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Confluent vs Spring Cloud Data Flow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Confluent
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Spring Cloud Data Flow
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Confluent is 9.4%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Cloud Data Flow is 5.0%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

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.
NitinGoyal - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a plug-and-play model and provides good robustness and scalability
The solution's community support could be improved. I don't know why the Spring Cloud Data Flow community is not very strong. Community support is very limited whenever you face any problem or are stuck somewhere. I'm not sure whether it has improved in the last six months because this pipeline was set up almost two years ago. I struggled with that a lot. For example, there was limited support whenever I got an exception and sought help from Stack Overflow or different forums. Interacting with Kubernetes needs a few certificates. You need to define all the certificates within your application. With the help of those certificates, your Java application or Spring Cloud Data Flow can interact with Kubernetes. I faced a lot of hurdles while placing those certificates. Despite following the official documentation to define all the replicas, readiness, and liveliness probes within the Spring Cloud Data Flow application, it was not working. So, I had to troubleshoot while digging in and debugging the internals of Spring Cloud Data Flow at that time. It was just a configuration mismatch, and I was doing nothing weird. There was a small spelling difference between how Spring Cloud Data Flow was expecting it and how I passed it. I was just following the official documentation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
"We mostly use the solution's message queues and event-driven architecture."
"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 tools."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"The client APIs are the most valuable feature."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"The best thing I like about Spring Cloud Data Flow is its plug-and-play model."
"The ease of deployment on Kubernetes, the seamless integration for orchestration of various pipelines, and the visual dashboard that simplifies operations even for non-specialists such as quality analysts."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it allows us to use different batch data sources, retrieve the data, and then do the data processing, after which we can convert and store it in the target."
"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."
"The most valuable features of Spring Cloud Data Flow are the simple programming model, integration, dependency Injection, and ability to do any injection. Additionally, auto-configuration is another important feature because we don't have to configure the database and or set up the boilerplate in the database in every project. The composability is good, we can create small workloads and compose them in any way we like."
"The dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable."
"There are a lot of options in Spring Cloud. It's flexible in terms of how we can use it. It's a full infrastructure."
"The product is very user-friendly."
 

Cons

"Confluent has a good monitoring tool, but it's not customizable."
"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."
"The product should integrate tools for incorporating diagrams like Lucidchart. It also needs to improve its formatting features. We also faced issues while granting permissions."
"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"There is no local support team in Saudi Arabia."
"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."
"I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly."
"On the tool's online discussion forums, you may get stuck with an issue, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The configurations could be better. Some configurations are a little bit time-consuming in terms of trying to understand using the Spring Cloud documentation."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow is not an easy-to-use tool, so improvements are required."
"There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or refreshing the dashboard."
"The solution's community support could be improved."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow could improve the user interface. We can drag and drop in the application for the configuration and settings, and deploy it right from the UI, without having to run a CI/CD pipeline. However, that does not work with Kubernetes, it only works when we are working with jars as the Spring Cloud Data Flow applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"It comes with a high cost."
"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."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"If you want support from Spring Cloud Data Flow there is a fee. The Spring Framework is open-source and this is a free solution."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"The solution provides value for money, and we are currently using its community edition."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
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 maintenanc...
What needs improvement with Confluent?
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 c...
What needs improvement with Spring Cloud Data Flow?
I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly. Another area for improvement is the documentation, as it is not very precise. There are limited resources available on Spr...
What is your primary use case for Spring Cloud Data Flow?
I am a developer using Spring Cloud Dataflow. We primarily use it to convert our applications from monolithic to microservices. The solution is used for scheduling tasks in a specific order and ens...
What advice do you have for others considering Spring Cloud Data Flow?
My advice would be to thoroughly review the documentation and understand if Spring Cloud Dataflow is the right solution for your application. For applications with only one or two microservices, it...
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
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Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.