Amazon MSK vs PubSub+ Platform comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Solace are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.2, while Solace is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.2% mindshare in SA, compared to Solace’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Solace users who would recommend it.

Amazon MSK

Read 14 Amazon MSK reviews

2,291 Views
2,245 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

PubSub+ Platform

Read 18 PubSub+ Platform reviews

2,255 Views
970 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

PubSub+ Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Amazon MSK and PubSub+ Platform compete in the streaming data solutions category. While both offer valuable features, PubSub+ Platform is generally considered superior due to its comprehensive feature set, which justifies its higher cost.

Features: Amazon MSK integrates seamlessly with AWS services, simplifies Apache Kafka management, and automates important configurations such as VPC. PubSub+ Platform excels with extensive messaging capabilities, real-time event streaming, and flexible deployment options across cloud and hybrid environments.

Room for Improvement: Amazon MSK could enhance its support for smaller workloads to improve cost-effectiveness. It might also need better differentiation in features compared to its competitors. PubSub+ Platform could improve topic hierarchy management and the learning curve for optimal configuration. Simplifying multi-cloud integration could further extend its reach.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon MSK benefits from the AWS managed service infrastructure, providing smooth deployment experiences and leveraging AWS's established support channels. PubSub+ Platform offers versatile deployment models and stands out due to its focus on hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. It provides responsive and personalized customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon MSK is attractive for its lower setup costs and the value it offers through integrated AWS services, particularly appealing to existing AWS users. PubSub+ Platform, although requiring a higher initial investment, delivers significant ROI with its robust feature set and scalability, making it ideal for enterprises seeking comprehensive event-driven architectures.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon MSK vs. PubSub+ Platform Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. PubSub+ Platform

December 2025

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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

4.1

Amazon MSK saves time and money, promotes innovation with flexible pricing, yet some users find costs hard to justify.

Sentiment score

6.4

Users experienced varied ROI with PubSub+; some saw cost savings and productivity gains, others faced maintenance cost concerns.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the PubSub+ Platform report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.2

Amazon MSK support varies; some praise its effectiveness, while others note average service and seek external assistance.

Sentiment score

7.4

PubSub+ Platform is renowned for excellent, responsive support, with dedicated teams enhancing user experiences through prompt issue resolution.

They can manage most of our queries, and for what they cannot manage, they guide us through the process of finding out.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

Amazon's support is excellent.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

I have looked into PubSub+ Platform's support forums to read and understand a few things that I did not understand.

Vyshakh Babji

Developer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the PubSub+ Platform report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.0

Amazon MSK is viewed as scalable, manageable, appealing to various environments, but may require manual scaling adjustments.

Sentiment score

7.1

PubSub+ Platform is scalable and flexible, supporting complex use cases, though some users report deployment challenges and feature gaps.

The functionality for scaling comes out of the box and is very effective.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

As a B2B enterprise client, our clientele consists of large ticket clients but low amounts of users.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the PubSub+ Platform report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.3

Amazon MSK is stable with high ratings; minor issues are unrelated to MSK, maintaining success rates of 91% under load.

Sentiment score

8.2

PubSub+ Platform offers exceptional reliability, maintaining zero downtime and robust performance even during high-stress global events.

It doesn't require any maintenance on my end yet, as I haven't had any issues.

Mauro Velasco Sarmiento

Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

I think the stability of PubSub+ Platform is pretty good, and I would rate it at eight.

Vyshakh Babji

Developer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the PubSub+ Platform report

Room For Improvement

Amazon MSK struggles with integration, configuration complexities, high costs, and operational challenges compared to services like Kinesis.

PubSub+ Platform requires improved integration, usability, cost management, and features like dynamic topics and enhanced monitoring capabilities.

There are preset configurations and limited configurations that we can set for our unique use case.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

The increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

I had to remove and drop all the clusters and recreate them again, which is complicated in a production environment.

Mauro Velasco Sarmiento

Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

It was as impressive as Kafka, better than Kafka based on my experience working on the Solace and Kafka white paper.

reviewer2714190

freelancer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The analytics tools integrated within PubSub+ Platform are good, as it has already integrated with cloud logging and the cloud logging features, making the analytics pretty good already.

Vyshakh Babji

Developer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the PubSub+ Platform report

Setup Cost

Amazon MSK is competitively priced with variable costs, appealing to enterprise users but potentially expensive for some.

PubSub+ Platform offers flexible, tiered pricing based on message volume with free options and scalable enterprise solutions.

Once we started using Kafka, our cloud costs rose by 50% to 60%.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

We use Kafka M5 Large instance, and depending on the instances, that is the cost we have, along with storage cost and data transfer costs.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the PubSub+ Platform report

Valuable Features

Amazon MSK integrates AWS services, offering cost-effective, automated scaling, ease of use, real-time analytics, encryption, and event sourcing.

The PubSub+ Platform excels in scalability, reliability, and integration, offering outstanding support, flexibility, and efficient event handling capabilities.

It starts checking how the brokers are functioning, and automatically, Amazon MSK tries to resolve all the problems.

Mauro Velasco Sarmiento

Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

The ability to handle everything, including installation, with minimal human intervention, is a strong point.

ParsuramPanigrahi

CTO at Atulya Abhinav Tech Private Limited

The best features of Amazon MSK are the real-time analytics that are excellent.

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon MSK report

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.

reviewer2714190

freelancer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The best features of PubSub+ Platform include being highly scalable, allowing us to handle billions and billions of events.

Vyshakh Babji

Developer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the PubSub+ Platform report

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MSK

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

6th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

PubSub+ Platform

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

14th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software (8th), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Event Monitoring (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 5.2%, down from 8.5% 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 Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon MSK	5.2%
PubSub+ Platform	3.0%
Other	91.8%

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

Improved data streaming and integration challenges prompt search for alternatives

The integration capabilities of Amazon MSK are not very flexible. If you have your own self-managed Kafka, that helps significantly because you can set up configurations. We are considering self-managed Kafka since our product is only one year old. The Kafka integrations are fine, but the configurations are an issue. The only issue with Amazon MSK that we are facing is the configurations. There are preset configurations and limited configurations that we can set for our unique use case. The product could improve by allowing us to set different configurations. I would also like to see Amazon MSK improve in the area of connectors. We are considering Confluent Cloud because they have many more connectors. They have KSQL DB and governance features. It is slightly costlier, but Confluent offers more flexibility with their connectors.

Read full review

reviewer2714190

freelancer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Offers a seamless way to decouple applications, providing impressive performance and flexibility

Regarding improving the PubSub+ Platform, I'm not sure about the pricing aspect, but I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka. That's the only concern I can mention; otherwise, it was as impressive as Kafka, better than Kafka based on my experience working on the Solace and Kafka white paper.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

27%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?

We are recently working with Amazon MSK at Fortis, where we have multiple dashboards in our revenue intelligence platform. We are streaming data from different apps into those dashboards. The data ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PubSub+ Event Broker?

I do not know about the pricing of PubSub+ Platform because I did not manage the instance.

See all answers

What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?

Additional in-line information about certain things on PubSub+ Platform could be more beneficial for new users who are just starting to use this technology. The analytics tools integrated within Pu...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for PubSub+ Event Broker?

I describe the main use cases for PubSub+ Platform as wanting to use it as a messaging queue pipeline for managing the data stream events in our IoT platform while I was working at an IoT-based com...

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Stream Analytics vs Amazon MSK

Compared 28% of the time

Apache Flink vs Amazon MSK

Compared 15% of the time

Confluent vs Amazon MSK

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Amazon MSK

Compared 9% of the time

Instaclustr vs Amazon MSK

Compared 3% of the time

More Amazon MSK Competitors

Apache Kafka vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 13% of the time

IBM MQ vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Software AG Universal Messaging vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Confluent vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Real-Time Innovations DDS vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More PubSub+ Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

December 2025

Download Amazon MSK product report

Buyer's Guide

PubSub+ Platform

December 2025

Download PubSub+ Platform product report

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal

Overview

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.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

PubSub+ Platform is designed for real-time message publishing and outstanding interoperability. With features like intuitive administration and topic filtering, it offers both stability and high performance for scalable deployments across diverse scenarios.

PubSub+ Platform enhances data integration with its event mesh and seamless protocol compatibility, providing a comprehensive solution for organizations tracking shipments, generating reports, and managing transactions. Its granular topic filtering and WAN optimization ensure high utility in event-driven applications and cloud deployments. Users highlight the platform's intuitive administration and ease of management, though some seek improved integration with third-party tools and enhanced observability. Concerns include scalability for large payloads and training resource availability. Despite its interface complexity, PubSub+ remains valuable for trading and market data distribution.

What are the key features of PubSub+ Platform?

Real-time messaging: Facilitates seamless communication across platforms.
Flexible topic hierarchy: Supports dynamic topic taxonomy for efficient data management.
Event mesh: Enhances integration and interoperability with diverse protocols.
Intuitive administration: Simplifies system management and configuration.
WAN optimization: Ensures efficient connectivity for global deployment.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Messaging stability: Offers consistent performance in dynamic environments.
Scalability: Provides seamless expansion to accommodate growing data volumes.
Security: Maintains robust protection for sensitive information.
Support and configuration: Accessible, reliable support, and UI-driven setup streamline the management.

PubSub+ Platform is widely implemented for asynchronous messaging in industries like finance for trading and market data, logistics for shipment tracking, and tech operations management. It enables companies to modernize applications while ensuring data accuracy and efficiency across global systems.

Solace

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. PubSub+ Platform

December 2025

Free Report: Amazon MSK vs. PubSub+ Platform

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