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Confluent vs SAS Access 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)
SAS Access
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (59th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and SAS Access 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.
SAS Access, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 0.8% mindshare, up 0.4% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.4%
Databricks7.5%
Apache Flink7.5%
Other78.6%
Streaming Analytics
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAS Access0.8%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)3.8%
SSIS3.7%
Other91.7%
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.
Robert Heck - PeerSpot reviewer
Co Owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH
The solution is stable, scalable, and flexible
I rate the solution eight out of ten. The number of people required to maintain the solution is dependent on the other applications running. The solution in itself does not require a lot of maintenance. The solution is flexible and I recommend it when you have more complex applications with special requirements.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 tools."
"Confluence's greatest asset is its user-friendly interface, coupled with its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with a vast range of other solutions."
"The solution can handle a high volume of data because it works and scales well."
"The design of the product is extremely well built and it is highly configurable."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"To date, we have seen improvements in performance and scalability, so we recommend this solution."
"The most valuable feature that we are using is the data replication between the data centers allowing us to configure a disaster recovery or software. However, is it's not mandatory to use and because most of the features that we use are from Apache Kafka, such as end-to-end encryption. Internally, we can develop our own kind of product or service from Apache Kafka."
"We primarily use Confluent for service desk and task management, and it is also good for knowledge base management."
"The SAS/ACCESS ability to connect creates an elegant simplicity."
"The most valuable part of SAS/ACCESS is what it is made for: connecting to remote systems that are not part of your physical SAS environment."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the ease of access to the data in those databases."
"The most valuable feature is you have native access to the external databases."
 

Cons

"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."
"Confluent has a good monitoring tool, but it's not customizable."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"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."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"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 requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"The solution can provide access to the newer databases that come out sooner."
"The solution's pricing and licensing are expensive."
"The pricing model needs to be reconsidered and adjusted."
"The primary way that this product can be improved is by adjusting their pricing model."
"I can't really recall any missing feature or general improvement that is needed. We don't really add too many new kinds of databases and therefore our needs are already met."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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 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."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"It comes with a high cost."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"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."
"The solution's pricing and licensing are expensive."
"The pricing model is complex and is based on modular packages as well as the size of the applicable environment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

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...
Ask a question
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SAS/Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Los Angeles County, West Midlands Police, Credit Guarantee Corporation, Canada Post, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty
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.