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Apache Flink 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Flink
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
17
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
16
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (6th), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Event Monitoring (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Flink is 13.8%, up from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PubSub+ Platform is 2.9%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
A great solution with an intricate system and allows for batch data processing
We value this solution's intricate system because it comes with a state inside the mechanism and product. The system allows us to process batch data, stream to real-time and build pipelines. Additionally, we do not need to process data from the beginning when we pause, and we can continue from the same point where we stopped. It helps us save time as 95% of our pipelines will now be on Amazon, and we'll save money by saving time.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Allows us to process batch data, stream to real-time and build pipelines."
"Easy to deploy and manage."
"It is user-friendly and the reporting is good."
"Apache Flink offers a range of powerful configurations and experiences for development teams. Its strength lies in its development experience and capabilities."
"The setup was not too difficult."
"Apache Flink allows you to reduce latency and process data in real-time, making it ideal for such scenarios."
"With Flink, it provides out-of-the-box checkpointing and state management. It helps us in that way. When Storm used to restart, sometimes we would lose messages. With Flink, it provides guaranteed message processing, which helped us. It also helped us with maintenance or restarts."
"It provides us the flexibility to deploy it on any cluster without being constrained by cloud-based limitations."
"Going from something where we had outages and capacity issues constantly to a system that was able to scale with the massive market data and messaging spikes that happened during the initial stages of the COVID crisis in March, we were able to scale with 40 plus percent growth in our platform over the course of days."
"We've built a lot of products into it and it's been quite easy to feed market data onto the systems and put entitlements and controls around that. That was a big win for us when we were consolidating our platforms down. Trying to have one event bus, one messaging bus, for the whole globe, and consolidate everything over time, has been key for us. We've been able to do that through one API, even if it's across the different languages."
"One of the main reasons for using PubSub+ is that it is a proper event manager that can handle events in a reactive way."
"As of now, the most valuable aspects are the topic-based subscription and the fanout exchange that we are using."
"Some valuable features include reconnecting topics, placing queues, and direct connections to MongoDB. The platform provides a dashboard to monitor the status of messages, such as how many have been processed or delivered, which is helpful for tracking performance."
"The way we can replicate information and send it to several subscribers is most valuable. It can be used for any kind of business where you've got multiple users who need information. Any company, such as LinkedIn, with a huge number of subscribers and any business, such as publishing, supermarket, airline, or shipping can use it."
"The most valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the scaling integration. Prior to using the solution, it was done manually with a file, and it can be done instantly live."
"When it comes to granularity, you can literally do anything regarding how the filtering works."
 

Cons

"Amazon's CloudFormation templates don't allow for direct deployment in the private subnet."
"In terms of stability with Flink, it is something that you have to deal with every time. Stability is the number one problem that we have seen with Flink, and it really depends on the kind of problem that you're trying to solve."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"The machine learning library is not very flexible."
"The state maintains checkpoints and they use RocksDB or S3. They are good but sometimes the performance is affected when you use RocksDB for checkpointing."
"Apache Flink should improve its data capability and data migration."
"In terms of improvement, there should be better reporting. You can integrate with reporting solutions but Flink doesn't offer it themselves."
"Apache should provide more examples and sample code related to streaming to help me better adapt and utilize the tool."
"The solution could be improved by enhancing the message pooling size for persistent messages to handle both small and large messages effectively."
"The licensing and the cost are the major pitfalls."
"The integrations could improve in PubSub+ Event Broker."
"We've pointed out some things with the DMR piece, the event mesh, in edge cases where we could see a problem. Something like 99 percent of users wouldn't ever see this problem, but it has to do with if you get multiple bad clients sending data over a WAN, for example. That could then impact other clients."
"For improvements, I would suggest increasing the max payload size to a limit of 100MB or more. The current max payload size is limited to 5MB."
"It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use."
"I would like them to design topic and queue schemas, mapping them to the enterprise data structure."
"A challenge we currently have is Solace's ability to integrate with single sign-on in our Active Directory and other single sign-on tools and platforms that any company would have. It's important for the platforms to work. Typically, they support only LDAP-based connectivity to our SQL Servers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source solution."
"It's an open source."
"The solution is open-source, which is free."
"Apache Flink is open source so we pay no licensing for the use of the software."
"This is an open-source platform that can be used free of charge."
"Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."
"I would rate the product's pricing a ten out of ten."
"The price of PubSub+ Event Broker is reasonable for the capability it offers. However, when compared to others solutions on the market it is expensive."
"We have been really happy with the product licensing rates. It has been free for us, up to a 100,000 transactions per second, and all we have to do is pay for support. Making their product available and accessible to us has not been a problem at all."
"It could be cheaper. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"We are looking for something that will add value and fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only."
"The pricing and licensing were very transparent and well-communicated by our account manager."
"The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Flink?
The product helps us to create both simple and complex data processing tasks. Over time, it has facilitated integration and navigation across multiple data sources tailored to each client's needs. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Flink?
The solution is expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Apache Flink?
There are more libraries that are missing and also maybe more capabilities for machine learning. It could have a friendly user interface for pipeline configuration, deployment, and monitoring.
What do you like most about PubSub+ Event Broker?
The most valuable feature of PubSub+ Event Broker is the scaling integration. Prior to using the solution, it was done manually with a file, and it can be done instantly live.
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...
 

Also Known As

Flink
PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LogRhythm, Inc., Inter-American Development Bank, Scientific Technologies Corporation, LotLinx, Inc., Benevity, Inc.
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 Apache Flink vs. PubSub+ Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.