Our main use case for Redpanda is to send a large volume of messages and consume those messages, essentially processing them.
Redpanda is renowned for handling very high throughput. Redpanda, or Kafka, is able to process billions of messages.
External reviews
24 reviews
from
and
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Stream processing has become faster and configuration time is reduced for high message volumes
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Instead of using raw Kafka, Redpanda helps us manage Kafka at a production level, and it has a nice user interface so we can interact with any pending messages and processed messages.
Redpanda is developer-friendly, and we need to do much less configuration because Redpanda provides out-of-the-box configuration for us. It is not only a nice UI, but it also requires less configuration compared to a raw Kafka server. Redpanda is built on top of Kafka; their main architecture is Kafka only.
It has impacted us in a way that we need to do very little configuration, so we can quickly deploy Redpanda in stage, development, or production environments. We spend less time managing the raw Kafka server compared to Redpanda; Redpanda is less maintainable.
Using Redpanda, we do not need a separate team that specifically manages Kafka, so we have fewer employees needed, possibly one or two less employees, and time is also saved.
What needs improvement?
Redpanda can be improved by providing more local meetups or online meetups to increase awareness, as very few people know about it.
I think Redpanda is overall very good for us, and I am uncertain whether Redpanda can scale to very large companies as we are a medium-sized startup. However, if we consider an example of a very large company like Uber, I am not sure whether it would fit there.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working in my current field for more than 3.5 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Redpanda is very stable. As per our use case, it is very good.
How are customer service and support?
Overall, the customer service was very good, and the AWS team is also supporting us at any point.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Negative
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
From the initial stages, we have been using Redpanda. Kafka server is one alternative, and another alternative is privately hosted Kafka servers on other cloud services.
What about the implementation team?
Our DevOps team has deployed Redpanda and manages it. I do not have any specific configuration or measurements.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Kafka server is one alternative, and another alternative is privately hosted Kafka servers on other cloud services.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend reading the documentation as it is comprehensive, and their user interface is also good. If you are a small startup or a medium-level startup, you can use Redpanda instead of Kafka. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
High-performance message brokering with excellent documentation and an easy setup
What is our primary use case?
I have worked with Redpanda for the past two to three months. Mainly in the tech industry or software industry, there's a huge rise of streaming data.
Redpanda serves as a very reliable and fast message broker, which lets you build applications asynchronously. The major use case is for my project specifically, we're using it for a monitoring system that we're building.
How has it helped my organization?
I haven't worked on enterprise-grade applications. It's a project for academic research for the college.
What is most valuable?
The industry standard for this kind of platform is Kafka. Confluent Kafka has acquired it. Kafka is an open-source platform built by Apache. Confluent is the commercial version of it.
The major improvement of Redpanda over Kafka is firstly, good documentation. Redpanda's documentation is very easily understandable, and they have a lot of examples. In addition to that, most of the setups include using another technology called Docker, which I am very familiar with.
Setting up technologies using Docker is very convenient to me, and Redpanda has provided many templates for that. Redpanda has its own built-in metrics exporter, making it easier to monitor and check performance.
What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++. C++ is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications.
What needs improvement?
Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good. Maybe due to the fact that it's a first prototype and was very recently released. However, from a product perspective, I do not have any problems.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Redpanda for the past two to three months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I am definitely satisfied with the stability provided by Redpanda.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In the free version, it's still working with containers itself. They've provided the template for one and three nodes for horizontal scaling.
For our project, we've set up five containers. The template is ready in the Dockerfile they provided. You just add the existing nodes and give them the respective configurations.
How are customer service and support?
I have not escalated any questions to technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The industry standard for this kind of platform is Kafka. Confluent Kafka has acquired it. Kafka is an open-source platform built by Apache. Confluent is the commercial version of it. I have worked with Kafka, so I pretty much know how it works. I found Redpanda's documentation and setup to be more straightforward.
How was the initial setup?
Once I learned about this platform, I read about it a bit and then I looked at how they set it up on their systems. It's a simple straightforward Dockerfile. If you have Docker installed on your system, you can just spin it up quickly without any issues.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Redpanda is actually a commercial platform, but they do provide free versions as well. I've been working only with the free versions.
What other advice do I have?
Anyone finishing their bachelor's degree in computer science engineering would have had some hands-on experience with Kafka and understand how it works. Shifting from Kafka to Redpanda would be very simple for them.
I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.
Rapid data handling with increased peace of mind and significant cost savings
What is our primary use case?
We handle high volumes of telemetry data and operate under stringent latency requirements, with our data pipeline demanding sub-second response times. Redpanda seamlessly integrates into our data plane, particularly as a message broker system, where performance is absolutely critical. Its low-latency capabilities and robust performance have been essential to meeting our operational demands
How has it helped my organization?
The cost savings have been significant. We were able to eliminate one MSK cluster, and still, the end-to-end lag hasn't been worse. The performance is superb, and the value we are getting for the money we pay is great. Additionally, peace of mind is also a significant benefit due to the high performance and fault tolerance.
What is most valuable?
The whole system itself is valuable. The cost and performance are the primary benefits. Redpanda is extremely fast, which I describe as Kafka on steroids.
What needs improvement?
When it comes to self-hosting, their documentation could be improved. At the time we were onboarded, we had to apply our logic. Updating the documentation and managing the automation file for customer users to self-host would be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Redpanda for two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Redpanda has been highly stable for our workloads. It utilizes the RAFT consensus algorithm, which ensures reliability by maintaining a quorum for data consistency and fault tolerance in cluster formation.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability of Redpanda as very high, around nine out of ten. They support a feature called tiered storage to offload data to keep the systems running efficiently, which provides us with ample capacity.
How are customer service and support?
They are really helpful. During our onboarding, they were very resourceful and knew what they were doing.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used AWS MSK. We switched because MSK was very costly.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Redpanda was straightforward and rated an eight out of ten. The setup involved using an Ansible script to bootstrap the cluster, which took about 10-15 minutes per cluster.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment was handled internally by one person with assistance from the provided Ansible script.
What was our ROI?
Apart from cost savings, the high performance and low latency provide peace of mind and operational efficiency.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Redpanda is very cost-effective and offers competitive pricing compared to other options in the market. While not the lowest, the pricing is reasonable considering the high performance and value it delivers.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We considered Confluent Cloud, but after reviewing our needs, Redpanda seemed like the perfect fit due to its superior performance and cost benefits. Given that, we decided to move forward without a formal evaluation of other options.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise users to consider their in-house technical expertise when deciding the deployment model for Redpanda. If there is a lack of expertise, it is better to opt for the managed service offered by Redpanda.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Takes less resources compared to Kafka and it is based on C++ and is native to the operating system
What is our primary use case?
The main use case is a message stream. Just to process the data with window processing.
How has it helped my organization?
Operationally, it is good.
Two projects use artificial intelligence in combination with Redpanda right now.
What is most valuable?
The best thing is that it takes less resources compared to Kafka. We have a bad experience with Kafka; we need to restart the services because it's built on Java and requires a huge space on servers.
Redpanda is based on C++ and is native to the operating system. Basically, it is memory efficient. We like it.
It's easy to learn to use Redpanda for the first time because it supports the Kafka client as a developer. It supports native Kafka clients.
And from the operations perspective, it's a pretty standard installation. The online community support is also available.
What needs improvement?
The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all.
For example, if I wanted to check how many messages are in a topic, there is a command, but we need to use different tools to get that information. It's not really built into the native tool.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for three years. I use version 25.3.3
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I never experienced any bugs. So far, so good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I tested it with ten-plus nodes, and it's highly scalable.
We are about 55 people, 12 people actively use it, and we use it for six products.
How are customer service and support?
I never needed to contact the customer service and support because it's working as expected.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We opted for Kafka for two reasons.
- One is we used to use Kafka, and we had to restart Kafka every quarter or so due to memory issues.
- Compared to Kafka, Redpanda is stable and resource consumption is also very effective. It takes less resources compared to other tools.
How was the initial setup?
It's very easy. The cluster setup is also very easy in Redpanda compared to others.
What about the implementation team?
NO
What was our ROI?
Yes.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's free. Everybody can use it, only support is paid.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated three: Kafka, Redpanda, and ActiveMQ.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Redpanda to others because it's easy to set up, consumes less resources, and is stable compared to other tools.
Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten because there is room for improvement. So far, it's nothing but a rewrite of Kafka. It needs improvement on some of the command-line tools. And the second thing is it doesn't have a management graphical user interface. That also needs improvement.
Affordable, easy to deploy, and it is easy to find things on the user interface
What is our primary use case?
We use the tool for a simple use case. We use it for data streaming and data normalization. We receive a lot of messages from many different systems. We normalize them and highlight errors. We get 5000 to 6000 messages per minute, so we dump them in the database to handle the load. We use the tool for microservices.
What is most valuable?
The UI is modern. It is simple. We find what we are looking for.
What needs improvement?
The version control mechanism must be improved. Converting messages takes time. There is a version mechanism in the tool. It follows the coding standard, but sometimes, it gets confusing because I have to remove the older version to ensure the new version works fine.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for more than a year. I am using the latest version of the tool.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is pretty stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have around 20 users.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used RabbitMQ before.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is straightforward. The vendor takes care of everything. We just paid for the tool and started using it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Redpanda is cheaper than its competitors. It is cheaper than Vanilla Kafka and Confluent.
What other advice do I have?
We use the libraries in the different programming languages. We use the message format in Avro, convert the data in the format, and pass it on. We have contacted the sales team about the solution. So far, the product fulfills our requirements. We get lots of data. The data flows through Kafka to Redpanda. Then it goes to a database.
If our infrastructure goes down for a week, we will not lose data. It is an advantage of Redpanda. I recommend the product to others. We might choose a different solution if we find something cheaper. We used Redpanda because we did not want to self-host our software. Redpanda is a piece of infrastructure. There is not much of a learning curve.
Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Cost effective, flexible solution for Kafka users
What do you like best about the product?
Redpanda has been a powerful part of our infrastructure, it enables us to have the scalability and reliability that we need while being low touch around administration and maintenance. The Redpanda team has done as excellent job delivering a high quality product, as well as providing excellent support, guidance and continuous product and service improvements. BYOC has provided us the flexibility of running their managed service on our account, which combined with a very efficient Kafka platform, and their tooling and support, means we can focus our time and money on delivering even more value to our customers, while still having the flexibility of an onsite solution.
What do you dislike about the product?
If you're a Confluent or Open Source Kafka user, there will be some differences to adjust to with regards to running it yourself, as the underlying implementation is not the same, but I think overall an improvement for users in terms of management and configuration.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Provides the backbone pipeline for our processing flows and connecting our various pieces of infrastructure together.
Scalability, Usability, Stability - Pick all
What do you like best about the product?
Red Panda is substantlially easier to get up and running than a traditional Kafka queueing solution; while it's also more scalable and performance.
What do you dislike about the product?
So far, nothing really. The team has been extremely helpful, the application was trivial to deploy, and we've had few if any issues.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We need a highly available, highly scalable real-time throughput persistence solution. Red Pandas offers this to us in spades.
Quality software delivered by a quality team
What do you like best about the product?
Redpanda's team and their product have been nothing but a positive experience for our company. Our Redpanda BYOC cluster is on the frontline keeping mission critical systems up and running reliably. Throughout the entire time we have been running the cluster multiple team members have exclaimed how critical and stress relieving it has been to have Redpanda in our stack. Redpanda has simultaneously kept our systems running while also allowing us to speed up development on downstream systems. Alongside this we have had nothing but a positive experience with the Redpanda team. From the original POC and purchasing process all the way through the support relationship Redpanda has felt like they are another team inside our own company.
What do you dislike about the product?
Occassionally, the console ui has some less than great feature implementations however, the team is always quick to fix any issues.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use Redpanda to broker all of our billable events occurring at the company and processing them out to multiple downstream services and analytics stores.
Kafka as it Should be
What do you like best about the product?
Kafka-compatible in an easier to consume, faster and cheaper package. Great company to work with and delivers
What do you dislike about the product?
Redpanda are still adding features but also remaining innovative
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Streaming is at the heart of complex systems and for Fintechs this capability is critical yet also complex to implement, scale and manage.
Redpanda provides the heart of our streaming solutions - and as cloud hosted service removes much of the implementations and operational overhead.
Redpanda have taken the opportunity to learn from the open source project with a simpler and more scalable approach yet with kafka compatibility that support and integration into the wider kafka ecosytem
Redpanda provides the heart of our streaming solutions - and as cloud hosted service removes much of the implementations and operational overhead.
Redpanda have taken the opportunity to learn from the open source project with a simpler and more scalable approach yet with kafka compatibility that support and integration into the wider kafka ecosytem
Game changer.
What do you like best about the product?
Redpanda has revolutionized our use of Kafka, enhancing everything from deployment simplicity to WASM transformations, and significantly boosting speed! After nearly a decade of Kafka in production and numerous outages, Redpanda has proven to be a remarkable replacement—truly a game changer.
Features like WASM transform are essential for harnessing its full potential and replacing outdated custom software that many of us still use today for that aspect.
The cloud version is the icing on the cake. It eliminates excessive billing and alleviates GDPR concerns for Europe, as everything operates on our cloud, under our security, exactly where we want it. The support has been phenomenal too; despite occasional bugs, the team addresses issues incredibly quickly.
Redpanda has fundamentally changed how we work, resolving many persistent issues we faced with Kafka. It's the dawn of a new era.
Features like WASM transform are essential for harnessing its full potential and replacing outdated custom software that many of us still use today for that aspect.
The cloud version is the icing on the cake. It eliminates excessive billing and alleviates GDPR concerns for Europe, as everything operates on our cloud, under our security, exactly where we want it. The support has been phenomenal too; despite occasional bugs, the team addresses issues incredibly quickly.
Redpanda has fundamentally changed how we work, resolving many persistent issues we faced with Kafka. It's the dawn of a new era.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing for now really. Maybe the Kafka client that could be replaced at some point by a dedicated protocol.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Our entire data-pipeline is running via Redpanda. From analytics to event processing.
showing 1 - 10