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Amazon MSK pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

3.7 out of 5

12 reviews
91% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Amazon MSK offers private networking to enhance security and stability, but it lacks flexibility compared to competitors like Confluence. Integration improves efficiency and benefits workflows, although costs can increase by 50% to 60%. Scalability is excellent, promoting resource use and developer productivity, yet more autoscaling and schema support are needed. Enhancements in configuration, documentation, and feature offerings could further elevate user experience.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon MSK offers a private network as an out-of-box feature.

The integration capabilities of Amazon MSK are highly valuable, allowing easy communication between systems.

Scalability in Amazon MSK is impressive, facilitating growth and adaptation within AWS.

Amazon MSK supports seamless installation, scaling, and deployment, providing ease of use.

Technical support offered by Amazon MSK is helpful, enhancing user experience.

CONS

Amazon MSK could be more flexible with integrations and offers fewer features compared to Confluence.

Amazon MSK does not autoscale automatically, leading to operational overhead when managing clusters manually.

Documentation for Amazon MSK is inadequate, making configuration challenging and confusing, especially with undocumented policy changes.

Amazon MSK's schema support requires enhancements to improve integration with various programming languages like .NET.

The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, with cloud costs increasing by 50% to 60%, outweighing any savings.

Amazon MSK Pros review quotes

reviewer2237604

Integration Solution Architect at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

May 24, 2024

Amazon MSK's scalability is very good.

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Keorapetse Naane

Cloud DevOps Engineer at Restack

May 18, 2023

Overall, it is very cost-effective based on the workflow.

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Aniruddh Kurundkar

Lead Consultant at Neutrino Tech Systems

Jun 19, 2023

It is a stable product.

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FW

Senior Software Engineer at a recreational facilities/services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 12, 2024

Amazon MSK's separation of concerns and ease of creating and deploying new features are highly valuable. It just requires to assign them to the topic, and then anyone who needs to consume these messages can do so directly from Amazon MSK. This separation of concerns makes it very convenient, especially for new feature development, as developers can easily access the messages they need without having to deal with complex server communications or protocol setups.

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Senior Data Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

May 9, 2024

Amazon MSK has good integration because our team has been undergoing significant changes. Coupling it with MSK within AWS is helpful. We don't have to set up additionals or monitor external environments. This

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reviewer1500498

Team Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 16, 2021

MSK has a private network that's an out-of-box feature.

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PP

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

Feb 25, 2025

It provides installations, scaling, and other functionalities straight out of the box.

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SDE at Mindtickle

Jul 10, 2024

The solution's technical support was helpful.

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Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos

Software Architect at C&A Brasil

Jan 8, 2024

Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems.

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reviewer2268408

Software Team Lead at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Sep 4, 2023

It offers good stability.

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Show 1 more reviews (out of 11)

Amazon MSK Cons review quotes

reviewer2237604

Integration Solution Architect at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

May 24, 2024

One of the reasons why we prefer Kafka is because the support is a little bit difficult to manage with Amazon MSK.

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Keorapetse Naane

Cloud DevOps Engineer at Restack

May 18, 2023

It does not autoscale. Because if you do keep it manually when you add a note to the cluster and then you register it, then it is scalable, but the fact that you have to go and do it, I think, makes it, again, a bit of some operational overhead when managing the cluster.

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Aniruddh Kurundkar

Lead Consultant at Neutrino Tech Systems

Jun 19, 2023

It would be really helpful if Amazon MSK could provide a single installation that covers all the servers.

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Free Report: Amazon MSK Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Amazon MSK. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.

863,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.

RP

devops engineer at bpm links

Jul 3, 2025

We need to create connectors in Amazon MSK, but there are no default connectors in AWS for that purpose.

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FW

Senior Software Engineer at a recreational facilities/services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 12, 2024

In my opinion, there are areas in Amazon MSK that could be improved, particularly in terms of configuration. Initially setting it up and getting it connected was quite challenging. The naming conventions for policies were updated by AWS, and some were undocumented, leading to confusion with outdated materials. It took us weeks of trial and error before discovering new methods through hidden tutorials and official documentation.

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reviewer1500498

Team Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 16, 2021

It should be more flexible, integration-wise.

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PP

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

Feb 25, 2025

The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, which is a significant disadvantage, as the increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings.

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SDE at Mindtickle

Jul 10, 2024

Horizontal scale-out is actually not easy, making it an area where improvements are required.

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Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos

Software Architect at C&A Brasil

Jan 8, 2024

The product's schema support needs enhancement. It will help enhance integration with many kinds of languages of programming languages, especially for environments using languages like .NET.

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reviewer2268408

Software Team Lead at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Sep 4, 2023

The configuration seems a little complex and the documentation on the product is not available.

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Show 1 more reviews (out of 11)

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