanded.

"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."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."

ROI

Pricing

Confluent's pricing is competitive yet perceived as high, especially for features and maintenance. Many users suggest the need for flexible feature-based pricing. Costs vary with server usage, cloud scaling, and additional features like monitoring. While some find it reasonable with decreasing user costs, others see it as expensive, rating it between five to eight out of ten. It's favorable for feature-rich environments, but preference often leans towards cost-effective open-source alternatives.

"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

Organizations primarily use Confluent for data streaming, documentation creation, task management, and enterprise architecture. It facilitates real-time data processing, integration with Jira, and enables efficient reporting. Companies utilize it for handling vast data, managing internal processes, automating tasks, and integrating data pipelines. Additionally, Confluent serves as a knowledge base, supports ticket resolution, and aids in software development and planning, especially within agile teams and financial sectors.

Service and Support

Confluent's customer support is highly regarded, with teams responding effectively to queries both on-site and remotely. Customers praise the platinum enterprise support, video assistance, and quick issue resolution. They mention good experiences with the support hierarchy, specifically noting promptness and competence. While some users rely heavily on backend teams for interaction, others commend Confluent Cloud's maintenance-free support. Criticism includes a need for more guidance. Overall, they rate support positively across multiple interactions.

Deployment

Confluent's initial setup is considered straightforward by many, especially when using the cloud option, which is plug-and-play. On-prem setups require a team, often three to five people, using tools like Ansible and Confluent Operator. The ease of setup varies, with some describing it as simple, while others faced challenges with configuration. Teams often involve IT professionals, and setup times depend on complexity, ranging from minutes to a few weeks. Some rate the ease at six to eight out of ten.

Scalability

Confluent is highly scalable with various user capacities across organizations. Many rate its scalability positively, though some face challenges when scaling down or dealing with multi-cloud environments. It integrates easily with other systems if properly supported by hardware. Users appreciate its ability to manage high data volumes and throughput needs, though there can be complexities with custom integrations. Ratings typically vary from six to nine out of ten, indicating strong scalability potential.

Stability

Confluent demonstrates strong stability, with no significant bugs or crashes observed by multiple organizations. Many rate its stability highly, although some suggest room for enhancement, especially concerning logs, metrics, and cloud-related occasional outages. Regular maintenance and a dedicated operations team are essential for optimal performance. While it integrates well, certain dependencies, such as with Jira or Azure, can affect reliability. Despite these, users consistently commend Confluent for its general robustness.

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

University

Educational Organization

Media Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Comms Service Provider

Non Profit

Hospitality Company

Construction Company

Transportation Company

Wholesaler/Distributor

Logistics Company

Outsourcing Company

Pharma/Biotech Company

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Legal Firm

Performing Arts

Consumer Goods Company

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.”