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Confluent vs TIBCO BusinessWorks 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
6.4
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (3rd)
TIBCO BusinessWorks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and TIBCO BusinessWorks aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 8.4%, down 9.8% compared to last year.
TIBCO BusinessWorks, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 1.0% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Confluent8.4%
Apache Flink14.6%
Databricks13.1%
Other63.9%
Streaming Analytics
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
TIBCO BusinessWorks1.0%
Informatica PowerCenter6.3%
SSIS5.9%
Other86.8%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming
Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance. It helps us understand the various requirements of multiple customers and validates the information for different versions. We can automate the tasks using Confluent Kafka. Thus, it guarantees us the data quality and maintains the integrity of message contracts.
AftabAlam - PeerSpot reviewer
User benefits from reliable support and seamless orchestration capabilities
The best features of TIBCO BusinessWorks compared to other products are that it is a roadmap product. The company has proper support. We have similar products in the market, including open source options, but they don't have any support beyond community feedback. TIBCO BusinessWorks is a standard product widely used by many companies. It is more stable, has future releases, and is compliant with new technologies. The significant advantage is that it is a standardized product with a proper, well-planned roadmap, support, and R&D. The positive impact I have experienced from installing TIBCO BusinessWorks is that it is reliable and has better support. It is easy to use and saves overall support costs. The real-time data exchange capability of TIBCO BusinessWorks has helped mission-critical systems because the uptime is superb. We have implemented it in a Kubernetes cluster with auto-scaling. If any systems go down, we have pods that automatically restart and spawn new pods which start taking the load. Earlier deployments used to be on VMs where infrastructure was limited, making scaling difficult. With Kubernetes, you can provision in advance and scale up or down based on requirements. The graphical user interface of TIBCO BusinessWorks is very easy to use. You can configure all components efficiently. Previously, configuration required opening XML files, which wasn't easy to understand without complete specifications knowledge. The graphical interface makes it easy to understand what needs to be configured and is straightforward to use.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."
"The benefit is escaping email communication. Sometimes people ignore emails or put them into spam, but with Confluence, everyone sees the same text at the same time."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"We ensure seamless management of Kafka through Confluent, allowing all of our Kafka activities to be handled by a third party."
"The documentation process is fast with the tool."
"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"Good performance and reliability."
"It is very stable. It is a market leader, and it has connectors to many of the legacy systems. It also has enterprise cloud connectors."
"It's a great software application for the middleware use cases to connect the front channels to the back ends in a secure and safer way."
"The most valuable part of the solution is the ease-of-use and ease of deployment."
"We use the solution to develop applications."
"It is very valuable for my work, helping me communicate with other branches, parse data, and change data formats to respond to the front channels with the correct format."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten…On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy, I rate the initial setup a nine."
"The most valuable feature is the integration."
 

Cons

"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"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."
"The pricing model should include the ability to pick features and be charged for them only."
"The formatting aspect within the page can be improved and more powerful."
"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"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."
"The technical support's turnaround time is an area where TIBCO needs to consider improvements...Getting support from TIBCO on a particular issue takes a lot of turnaround time."
"I'd like to see a new cloud approach in the next release. They need to work on integrations, stability and management issues on their cloud platform."
"The solution’s customer support should be improved."
"The creation of XSDs should be much simpler. They should ensure that what was working in the previous version must also work in the new version of BW six."
"This solution's cloud could be improved. I don't know whether it was because we didn't have the internal expertise or if it was the product itself, but since they came later—I think only two or three years into the cloud—after many other iPaaS that had been in the cloud for longer, I feel that maybe they haven't matured in terms of the cloud."
"Though it is a stable product, if we have an issue with the product, it gets difficult, and it gets really difficult to explain the issue to the support team. Also, it takes a long time to get resolved."
"There are not many plugins available to integrate the databases. We have to write it in Java and integrate it. The developers should have more knowledge. These are the three main aspects that they could improve."
"Could be more user friendly in the development area."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"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."
"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."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"I give the cost of the solution a four out of ten."
"TIBCO licensing is yearly and very costly for a company like ours."
"I think BusinessWorks is more expensive compared to other products. We have the ELA, so at least we have some sort of bargain or discount with that. But for a start-up, it's very expensive compared to other ESBs."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"TIBCO BusinessWorks is expensive."
"The license is expensive, and I would rate it one out of ten."
"The product is not cheap."
"It is a bit expensive for medium-sized companies. If you are migrating from the current version to the container-supported version, it is quite expensive. The existing licensing will not work because the product platform itself is different."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
13%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

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 am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team. The lack of easy access to the Confluent support team is also a...
How does TIBCO BusinessWorks compare with Mule Anypoint Platform?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether TIBCO BusinessWorks or Mule Anypoint platform integration and connectivity software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Mule...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO BusinessWorks?
Pricing is for an enterprise application, so the company pays for it with a company license. Everything comes packaged with the license.
What needs improvement with TIBCO BusinessWorks?
The creation of XSDs should be much simpler. They should ensure that what was working in the previous version must also work in the new version of BW six.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Euler Hermes, QSuper, Scandinavian Airlines
Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. TIBCO BusinessWorks and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.