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Confluent vs Zapier 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)
Zapier
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (23rd), Cloud Data Integration (14th), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (19th), AI Software Development (18th)
 

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.
MI
Go High Level Manager at Virtual Worker Now
Automation expertise grows and enhances global collaboration
The most valuable aspect is the ability to integrate with over 20,000 applications, which is a superior feature compared to Make.com that has limited applications access. I use multi-step automation workflows in my tasks, which increases productivity and efficiency. The features such as if-else conditions allow for different branches in automation, making the automation more productive. I utilized conditional logic, text parsing, and formatting. My experience with these advanced features has been excellent. For instance, I once pushed data from Zapier to GoHighLevel while checking the date, and based on that date, I created automation in GoHighLevel that involved various branches, effectively creating a loop. Remote access to Zapier's automated workflows and cloud integration is beneficial. I use cloud services such as Google Drive and Dropbox within Zapier. The remote capabilities are advantageous, allowing us to provide services from Pakistan for businesses based in the USA, reducing company expenses when hiring employees from the USA. The ability to work remotely globally through Zapier is a significant opportunity.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The biggest benefit of Confluent as a tool is that it is a distributed platform that provides more durability and stability."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"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."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"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."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent, and the other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."
"The connection between Facebook lead forms and MailChimp integrations is the most valuable feature."
"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
"The main thing I appreciate about Zapier is that it has maximum availability of apps, with most tools being available compared to different solutions."
"The ability to connect web applications to trigger actions in another app after having enriched, formatted, delayed, grouped, and filtered is really valuable for many businesses."
"Zapier, combined with MailParser, is an essential element of our back-end operations."
"Zapier is user friendly and makes it easy to integrate different tools. It has a drag and drop functionality which makes it easy to connect environments."
"The most valuable aspect is the ability to integrate with over 20,000 applications, which is a superior feature compared to Make.com that has limited applications access."
"Zapier’s most valuable feature is its ability to interconnect applications or devices."
 

Cons

"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."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"It would be great if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"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 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."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."
"The solution does not work properly when we apply filters and we get errors."
"It could support various languages along with Python."
"I think the history of "zaps" could be improved."
"The Google Analytics integrations (especially the Facebook Lead Forms to Google Analytics) HubSpot, that leads to Android phone integration"
"Zapier could improve on some Google Sheets features. For example, having the Zaps not break down when one row has been moved, but the header has stayed the same."
"Some recent changes to the solution have made it bulky and not as intuitive to use as it previously was."
"The user interface for Zapier could be improved. It also takes some time to sync the data between different environments."
"The pricing could be a little cheaper."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"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."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"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."
"There is a free plan that is, of course, limited. However, it allows you to understand and check true scenarios for a while."
"It's very affordable."
"Zapier's price is good."
"It's very straightforward licensing. There's only one cost you have to pay, and if you want a relevant pricing plan, I think you have two or three different models or packages which include the number of notifications or Zaps, as they call it, that you can program."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The least expensive plan is $24 a month, and you can go all the way to $800 a month if you're a huge company using many tasks."
"Zapier is a paid service. Its license renews monthly, and Zapier will downgrade your subscription to the free version when your credit card doesn't have funds. That significantly impacts your service because everything halts completely. Zapier doesn't have any hidden costs."
"Per task, there is a monthly plan involving 15 euros...Also, in different forms, they just give you the ability to use different features. They charge 18.58 euros for the first standard plan, which includes 750 tasks. So, it is about 25 cents per task."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
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 Business32
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise7
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zapier?
The pricing is in accordance with market standards and even lower in some cases. The license setup cost is reasonable.
What needs improvement with Zapier?
Zapier can be improved by having more complex running scenarios, such as running code and more custom modules, and maybe multi-router cases which will make the workflows even tighter and more compl...
What is your primary use case for Zapier?
My main use case for Zapier is that it acts as a no-code automation platform which helps us in automating business platforms and business process automation. It is a tool that we were using prior t...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
BuzzFeed, Groupon, Spotify, Columbia University, FOX
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