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Elastic Search vs IBM Cloud Pak for Integration comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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

Elastic Search
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (2nd)
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration
Ranking in Cloud Data Integration
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
API Management (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Data Integration category, the mindshare of Elastic Search is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Integration is 1.4%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Search1.6%
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration1.4%
Other97.0%
Cloud Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Anurag Pal - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Search and aggregations have transformed how I manage and visualize complex real estate data
Elastic Search consumes lots of memory. You have to provide the heap size a lot if you want the best out of it. The major problem is when a company wants to use Elastic Search but it is at a startup stage. At a startup stage, there is a lot of funds to consider. However, their use case is that they have to use a pretty significant amount of data. For that, it is very expensive. For example, if you take OLTP-based databases in the current scenario, such as ClickHouse or Iceberg, you can do it on 4GB RAM also. Elastic Search is for analytical records. You have to do the analytics on it. According to me, as far as I have seen, people will start moving from Elastic Search sooner or later. Why? Because it is expensive. Another thing is that there is an open source available for that, such as ClickHouse. Around 2014 and 2012, there was only one competitor at that time, which was Solr. But now, not only is Solr there, but you can take ClickHouse and you have Iceberg also. How are we going to compete with them? There is also a fork of Elastic Search that is OpenSearch. As far as I have seen in lots of articles I am reading, users are using it as the ELK stack for logs and analyzing logs. That is not the exact use case. It can do more than that if used correctly. But as it involves lots of cost, people are shifting from Elastic Search to other sources. When I am talking about pricing, it is not only the server pricing. It is the amount of memory it is using. The pricing is basically the heap Java, which is taking memory. That is the major problem happening here. If we have to run an MVP, a client comes to me and says, "Anurag, we need to do a proof of concept. Can we do it if I can pay a 4GB or 16GB expense?" How can I suggest to them that a minimum of 16GB is needed for Elastic Search so that your proof of concept will be proved? In that case, what I have to suggest from the beginning is to go with Cassandra or at the initial stage, go with PostgreSQL. The problem is the memory it is taking. That is the only thing.
Igor Khalitov - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner/Full Stack Software Engineer at Maraphonic, Inc.
Manages APIs and integrates microservices with redirection feature
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration includes monitoring capabilities to track the performance and health of your integrations. You can quickly roll back to a previous version if an issue arises. Additionally, it supports incremental deployments, allowing you to shift traffic to a new version of an API gradually. For example, you can start by directing 10% of traffic to the new version while the rest continue using the legacy version. If everything works as expected, you can gradually increase the traffic to the new version over time. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration has a client base that includes numerous organizations using AI and machine learning technologies. We leverage an open-source machine learning framework and integrate it with Kafka to help create and manage various products and data retrieval processes. For companies with private data, the framework first retrieves relevant data from a GitHub database, which is then combined with the final request before being sent to a language model like GPT. This ensures that the language model uses your specific data to generate responses. Kafka plays a key role by streaming real-time data from file systems and databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL. This data is published to Kafka topics, then vectorized and used with artificial intelligence to enhance the overall process. It's like an old-fashioned approach. The best way is to redesign it with products such as Kafka. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like how it allows us to connect to Kafka and get this data in a document format very easily, and Elasticsearch is very fast when you do text-based searches of documents."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The ability to aggregate log and machine data into a searchable index reduces time to identify and isolate issues for an application."
"The best feature of Elastic Search that I appreciate is its monitoring capability."
"We had many reasons to implement Elasticsearch for search term solutions. Elasticsearch products provide enterprise landscape support for different areas of the company."
"There are a lot of good things about this solution. First, it is an extremely fast search. We have quite an extensive number of logs, and we can search through billions of documents in just a few minutes, and get the results we're looking for."
"Aggregation is faster than querying directly from a database, like Postgres or Vertica, and it's much faster if I want to do aggregation, which allows me to store logs and find anomalies effectively."
"A nonstructured database that can manage large amounts of nonstructured data."
"Cloud Pak for Integration is definitely scalable. That is the most important criteria."
"It is a stable solution."
"Redirection is a key feature. It helps in managing multiple microservices by centralizing control and access."
"The most valuable aspect of the Cloud Pak, in general, is the flexibility that you have to use the product."
"The most preferable aspect would be the elimination of the command, which was a significant improvement. In the past, it was a challenge, but now we can proceed smoothly with the implementation of our policies and everything is managed through JCP. It's still among the positive aspects, and it's a valuable feature."
"Cloud Pak for Integration is definitely scalable; that is the most important criteria."
"In general, the solution works very, very well."
 

Cons

"We'd like more user-friendly integrations."
"We see the need for some improvements with Elasticsearch. We would like the Elasticsearch package to include training lessons for our staff."
"There is another solution I'm testing which has a 500 record limit when you do a search on Elastic Enterprise Search."
"I would like to see more open source tools and testing as well as a signature analysis in the solution."
"While integrating with tools like agents for ingesting data from sources like firewalls is valuable, I believe prioritizing improvements to the core product would be more beneficial."
"We had initially planned to expand use of ELK because of its cheap price and the services that are included, but given the difficulty with implementation we've decided to go with Nagios instead."
"I found an issue with Elasticsearch in terms of aggregation. There is a maximum of 10,000 entries, so the limitation means that if I wanted to analyze certain IP addresses more than 10,000 times, I wouldn't be able to dump or print that information."
"Elasticsearch could improve by honoring Unix environmental variables and not relying only on those provided by Java (e.g. installing plugins over the Unix http proxy)."
"Setting up Cloud Pak for Integration is relatively complex. It's not as easy because it has not yet been fully integrated."
"Setting up Cloud Pak for Integration is relatively complex. It's not as easy because it has not yet been fully integrated. You still have some products that are still not containerized, so you still have to run them on a dedicated VM."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"What needs to be improved is the restriction that they have on the product."
"The pricing can be improved."
"Enterprise bots are needed to balance products like Kafka and Confluent."
"Its queuing and messaging features need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It can be expensive."
"We are using the Community Edition because Elasticsearch's licensing model is not flexible or suitable for us. They ask for an annual subscription. We also got the development consultancy from Elasticsearch for 60 days or something like that, but they were just trying to do the same trick. That's why we didn't purchase it. We are just using the Community Edition."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
"The solution is less expensive than Stackdriver and Grafana."
"The tool is not expensive. Its licensing costs are yearly."
"The solution is free."
"This is a free, open source software (FOSS) tool, which means no cost on the front-end. There are no free lunches in this world though. Technical skill to implement and support are costly on the back-end with ELK, whether you train/hire internally or go for premium services from Elastic."
"We are paying $1,500 a month to use the solution. If you want to have endpoint protection you need to pay more."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution's pricing model is very flexible."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise46
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
On the subject of pricing, Elastic Search is very cost-efficient. You can host it on-premises, which would incur zero cost, or take it as a SaaS-based service, where the expenses remain minimal.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
From the UI point of view, we are using most probably Kibana, and I think they can do much better than that. That is something they can fine-tune a little bit, and then it will definitely be a good...
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
Enterprise bots are needed to balance products like Kafka and Confluent.
What is your primary use case for IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
It manages APIs and integrates microservices at the enterprise level. It offers a range of capabilities for handling APIs, microservices, and various integration needs. The platform supports thousa...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Cloud Pak for Integration?
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration includes monitoring capabilities to track the performance and health of your integrations. You can quickly roll back to a previous version if an issue arises. Addition...
 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
CVS Health Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Search vs. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.