Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon MSK vs PubSub+ Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon MSK provides positive ROI by reducing integration time, minimizing licensing costs, and supporting flexible, cost-efficient experimentation with large data volumes.
Sentiment score
7.0
PubSub+ Platform users see efficiency and cost benefits, though some find Kafka more economical long-term due to complex returns.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Amazon MSK customer service is generally praised for accessibility and responsiveness, but expertise and cost can vary by plan.
Sentiment score
7.5
PubSub+ Platform offers exceptional, responsive customer service with efficient problem resolution and user-driven feature development.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Amazon MSK offers efficient manual scalability, rated six to nine by users, suitable for different organizational needs.
Sentiment score
7.0
PubSub+ Platform seamlessly scales across IT environments, excelling in adaptability, performance, and transaction processing despite some complexity concerns.
The functionality for scaling comes out of the box and is very effective.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon MSK is stable with high user ratings, though concerns exist due to its newness and some Windows-specific issues.
Sentiment score
8.2
PubSub+ Platform delivers stable, reliable performance with zero downtime, handling massive data efficiently and ensuring high availability.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon MSK needs better integration, configuration ease, improved documentation, cost reduction, and feature enhancements to compete and integrate effectively.
PubSub+ Platform needs improvements in integration, user management, dashboard functionality, and open-source support for enhanced application deployment.
The increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings.
It was as impressive as Kafka, better than Kafka based on my experience working on the Solace and Kafka white paper.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon MSK is cost-effective for large workloads but can be expensive for smaller use cases, needing careful evaluation.
Enterprise users value PubSub+ for its clear pricing, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, appreciating the free version for initial evaluation.
Once we started using Kafka, our cloud costs rose by 50% to 60%.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon MSK offers seamless AWS integration, cost-efficiency, simplified setup, and reliable performance for CDC pipelines and asynchronous data collection.
PubSub+ Platform offers seamless integration, scalability, and WAN optimization with intuitive management, efficient data distribution, and advanced topic filtering.
The ability to handle everything, including installation, with minimal human intervention, is a strong point.
The solution's ability to decouple message producers and consumers allows us to have high cohesion and low coupling, making it an excellent solution for that purpose.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PubSub+ Platform
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (8th), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Event Monitoring (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 6.9%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PubSub+ Platform is 3.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

FNU AKSHANSH - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines our processes, and we don't need to configure any VPCs; it's automatic
We don't have many use cases involving ingesting large amounts of data and scaling up and down. We have a clear understanding of our data volume, which remains relatively constant throughout the week. While we're aware of other features Amazon MSK offers, we feel confident in our current setup. If our requirements change significantly in the future, we'll reassess our needs and consider adopting Amazon MSK.
BhanuChidigam - PeerSpot reviewer
Performs well, high availability, and helpful support
We use approximately four people for the maintenance of the solution. My advice to others is this solution has high throughput and is used for many stock exchanges. For business critical use cases, such as processing financial transactions at a quick speed, I would recommend this solution. I rate PubSub+ Event Broker an eight out of ten.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Streaming Analytics solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Retailer
4%
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon MSK?
Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems.
What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?
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. There were no other notable issues.
What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?
We used Amazon MSK to manage high-volume third-party data entering our system. It served as a buffer when our system was unable to consume data at high speeds in real-time. The data initially went ...
What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?
The solution could be improved by enhancing the message pooling size for persistent messages to handle both small and large messages effectively. Additionally, providing a comprehensive dashboard t...
What is your primary use case for PubSub+ Event Broker?
We use PubSub+ primarily for long processing messages. For instance, we generate customer forms, which take a longer time. We place these requests in queues, process them, and return them to the qu...
What advice do you have for others considering PubSub+ Event Broker?
I recommend considering Solace due to its enterprise-level features, high throughput, cloud integration, and security. It is a top competitor among similar products and offers significant benefits ...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet 
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MSK vs. PubSub+ Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.