Confluent and Amazon MSK compete in the managed streaming data service market with Apache Kafka-based solutions. Confluent is preferred for its pricing and support, while Amazon MSK is favored for its features despite pricing concerns.
Features: Confluent delivers enterprise-grade security, robust monitoring, and an advanced schema registry, offering flexibility. Amazon MSK provides seamless AWS integration, automated scaling, and easy message development through its separation of concerns.
Room for Improvement: Confluent could improve AWS ecosystem integration, automation in scaling, and reduce infrastructure concerns. Amazon MSK can enhance customer support response times, offer clearer pricing models, and improve documentation to aid user understanding.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Confluent provides a straightforward deployment process with responsive support, appealing to enterprises seeking quick setups. Amazon MSK benefits from streamlined deployment within AWS but faces generic AWS support feedback.
Pricing and ROI: Confluent's transparent setup costs suit medium to large enterprises, offering long-term ROI with advanced features. Amazon MSK, while potentially pricier initially, offers better ROI for those using multiple AWS services.
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) is a fully managed service that enables you to build and run applications that use Apache Kafka to process streaming data. Amazon MSK provides the control-plane operations, such as those for creating, updating, and deleting clusters.
Confluent is an enterprise-ready, full-scale streaming platform that enhances Apache Kafka.
Confluent has integrated cutting-edge features that are designed to enhance these tasks:
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:
Confluent Advantage Features
Confluent has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
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.”
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