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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 6.4%, down 8.3% compared to last year.
Informatica PowerCenter, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 3.4% mindshare, down 7.8% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.4%
Databricks7.5%
Apache Flink7.5%
Other78.6%
Streaming Analytics
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Informatica PowerCenter3.4%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)3.8%
SSIS3.7%
Other89.1%
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

"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."
"We primarily use Confluent for service desk and task management, and it is also good for knowledge base management."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"Confluence's greatest asset is its user-friendly interface, coupled with its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with a vast range of other solutions."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"The documentation process is fast with the tool."
"To date, we have seen improvements in performance and scalability, so we recommend this solution."
"Having used SharePoint in the past, when I compare with traditional, old document repositories, like SharePoint, I would definitely recommend Confluent."
"We use Informatica PowerCenter to transfer the transitional database to and from the data warehouse, and this is very efficient as it enables us to quickly find our data reports and the data, so we can build AI models."
"The solution provides good performance with an easy to use interface and reasonable documentation."
"It is easy to use, and it is quick for developing things. It is fairly powerful, and it can integrate with a lot of different platforms without much hassle."
"To me, what's most valuable in Informatica PowerCenter is the flexibility in building the integration pipeline. Usually, you need to have a platform to be able to integrate with different technologies, including legacy data such as the mainframe. The platform should also be rich enough to transform the data per your business requirement, with no restrictions. Rich integration and rich transformation capabilities are the two key capabilities in Informatica PowerCenter. The solution also offers ease of use. Another valuable feature of Informatica PowerCenter is the drag-and-drop integration because it's GUI-based, similar to IBM and Oracle."
"The support is valuable. There are also open-source ETL products, which work very well, but there is no support. When we face a production problem, being able to get support is valuable, and it brings efficiency. With an open-source solution, we can't engage anyone to resolve the problem as quickly as possible."
"Can manage a huge quantity of data and provide reliability."
"What I like the most is that we have to deal with less while writing the queries."
"PowerCenter is serving as the data integration foundation for our enterprise integration initiatives including data warehousing, data governance, data migration, SOA, and MDM."
 

Cons

"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"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."
"The product should integrate tools for incorporating diagrams like Lucidchart. It also needs to improve its formatting features. We also faced issues while granting permissions."
"It would be great if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"It could be improved by including a feature that automatically creates a new topic and puts failed messages."
"They should remove Zookeeper because of security issues."
"I would like to see it be able to import data from NoSQL."
"Unstructured data handling is an important area with a shortcoming that needs improvement in the solution."
"The real-time database connectivity when getting the real-time data using the VPN is an area that needs improvement."
"Informatica PowerCenter could improve the data threshold for large sets of data. Additionally, they should add real-time integration."
"PowerCenter has three clients. I wish they would consolidate everything into one GUI, not three. Also, we had a persistent issue with the Informatica Developer tool but it was solved when we migrated to the newest one."
"It would be good to recreate the entire interface to make it easier for users to build workflows."
"I would like to see an improvement in the digital adoption. It would be nice if they could be cheaper, because the training is very expensive as they do everything online."
"Integration with Artificial Intelligence would benefit this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"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."
"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."
"The license model is CPU based."
"The licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"I am not sure about the most recent price, but I think it should be $100,000 or more."
"The price of Informatica PowerCenter is expensive, but it does give value."
"We are using an annual license for Informatica PowerCenter."
"We have a site license, but we do pay by the division."
"Our customers pay a licensing fee yearly."
"The pricing is a little expensive, but in the same range as IBM and other competitors."
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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
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Insurance Company
6%
 

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 Business14
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise76
 

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: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.