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PubSub+ Platform vs Starburst Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

PubSub+ Platform
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (8th), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Event Monitoring (12th)
Starburst Enterprise
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of PubSub+ Platform is 3.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Enterprise is 3.2%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PubSub+ Platform3.0%
Starburst Enterprise3.2%
Other93.8%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2714190 - PeerSpot reviewer
freelancer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers a seamless way to decouple applications, providing impressive performance and flexibility
Regarding improving the PubSub+ Platform, I'm not sure about the pricing aspect, but I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka. That's the only concern I can mention; otherwise, it was as impressive as Kafka, better than Kafka based on my experience working on the Solace and Kafka white paper.
KamleshPant - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Architect at USEReady
Connects to any data source from any region and offers unified access
There are no specific projects supported by Starburst regarding AI initiatives or machine learning projects. In the future, if we have all the data available, we can definitely capitalize on AI/ML and LLM capabilities to summarize data and gain insights. That's our future goal, but we haven't reached that point yet. There should be support for REST API data sources to access data from the web. We often have data coming in and communicate with data sources via REST API calls. I don't see that capability in Starburst currently; everything is through JDBC or ODBC. If Starburst could seamlessly access data using REST API capabilities, it would be a game-changer. The self-service data management features, like self-service materialized views, are great, but they can be a bit complex for basic users to understand.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The topic hierarchy is pretty flexible. Once you have the subject defined just about anybody who knows Java can come onboard. The APIs are all there."
"The most useful features has been the WAN optimization and probably the HybridEdge, which requires some third-party adapters or plugins. The idea that we can position Solace as a protocol-agnostic message transport fabric is key to our company having all manners of asynchronous messaging protocols from MQ, Kafka, JMS, etc. I really like the WAN optimization: Send once over a WAN, then distribute locally as many times as there are subscribers."
"When we went to add another installation in our private cloud, it was easy. We received support from Solace and the install was seamless with no issues."
"I rate the PubSub+ Platform a 9 out of 10."
"As of now, the most valuable aspects are the topic-based subscription and the fanout exchange that we are using."
"We've built a lot of products into it and it's been quite easy to feed market data onto the systems and put entitlements and controls around that. That was a big win for us when we were consolidating our platforms down. Trying to have one event bus, one messaging bus, for the whole globe, and consolidate everything over time, has been key for us. We've been able to do that through one API, even if it's across the different languages."
"One of the main reasons for using PubSub+ is that it is a proper event manager that can handle events in a reactive way."
"When it comes to granularity, you can literally do anything regarding how the filtering works."
"It's very scalable, fast performing, and supports many catalogs."
"We have noticed improvements in performance using Starburst Enterprise. It handles complex data, including reading and partitioning files. We can add a new catalog to Starburst Enterprise by providing connection details and service account information. This allows us to integrate with existing tools, such as the Snowflake database, which we use for data protection in our project."
 

Cons

"I would like them to design topic and queue schemas, mapping them to the enterprise data structure."
"It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use."
"The licensing and the cost are the major pitfalls."
"The solution could be improved by enhancing the message pooling size for persistent messages to handle both small and large messages effectively."
"We've pointed out some things with the DMR piece, the event mesh, in edge cases where we could see a problem. Something like 99 percent of users wouldn't ever see this problem, but it has to do with if you get multiple bad clients sending data over a WAN, for example. That could then impact other clients."
"The product should allow third-party agents to be installed. Currently, it is quite proprietary."
"We have requested to be able to get into the payload to do dynamic topic hierarchy building. A current workaround is using the message's header, where the business data can be put into this header and be used for a dynamic topic lookup. I want to see this in action when there are a couple of hundred cases live. E.g., how does it perform? From an administration perspective, is the ease of use there?"
"I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka."
"There should be support for REST API data sources to access data from the web."
"Starburst Enterprise could improve by offering additional features similar to those provided by other SQL query tools. For example, incorporating functionalities like pivot tables would make it more feasible to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of PubSub+ Event Broker is reasonable for the capability it offers. However, when compared to others solutions on the market it is expensive."
"I would rate the product's pricing a ten out of ten."
"We are looking for something that will add value and fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only."
"Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."
"Having a free version is critical for our technology operations use case. This is primarily because our technology operations team is a cost center in our company. They are not profit drivers and having a free version for installation will probably meet our needs. Even for production, it'll support up to a 100,000 messages per second. I don't think in technology operations that we have that many events and alerts from our detection tools. Even if I have 20 or 30 event detection products out there, they're only going to publish the things which are critical or warnings. I don't think we'll ever reach a 100,000 messages per second."
"The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"We have been really happy with the product licensing rates. It has been free for us, up to a 100,000 transactions per second, and all we have to do is pay for support. Making their product available and accessible to us has not been a problem at all."
"I haven't personally dealt with the pricing aspects first-hand, but from what I understand, it largely depends on the specifics of your setup, especially the machines you use on AWS. The cost of using Starburst Enterprise can vary based on the amount of data you're processing and the type of machines you opt for, whether on AWS or another cloud platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
10%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
4%
Retailer
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PubSub+ Event Broker?
I do not know about the pricing of PubSub+ Platform because I did not manage the instance.
What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?
Additional in-line information about certain things on PubSub+ Platform could be more beneficial for new users who are just starting to use this technology. The analytics tools integrated within Pu...
What is your primary use case for PubSub+ Event Broker?
I describe the main use cases for PubSub+ Platform as wanting to use it as a messaging queue pipeline for managing the data stream events in our IoT platform while I was working at an IoT-based com...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Enterprise?
I haven't personally dealt with the pricing aspects first-hand, but from what I understand, it largely depends on the specifics of your setup, especially the machines you use on AWS. The cost of us...
What needs improvement with Starburst Enterprise?
There are no specific projects supported by Starburst regarding AI initiatives or machine learning projects. In the future, if we have all the data available, we can definitely capitalize on AI/ML ...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Enterprise?
We use Starburst with one client who is exploring their ecosystem to remove data silos and enable data access across departments. It's a very big ecosystem, like a finance institute. They are curre...
 

Also Known As

PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet 
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about PubSub+ Platform vs. Starburst Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.