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Confluent vs TIBCO Spotfire comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (4th)
TIBCO Spotfire
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and TIBCO Spotfire aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 8.5%, down 11.4% compared to last year.
TIBCO Spotfire, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.1% mindshare, down 1.2% since last year.
Streaming Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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.
Mohsin Pathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, offers a single pane of glass, and is highly customizable
There's one area I see that specifically needs improvement. That is when you do the data loading. It is slow. For historical data, when you talk about gigabytes of data, terabytes of data, then it becomes prolonged. Loading could be improved. That's one part. That is actually there with every tool. I would not say that this is a specific problem with Spotfire. However, it is a problem with all the BI tools. That is one area which can be improved. When you are doing analytics, you see that the value has to come perfect. There was a missing feature of alerting out of the box within Spotfire. However, they have released this in version 12.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"The documentation process is fast with the tool."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"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."
"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."
"It's scalable."
"TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. While they assisted with the setup, we conducted the POC ourselves."
"R and automation services."
"It allows users to quickly analyze data from a variety of sources and visualize it with powerful, interactive graphs, and charts."
"This solution allows us to integrate data from across all client departments, for effective reporting via a single dashboard."
"The most valuable features of TIBCO Spotfire are visualization. It's very nice, clear, and, flexible. You can analyze many data types and the user interface is very good."
"The two features that I have found most valuable are its ability to customize the dashboards when it comes to the evaluation. The second feature is its ability to handle a large amount of data, which is also something very unique about it."
"One of the main features is integrated statistical analysis."
 

Cons

"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"Areas for improvement include implementing multi-storage support to differentiate between database stores based on data age and optimizing storage costs."
"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"There is no local support team in Saudi Arabia."
"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 would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"There is a limitation when it comes to seamlessly importing Microsoft documents into Confluent pages, which can be inconvenient for users who frequently work with Microsoft Office tools and need to transition their content to Confluent."
"It could have more themes. They should also have more reporting-oriented plugins as well. It would be great to have free custom reports that can be dispatched directly from Jira."
"The handling and consumption of realtime data could be improved."
"The Text Area feature needs to be more user-friendly. It is a little clunky to use, and it is difficult to consistently format text."
"We would like an easier way to get the product to the cloud. Right now, we have the on-premise version, and we would like to find a way to make it easier to migrate it over to the cloud."
"I would like to see the visualization library in this solution expanded, so that I can increase what I can offer to our clients."
"The way TIBCO Spotfire is designed, in my opinion, is the reason why it lags a bit, especially compared to other BI tools like Qlik."
"I would like more easy-to-implement analytical algorithms. At the moment they include things like forecasts and regressions. They need to add a lot more of these types of things to the product because not everyone is a data scientist."
"The initial setup is complicated and needs experience and knowledge."
"Compared to competitors, the UI is quite dated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"It comes with a high cost."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing seems competitive and reasonable. The value delivered by the product far exceeds the cost."
"This product carries a monthly licensing charge, with the amount depending on the features that are to be included. This costs also covers the use of technical support."
"The cost of TIBCO Spotfire could improve. It should be less expensive. It's the most expensive visualization tool in our company."
"The solution is affordable one."
"The Tibco sales teams have been very difficult to work with - ignoring requests, misrepresenting level of demand, etc."
"The price-point for this solution is negotiable depending on usage levels."
"In comparison to other solutions such as IBM Cognos, TIBCO Spotfire is more affordable."
"I would describe TIBCO Spotfire as an averagely-priced product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
 

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?
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 do you like most about TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. While they assisted with the setup, we conducted the POC ourselves.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Spotfire?
Compared to other tools, Spotfire's pricing is competitive, especially with its enterprise licensing.
What needs improvement with TIBCO Spotfire?
Spotfire requires better documentation. Unlike competitors like Power BI and Tableau, Spotfire lacks comprehensive metadata dictionaries. This makes it difficult to generate usage metrics, which ar...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Spotfire
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Allergan, ASSS de Montreal, Avantium, Blue River, Bank of Montreal, Citibank, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Merck, Novartis
Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. TIBCO Spotfire and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.