Azure Event Grid Alternatives: Comparing Hookdeck, Amazon EventBridge, Google Eventarc, and Confluent Kafka

Azure Event Grid is an event distribution tool that allows connecting external and Azure data sources with external and Azure data consumers, enabling the building of event-driven architectures. However, it lacks complex in-flight processing and has limited data storage, requiring additional tools for these features. Hookdeck is a comprehensive event gateway solution that ingests events over HTTP, offers complex in-flight processing, and can deliver to any HTTP destination. Amazon EventBridge is a point-to-point event gateway with simple in-flight processing but more complex integrations. Google Eventarc integrates mainly with other Google services and lacks direct integrations with external targets. Confluent Kafka is a powerful but complex platform that requires up-front planning and ongoing maintenance, offering rich ecosystem integrations and SQL/Java processing capabilities. When choosing an event gateway, consider the setup time, compatibility with producers and consumers, feature set, observability, failure handling, and recovery mechanisms.