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CloverETL vs Confluent comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

CloverETL
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (57th), Data Visualization (34th)
Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

CloverETL and Confluent aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. CloverETL is designed for Data Integration and holds a mindshare of 0.8%, up 0.1% compared to last year.
Confluent, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 6.9% mindshare, down 8.6% since last year.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloverETL0.8%
SSIS3.6%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)3.6%
Other92.0%
Data Integration
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.9%
Apache Flink10.9%
Databricks9.0%
Other73.2%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

it_user856614 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Programmer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Very easy to schedule jobs and monitor them, however we run out heap space even with a high allocation
Flexibility: We can bring in data from multiple sources, e.g., databases, text files, JSON, email, XML, etc. This has been very helpful Connectivity to various data sources: The ability to extract data from different data sources gives greater flexibility. Server features for scheduler: It is…
PavanManepalli - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP - Sr Middleware Messaging Integration Engineer at Wells Fargo
Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"No dependence on native language and ease of use.​​"
"Key features include wealth of pre-defined components; all components are customizable; descriptive logging, especially for error messages."
"We switched to CloverETL because of its flexibility to connect to various data sources and no dependence on native language and ease of use."
"Server features for scheduler: It is very easy to schedule jobs and monitor them. The interface is easy to use."
"Connectivity to various data sources: The ability to extract data from different data sources gives greater flexibility."
"Familiar, intuitive GUI coming from a Java development background, in-depth, descriptive, and well-laid-out documentation, responsive support through forums directly from Clover staff, a wealth of customizable pre-defined components, descriptive logging for error messages, and ease of install with a light footprint make it very effective to use."
"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided; they're leading the market in this category."
"As an enterprise organization, data availability is critical and Confluent provides that SLA support."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"The client APIs are the most valuable feature."
"The solution can handle a high volume of data because it works and scales well."
"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."
"The biggest benefit of Confluent as a tool is that it is a distributed platform that provides more durability and stability."
"To date, we have seen improvements in performance and scalability, so we recommend this solution."
 

Cons

"Its documentation could be improved.​"
"​Resource management: We typically run out of heap space, and even the allocation of high heap space does not seem to be enough.​"
"Resource management: We typically run out of heap space, and even the allocation of high heap space does not seem to be enough."
"Needs: easier automated failure recovery; more, and more intuitive auto-generated/filled-in code for components; easier/more automated sync between CloverETL Designer and CloverETL Server."
"Needs easier automated failure recovery, more and more intuitive auto-generated or filled-in code for components, and easier or more automated sync between CloverETL Designer and CloverETL Server."
"Confluent's price needs improvement."
"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."
"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."
"It could have more themes. They should also have more reporting-oriented plugins as well. It would be great to have free custom reports that can be dispatched directly from Jira."
"there is room for improvement in the visualization."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Confluent has fallen behind in being the tool of the industry. It's taking second place to things such as Word and SharePoint and other office tools that are more dynamic and flexible than Confluent."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"It comes with a high cost."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
27%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, Oracle, MuleSoft, GoodData, Thomson Reuters, salesforce.com, Comcast, Active Network, SHOP.CA
ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Find out what your peers are saying about CloverETL vs. Confluent and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.