Simplifying Real-time Data Ingestion: What are your go-to tools for beginner-friendly setups?

Hey everyone! I'm diving into real-time data ingestion for a personal project and frankly, the options feel a bit overwhelming. I want to process a continuous stream of events from a web application and display them on a dashboard with minimal latency. I'm trying to avoid overly complex configurations given I'm still learning. What tools or combinations do you find most approachable for someone relatively new to real-time pipelines but looking for something beyond just polling an API every few seconds? I'm curious about practical experiences with things like managed services or simpler open-source solutions that don't require deep Kafka or Flink expertise out of the gate. Any advice on keeping the DevOps overhead low would also be super helpful!