Apache Kafka is an open-source stream processing platform developed by the Apache Software Foundation written in Scala and Java. The Kafka event streaming platform is used by thousands of companies for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications.
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Whatfix
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Whatfix is advancing the "userization" of application technology, by empowering companies to maximize the ROI of digital investments across the application lifecycle. Powered by GenAI, Whatfix’s product suite includes a digital adoption platform, simulated application environments for hands-on training, and no-code application analytics. Whatfix enables organizations to drive user productivity, ensure process compliance, and improve user experience of internal and customer-facing…
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Pricing
Apache Kafka
Whatfix
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache Kafka
Whatfix
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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All Pricing models are customized and tailor-made according to the customer's requirement.
Apache Kafka is well-suited for most data-streaming use cases. Amazon Kinesis and Azure EventHubs, unless you have a specific use case where using those cloud PaAS for your data lakes, once set up well, Apache Kafka will take care of everything else in the background. Azure EventHubs, is good for cross-cloud use cases, and Amazon Kinesis - I have no real-world experience. But I believe it is the same.
Currently, we are only using Whatfix with Salesforce but are in the process of implementing on other systems. It is an excellent tool to organize and provide in-app access to training materials already created. It excels at providing guidance about tasks users don't complete often and, therefore, forget what they were trained about the process. The only sort of system it might not work well is one that provides its own robust in-app assistance. More than one type of tip icon being displayed, for instance, could be confusing.
Really easy to configure. I've used other message brokers such as RabbitMQ and compared to them, Kafka's configurations are very easy to understand and tweak.
Very scalable: easily configured to run on multiple nodes allowing for ease of parallelism (assuming your queues/topics don't have to be consumed in the exact same order the messages were delivered)
Not exactly a feature, but I trust Kafka will be around for at least another decade because active development has continued to be strong and there's a lot of financial backing from Confluent and LinkedIn, and probably many other companies who are using it (which, anecdotally, is many).
Sometimes it becomes difficult to monitor our Kafka deployments. We've been able to overcome it largely using AWS MSK, a managed service for Apache Kafka, but a separate monitoring dashboard would have been great.
Simplify the process for local deployment of Kafka and provide a user interface to get visibility into the different topics and the messages being processed.
Learning curve around creation of broker and topics could be simplified
The possibility to select content/widgets at the time for "push to production" (some we would like to p2p for one single content, that is not possible at the moment).
I wish the filters in the dashboard would stay when you choose a content, currently you have to filter again and again.
In the analytics area, I would like the system to remember this for a certain time window after selecting the start date.
[We feel like] even though Whatfix has its flaws, we are impressed by the speed of development [and] their openness about their future improvements, [but] most important their proactive customer service and customer success team. Whatfix acts more like a partner than a supplier of a 3rd party tool, and we welcome that experience.
Apache Kafka is highly recommended to develop loosely coupled, real-time processing applications. Also, Apache Kafka provides property based configuration. Producer, Consumer and broker contain their own separate property file
While they've made a lot of improvements in the last year, there are still challenges with walkthroughs and how beacons can be created. They are aware of these limitations and are actively soliciting customer feedback to help them remedy these shortcomings.
Support for Apache Kafka (if willing to pay) is available from Confluent that includes the same time that created Kafka at Linkedin so they know this software in and out. Moreover, Apache Kafka is well known and best practices documents and deployment scenarios are easily available for download. For example, from eBay, Linkedin, Uber, and NYTimes.
Whatfix is THE best vendor I've ever worked with when it comes to supporting their customers. The support team is friendly, helpful and always willing to listen to your suggestions and ideas. This also applies to the Engineering team who I've spent several hours on calls with debugging a few of the more challenging scenarios we have in place. Nothing is ever too much trouble for Whatfix and they are truly best-in-class when it comes to their support model.
While helpful, the feedback from our employee was, that [they felt] the training was very high-level - sometimes confusing. It would be great to have some kind of sandbox environment for new users to train certain scenarios.
Although Whatfix make the process relatively straightforward (they will provide Group Policy Scripts to install a Google Chrome extension specific to your organisation) its important to ensure your network deployment teams (if you have more than one) understand their role and what they need to do to test deployment once they undertaken the work.
I used other messaging/queue solutions that are a lot more basic than Confluent Kafka, as well as another solution that is no longer in the market called Xively, which was bought and "buried" by Google. In comparison, these solutions offer way fewer functionalities and respond to other needs.
There is no comparison - Whatfix is the clear winner with us from the very beginning. As Whatfix continues to grow and innovate their product, engage with it's customers on a level beyond any I have every seen. They work as Partners with us, their teams from bottom to top are incredible - Customer Service, Collaboration Teams, Innovation, Sales, Success Mangers and everyone I missed are incredible. One team in particular I want to call out for there outstanding service, care and innovation to help us launch one of our systems is the Professional Services Team. Ganish, Joel, and everyone else who has been on our calls and worked behind the scenes to hit our incredible tight deadline in August - KUDOs for a job well done, You ROCK, THANK YOU words cannot describe how great you guys have been with us on this project, but on all of them. Whatfix's team definitely understands, the customer is first, they align with our values and we will continue to grow with them
Positive: Get a quick and reliable pub/sub model implemented - data across components flows easily.
Positive: it's scalable so we can develop small and scale for real-world scenarios
Negative: it's easy to get into a confusing situation if you are not experienced yet or something strange has happened (rare, but it does). Troubleshooting such situations can take time and effort.
Reduced Training Costs: By cutting traditional training time by 40%, Whatfix has saved significant resources while increasing learning efficiency.
Improved User Productivity: Faster onboarding and fewer errors have led to a 25% improvement in user performance metrics, directly contributing to operational efficiency.
Decreased Support Requests: Self-service guidance has reduced support tickets by 30%, freeing up teams to focus on strategic initiatives and cutting support costs.
