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Confluent vs Informatica PowerCenter 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

Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (7th)
Informatica PowerCenter
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (4th), Data Visualization (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and Informatica PowerCenter aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 6.6%, down 8.3% compared to last year.
Informatica PowerCenter, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 3.4% mindshare, down 8.2% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.6%
Apache Flink7.9%
Databricks7.8%
Other77.7%
Streaming Analytics
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Informatica PowerCenter3.4%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)3.7%
SSIS3.7%
Other89.2%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Garima Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Principal Engineer at Nagarro
Has supported complex data pipeline creation but performance tuning and monitoring responsiveness need improvement
Sometimes, I see various performance issues with Informatica PowerCenter, including caching concerns, whether it's a joiner transformation or other transformations, so I believe the team can enhance the performance perspectives of these transformations. Additionally, sometimes the Informatica Monitor hangs or takes time to open the current run or logs, which the team can also look into. Informatica is transitioning to cloud solutions and discontinuing on-premise support after 2026, so when we discuss Informatica Cloud and its support, it becomes quite expensive for the organization compared to peers such as SnapLogic or Netezza, which offer lower pricing. Informatica Cloud Intelligence's pricing is notably high.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."
"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided. They're leading the market in this category."
"Overall, it's a great company and they have excellent software."
"Some of the best features are that it's very quick to set up, very easy to have a centralized area that gives us a history of changes, and the ability to give feedback on any information placed onto the pages."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."
"We mostly use the solution's message queues and event-driven architecture."
"The most complex task, in this case, was to read and transform BLOB data, and Java transformation in Informatica Power Center was a great solution."
"The most valuable features of Informatica PowerCenter are the ease of use, and development, and is simple to find resources."
"It's one of the best tools in the integration field."
"Among all the solutions I have used, I found Informatica PowerCenter to be much more stable in terms of application."
"The ability to scale through partitions helped us to improve the performance."
"Complex transformations can be easily achieved by using PowerCenter. The processing layer does transformations and other things. About 80% of my transformations can be achieved by using the middle layer. For the remaining 15% to 20% transformations, I can go in and create stored procedures in the respective databases. Mapplets is the feature through which we can reuse transformations across pipelines. Transformations and caching are the key features that we have been using frequently. Informatica PowerCenter is one of the best solutions or products in the data integration space. We have extensively used PowerCenter for integration purposes. We usually look at the best bridge solution in our architecture so that it can sustain for maybe a couple of years. Usually, we go with the solution that fits best and has proven and time-tested technology."
"Once you figure it out, it is a powerful and simple ETL tool. Its stability has been very satisfactory."
"It's a very powerful tool you can use to load data, get data, do the drawing between the tables, and put it into the packet in a very fast way."
 

Cons

"The beginner who doesn't know how to work on HTML will struggle as when you create spaces in the Confluent, if you want to have some meeting notes or anything else, you need to know HTML and which HTML tags to include."
"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"It could be improved by including a feature that automatically creates a new topic and puts failed messages."
"Areas for improvement include implementing multi-storage support to differentiate between database stores based on data age and optimizing storage costs."
"Confluent's price needs improvement."
"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"It could have more integration with different platforms."
"I would like to see the inclusion of a tool that allows you to report performance metrics."
"I would like to see improvements made to the custom transformations. It should be more open for users that want to write their own code and use cases."
"The developer tool documentation can be enhanced with a more clear explanation of each utility, accompanied by relevant examples, so that developers are able to create programs with ease."
"In terms of innovation, creativity is not there in this solution. It is still an on-prem ETL tool."
"The licensing is difficult."
"Informatica is transitioning to cloud solutions and discontinuing on-premise support after 2026, so when we discuss Informatica Cloud and its support, it becomes quite expensive for the organization compared to peers such as SnapLogic or Netezza, which offer lower pricing."
"It would be better if I could do all the work within a single window. It was also very expensive."
"Its licensing can be improved. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise. A bundle will definitely be costly. In addition, we might use one or two features. That's why the pricing model should be based on the features. The model should be flexible enough based on the features. Their support should also be more responsive to premium customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a six out of ten. The exact pricing depends on various products that you have."
"The price of Informatica PowerCenter is expensive, but it does give value."
"I rate the product's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"We have found the pricing very cost-effective. The licensing is CPU and data source-based."
"We have a site license, but we do pay by the division."
"Pricing for Informatica PowerCenter isn't cheap, but if I compare it with IBM, it's as expensive as IBM, however, Informatica PowerCenter is more innovative, especially when compared to a giant company such as IBM that has thousands of products. Informatica PowerCenter is limited only to data management, but it has new features that come out every quarter. Points for ease of use and flexibility go to Informatica PowerCenter, but price-wise, IBM and Informatica are equal because they're both expensive."
"It is for big enterprises. We have leveraged Informatica for big enterprises but not for small and medium enterprises because it is a very costly product as compared to other products. We propose this solution only for enterprise customers. For small to medium enterprises, we would propose the Microsoft solution. Its licensing is currently bundle-wise. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise."
"I consider this to be an expensive product."
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Comparison Review

it_user90069 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Expert at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 20, 2014
Informatica PowerCenter vs. Microsoft SSIS - each technology has its advantages but also have similarities
Technology has made it easier for businesses to organize and manipulate data to get a clearer picture of what’s going on with their business. Notably, ETL tools have made managing huge amounts of data significantly easier and faster, boosting many organizations’ business intelligence operations…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise75
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
What is your primary use case for Confluent?
The main use cases for Confluent are log aggregation and streaming. I'm familiar with Confluent stream processing with KSQL. KSQL helps in terms of data analytics strategies because if we are the d...
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stability and reliability I am looking for, good scalability, and is easy to set up an...
Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?
SSIS PowerPack is a group of drag and drop connectors for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, commonly called SSIS. The collection helps organizations boost productivity with code-free compo...
Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Complex transformations can easily be achieved using PowerCenter, which has all the features and tools to establish a real data governance strategy. Additionally, PowerCenter is able to manage huge...
 

Also Known As

No data available
PowerCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Microsoft, Apache and others in Streaming Analytics. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.