We compared Confluent and Amazon Kinesis based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Based on user reviews, Confluent is praised for its efficient handling of vast amounts of data, seamless integration with various systems, and strong customer support. In contrast, Amazon Kinesis is commended for its real-time data processing capabilities, flexibility in integration with other AWS services, and user-friendly pricing and licensing. Confluent users highlight the need for improved UI and setup simplification, while Amazon Kinesis users suggest better documentation, UI enhancements, and scalability improvements. Ultimately, both platforms have received positive ROI feedback, with users experiencing returns on their investments.
Features: Confluent's valuable features include efficient handling of vast amounts of data, seamless integration with external systems, and comprehensive monitoring and management capabilities. Amazon Kinesis, on the other hand, offers efficient real-time processing of high data volumes, flexible data streaming and processing options, easy integration with AWS services, and availability of various tools and APIs.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Confluent's product has mixed sentiments from users, with some finding it manageable but others finding it complex. In contrast, users have positive feedback about the minimal and straightforward setup cost of Amazon Kinesis product., Confluent's product has received positive feedback for its strong return on investment. On the other hand, Amazon Kinesis offers significant ROI through cost savings, improved data processing efficiency, real-time analytics capabilities, scalability, and elasticity.
Room for Improvement: Confluent can improve its user interface and setup process, as well as provide better documentation. On the other hand, Amazon Kinesis needs enhancements in documentation, user interface, scalability, integrations, error handling, pricing, and customer support.
Deployment and customer support: User feedback on Confluent's tech solution indicates varying durations for deployment, setup, and implementation phases. In contrast, user feedback on Amazon Kinesis shows different timeframes for deployment and setup, emphasizing the need to consider them together or separately., Confluent's customer service is highly regarded for prompt and efficient support, while Amazon Kinesis is praised for outstanding assistance and representatives going above and beyond to address issues.
The summary above is based on 18 interviews we conducted recently with Confluent and Amazon Kinesis users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The solution's technical support is flawless."
"Everything is hosted and simple."
"Amazon Kinesis also provides us with plenty of flexibility."
"I have worked in companies that build tools in-house. They face scaling challenges."
"The solution works well in rather sizable environments."
"Setting Amazon Kinesis up is quick and easy; it only takes a few minutes to configure the necessary settings and start using it."
"What turns out to be most valuable is its integration with Lambda functions because you can process the data as it comes in. As soon as data comes, you'll fire a Lambda function to process a trench of data."
"The scalability is pretty good."
"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."
"We mostly use the solution's message queues and event-driven architecture."
"The client APIs are the most valuable feature."
"It is also good for knowledge base management."
"I would rate the scalability of the solution at eight out of ten. We have 20 people who use Confluent in our organization now, and we hope to increase usage in the future."
"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided. They're leading the market in this category."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"Amazon Kinesis should improve its limits."
"If there were better documentation on optimal sharding strategies then it would be helpful."
"Something else to mention is that we use Kinesis with Lambda a lot and the fact that you can only connect one Stream to one Lambda, I find is a limiting factor. I would definitely recommend to remove that constraint."
"Kinesis is good for Amazon Cloud but not as suitable for other cloud vendors."
"We were charged high costs for the solution’s enhanced fan-out feature."
"Lacks first in, first out queuing."
"AI processing or cleaning up data would be nice since I don't think it is a feature in Amazon Kinesis right now."
"One area for improvement in the solution is the file size limitation of 10 Mb. My company works with files with a larger file size. The batch size and throughput also need improvement in Amazon Kinesis."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"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."
"It could have more integration with different platforms."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"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."
"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
Amazon Kinesis is ranked 1st in Streaming Analytics with 24 reviews while Confluent is ranked 4th in Streaming Analytics with 21 reviews. Amazon Kinesis is rated 8.0, while Confluent is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon Kinesis writes "Used for media streaming and live-streaming data". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Confluent writes "Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming ". Amazon Kinesis is most compared with Azure Stream Analytics, Amazon MSK, Apache Flink, Google Cloud Dataflow and Apache Spark Streaming, whereas Confluent is most compared with Amazon MSK, Databricks, AWS Glue, Oracle GoldenGate and Fivetran. See our Amazon Kinesis vs. Confluent report.
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