My main use case for Estuary is to target replacing slow, batch-heavy ETL pipelines with millisecond latency change data capture pipelines for our primary real-time ETL streaming platform for our transactional databases. We use PostgreSQL, and we are using a streaming pipeline Kafka direct with our vector DB, Pinecone, and analytical data warehouse, Snowflake. This allows us to feed fresh transactional data and embeddings correctly into the downstream retrieval-augmented generation RAG, giving us real-time AI agents without writing custom pipeline code or maintaining heavy infrastructure.
Real-time data streaming has transformed our workflows and delivers faster, reliable insights
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
The shift from batch-heavy ETL to real-time change data capture has positively impacted our team and workflows, as we have seen a 45% reduction in cloud data pipeline compute cost by migrating from batch-based jobs to continuous CDC. We have saved around five to six weeks of pipeline deployment time for our data engineering and AI teams, which is a great time saver for us. We have seen sub-100ms latency on data availability for our live interface models compared to the legacy hourly batches which used to run earlier, with ultra-low latency that is scalable and no latency delays we have seen so far.
Estuary has positively impacted our organization as we have seen the infrastructure and licensing costs reduced by at least 68 to 72%. The pay-as-you-go billing model has saved us a lot of time, as the engineering teams are not spending weeks writing and maintaining the ETL integration for real-time vector embeddings, which has saved the engineering teams at least 300 hours per year due to the automation it provides.
The changes brought by Estuary have greatly affected my team's productivity and morale, improving our overall project delivery velocity by 28% and decreasing project delivery timelines by 18 to 20%, demonstrating the business impact it has made.
What is most valuable?
Regarding the best features Estuary offers in my experience, I love that it uses ingesting streaming data via Change Data Capture, which is ideal for our workloads. I also love that it automatically infers and adapts to the schema updates on our source DB without breaking down the downstream consumer or vector indexes. Another great feature is the flexible developer controls, such as CLI commands, SQL commands, live script, and support for Python derivation for transformations. It enforces strict exact processing guarantees and ensures that sensitive data is safe and not leaving our cloud boundary during transit.
Regarding Estuary's AI capabilities, the governance and security of the AI agents and workflows are really strong, making sure that sensitive data remains within the system, with great encryption measures in place to ensure that no bad actor can access it and that the data stays safe within the organization.
Estuary has definitely met my expectations regarding the accuracy and reliability of output, delivering great results while saving a lot of time, and the output is clear and concise.
Estuary integrates really well with the other AWS services we are using, whether it's our databases or internal repositories, connecting easily without any issues in integration.
What needs improvement?
While I feel Estuary is doing the job very well, if I had to suggest an improvement, I would want to see more detailed dashboards around the pipeline metric visualization in the web console, which is the only enhancement I can think of.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Estuary for our primary real-time ETL streaming platform for our transactional databases for more than ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Estuary is definitely a stable solution, as we have been using it for more than two years without experiencing any stability issues in any of our environments.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Estuary is definitely a scalable solution; we have over one million users, and it can handle heavy loads, databases, and pipelines efficiently.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support remains one of my favorite aspects of Estuary; when we faced a problem last month regarding the setup of one of our devices, the Estuary team resolved that query within 45 minutes of raising the concern, which is exceptional. I would rate the customer support a ten on a scale of one to ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use a different solution prior to Estuary.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment of Estuary in my environment is really easy, with no problems at all; the team helped us to maintain and create a proper deployment into our existing workflows, which integrated easily with our system and the pipelines using MCP connectors. I found the configuration process easy, as we were able to configure the solution within three days of purchase, resulting in a great ROI so far.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a 45% reduction in cloud data pipeline compute cost by migrating from batch-based jobs to continuous CDC. We have saved around five to six weeks of pipeline deployment time for our data engineering and AI teams. Infrastructure and licensing costs have been reduced by at least 68 to 72%. The engineering teams have saved at least 300 hours per year due to the automation provided. Our overall project delivery velocity has improved by 28% and project delivery timelines have decreased by 18 to 20%.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The procurement process was really easy, with no problems at all. The metering and billing experience is the best thing we have seen, as we opted for the pay-as-you-go model, which is saving us a lot of money and time.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
I rate Estuary a five on a scale of one to five based on the experience we have had, the ROIs that were delivered, and the features it contains, which justifies my rating. My advice to others looking into using Estuary is that anyone seeking a solution that can automate their pipelines should definitely consider Estuary. I give this product an overall rating of ten.
