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Confluent vs Cribl comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (3rd)
Cribl
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (10th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and Cribl aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 8.4%, down 9.8% compared to last year.
Cribl, on the other hand, focuses on Observability Pipeline Software, holds 45.3% mindshare, down 48.9% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Confluent8.4%
Apache Flink14.6%
Databricks13.1%
Other63.9%
Streaming Analytics
Observability Pipeline Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cribl45.3%
DataBahn16.0%
BindPlane OP15.5%
Other23.200000000000003%
Observability Pipeline Software
 

Featured Reviews

Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming
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.
Abdullah Zubair - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless SIEM/Data Migration and Log Filtration across the enterprise estate
They've already done many good things with the product, but perhaps they could implement a temporary SIEM solution where we could store logs and display them as a SIEM, though I think that's not the space that Cribl is actually looking into. Based on my experience, this product is brilliant and there isn't much or anything important lacking in the product. We encountered some occasional issues with the syslog data stream, particularly when handling large data volume, and getting it to parse and field extracted correctly, but no major alarms that would halt the days operation. There were few source vendor specific challenges, but overall, I didn't notice anything major beyond that. Most of the process went smoothly. However, we did need to carry some troubleshooting to resolve the issues we faced while connecting with other platforms and few data stream miss-behaving, which wasn't a straightforward task for us. In terms of large datasets—whether they originated from network inputs, virtual machines, or cloud instances—ingesting the data into the destination was relatively easy. In summary, aside from the usual difficulties or issues that someone could face with any project, everything else went well.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I would rate the scalability of the solution at eight out of ten. We have 20 people who use Confluent in our organization now, and we hope to increase usage in the future."
"The most valuable feature that we are using is the data replication between the data centers allowing us to configure a disaster recovery or software. However, is it's not mandatory to use and because most of the features that we use are from Apache Kafka, such as end-to-end encryption. Internally, we can develop our own kind of product or service from Apache Kafka."
"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."
"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."
"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"Cribl is specifically designed to reduce the data costs associated with the destination platform, which is one of its core offerings."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"The product's most valuable features include the internal management of events, coding perspective, data processing, and serialization."
"Features such as Cribl Stream, Cribl LogStream, and Cribl Edge have been the most beneficial. The Cribl LogStream, in particular, is valuable for routing data, creating firewalls on pipelines, and putting security measures in place to ensure data reaches its destination without issues."
"The support team was very helpful and managed to get everything production-ready."
"Cribl definitely helps with the complexity because you don't have to push for deployment—they provide the interface where you can mimic what the output will look like, and you can see that in real time when setting up the Cribl configuration, which definitely helps considerably."
"My favorite option in Cribl is the Stream product."
"The capability to reduce logs in a user-friendly manner is a standout feature. Cribl allows us to view logs live as they are being processed, giving us quick feedback on the changes made."
 

Cons

"They should remove Zookeeper because of security issues."
"Confluent has fallen behind in being the tool of the industry. It's taking second place to things such as Word and SharePoint and other office tools that are more dynamic and flexible than Confluent."
"The pricing model should include the ability to pick features and be charged for them only."
"Confluent's price needs improvement."
"The Schema Registry service could be improved. I would like a bigger knowledge base of other use cases and more technical forums. It would be good to have more flexible monitoring features added to the next release as well."
"Confluent has a good monitoring tool, but it's not customizable."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"It could have more integration with different platforms."
"Cribl could have developed some version that can give backward compatibility."
"Cribl doesn't have as many packs available"
"The sys logging could be enhanced to make it easier to identify errors, especially when dealing with multiple functions."
"Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful."
"There have been several administrative issues. Another point is that the browsing functions aren't very intuitive."
"There is no alerting mechanism for the leader/worker nodes status."
"We encountered some issues with the syslog data stream, particularly with handling large databases and extensive data logs."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation and knowledge base, particularly regarding configurations like sources where logs are being ingested"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"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."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"The product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"I would not say it is a cheaply priced tool as it has been doing wonders in the market. The tool has been budget-friendly for organizations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team. The lack of easy access to the Confluent support team is also a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
I think the pricing for Cribl is reasonable. For large usage, but I heard the calculation of those credits is a bit complicated.
What needs improvement with Cribl?
So since we’re handling a ton of data, I think we could really benefit from a more integrated or connected way to manage it all. Like, if there is a way to better track data lineage, metadata, thos...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
We use Cribl Stream to collect logs from multiple sources, transform and enrich them, filter out unnecessary data before sending them to SIEM. We also use Cribl to route logging to data lake.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
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