Azure Service Bus vs. Confluent

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Service Bus
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers Azure Service Bus as a reliable cloud messaging as a service (MaaS) and simple hybrid integration solution.N/A
Confluent
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Confluent Cloud is a cloud-native service for Apache Kafka used to connect and process data in real time with a fully managed data streaming platform. Confluent Platform is the self-managed version.
$0
Pricing
Azure Service BusConfluent
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$0
Standard
Starting at ~$385
per month
Enterprise
Starting at ~$1,150
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Service BusConfluent
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsConfluent monthly bills are based upon resource consumption, i.e., you are only charged for the resources you use when you actually use them: Stream: Kafka clusters are billed for eCKUs/CKUs ($/hour), networking ($/GB), and storage ($/GB-hour). Connect: Use of connectors is billed based on throughput ($/GB) and a task base price ($/task/hour). Process: Use of stream processing with Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink is calculated based on CFUs ($/minute). Govern: Use of Stream Governance is billed based on environment ($/hour). Confluent storage and throughput is calculated in binary gigabytes (GB), where 1 GB is 2^30 bytes. This unit of measurement is also known as a gibibyte (GiB). Please also note that all prices are stated in United States Dollars unless specifically stated otherwise. All billing computations are conducted in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Service BusConfluent
Considered Both Products
Azure Service Bus
Chose Azure Service Bus
RabbitMQ is simple and awesome... but so is Azure Service Bus. Both accomplish the same thing but in different environments. If you're building a cloud-native application - especially one that is serverless by design - Azure Service Bus is the only real choice in Azure. It …
Confluent
Chose Confluent
For our use case it was very important that the technology we were working with fit into our Azure architecture, and met our data processing size requirements to stream data within certain SLAs. Confluent more than met our performance requirements and compared to the others …
Chose Confluent
We chose to use the Confluent Platform because they provide enterprise-grade customer service support. Whenever we have trouble setting up or using the service, we can create a ticket for them and it will be resolved pretty fast. Kafka is the open-source software that comes …
Features
Azure Service BusConfluent
Streaming Analytics
Comparison of Streaming Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Azure Service Bus
-
Ratings
Confluent
9.1
Ratings
13% above category average
Real-Time Data Analysis00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Visualization Dashboards00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Data Ingestion from Multiple Data Sources00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Low Latency00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Integrated Development Tools00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Linear Scale-Out00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Data Enrichment00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Service BusConfluent
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

IBM Streams (discontinued)
IBM Streams (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Anypoint Platform
Anypoint Platform
Score 7.8 out of 10
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Anypoint Platform
Anypoint Platform
Score 7.8 out of 10
Spotfire Streaming
Spotfire Streaming
Score 6.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Service BusConfluent
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Service BusConfluent
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need a cloud-based service bus or a simple to use queue/topic/routing/pub-sub service, then Azure Service Bus is a very good choice at a reasonable price and performance. Typically on-premise we'd use RabbitMQ because it "just works", but if you're building a "cloud-first" application, then this is the one to go with. It's especially easy to integrate with if you're already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem.
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If your company needs to build event-driven applications, like in healthcare industry, you need to enhance interoperability, and you are seeking a reliable service with enterprise-grade support, Confluent is the best on the market you can get. Their product works great and they provide very good customer service.
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Pros
  • Acting as a basic queuing service it works very well.
  • One of the best parts is that Azure Service Bus can work over HTTPS which helps in strict firewall situations. There is a performance hit if you choose to use HTTPS.
  • The routing capabilities are quite good when using topics and subscriptions. You can apply filters using a pseudo-SQL-like language though the correlation filters are quick and easy options.
  • Costs are very reasonable at low-ish volumes. If you're processing 10's of millions of messages a month... it may be a different story.
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  • Products work great.
  • Training is available.
  • Customer support is good.
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Cons
  • The SqlFilter could be a little easier to use, but it's not terrible.
  • The performance while using HTTPS for the connection is a little slow compared to direct connections using AMQP ports.
  • There is a size limit to the message - unlike RMQ for instance, Azure Service Bus caps messages to 256kb on the standard tier.
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  • Cloud based Azure platform features for Confluent lacks behind AWS And GCP
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
The support from the Confluent platform is great and satisfying. We have been working with Confluent for more than a year now. They sent out resident architects to help us set up Confluent cluster on our cloud and help us troubleshoot problems we have encountered. Overall, it has been a great experience working with the Confluent Platform.
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Alternatives Considered
RabbitMQ is simple and awesome... but so is Azure Service Bus. Both accomplish the same thing but in different environments. If you're building a cloud-native application - especially one that is serverless by design - Azure Service Bus is the only real choice in Azure. It works well, it's performance, and it's reasonably priced in the Standard tier. From our testing, RMQ is more performant, but it's hard to compare service-based implementations vs RMQ installed on VMs.
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For our use case it was very important that the technology we were working with fit into our Azure architecture, and met our data processing size requirements to stream data within certain SLAs. Confluent more than met our performance requirements and compared to the others scale options and cost to run it was more than financially viable as a platform solution to our global operations.
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Return on Investment
  • Compared to open-source free software like RMQ, Azure Service Bus does have some costs to it. But the cost is reasonable.
  • Also unlike RMQ, Azure Service Bus doesn't require you to stand up any hardware - so it's very easy to use and saves time/money from that perspective.
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  • Confluent replaced Microsoft Event Hubs in our environment and unblocked data platform services rollout globally.
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ScreenShots