8 Best Tableau ETL Tools For 2024

Tableau has helped numerous organizations understand their customer data better through their Visual Analytics platform. Data Visualization is the next step after the customer data present in rudimentary form has been cleaned, organized, transformed, and placed in a Data Warehouse. This is where Tableau ETL Tools will come in handy. Integrating ETL tools with Tableau will allow you to load the analysis-ready data from a large number of sources into Tableau after passing through the ETL pipeline.

Here in this article, you will learn about the Tableau ETL Tools in detail. This article will explore the importance of Tableau ETL Tools integration, factors to keep in mind before you decide on a Tableau ETL Tool, and finally, it zeroes in on the best Tableau ETL Tools you choose from to incorporate in your workflow.  

Introduction to Tableau ETL Tools Integration

Tableau as mentioned before is a Data Visualization platform that allows you to extract relevant actionable insights from the customer data. This allows you to tweak your operations accordingly to ensure you function at optimal efficiency.

ETL Tools helps you centralize your data in a single data system. The data you receive from your customers cannot be directly assessed to extract insights as it exists in several formats taken from multiple sources. This data needs to be transformed into a single format and finally loaded into a repository for easy access. 

It is a well-known fact that the quality of your Analytics process depends on the quality of data you are leveraging. Tableau has come a long way to ensure that the process of gathering data is relatively easier than before, which allows you to bring in more data sources.

More Diverse and dynamic data would translate to more questions popping up, which means the opportunity of sharing more detailed answers to aspects that hadn’t been explored previously. 

ETL for Tableau allows you to join and blend data from disparate database technologies and tables quickly and easily. It thus gives you the competitive edge as it allows you to carry out analysis on the data irrespective of where it resides. ETL Tableau integration facilitates users’ ability to connect, convert, and visualize data in an effortless manner. 

Understanding the Factors to Keep in Mind for Tableau ETL Tools

There are several options available for loading/unifying data in Tableau. These range from built-in Tableau tools/functionalities to user-friendly third-party ETL platforms.

What you would be looking for is the capability of the ETL tool to convert the rudimentary data into a format that is Tableau-friendly.

In this section, you will get a glimpse of a few factors to keep in mind before you decide on an ETL tool to integrate with Tableau for Data Analysis:

• Technical Knowledge Requirement: You need to look for a Tableau ETL tool that allows you to prepare the data simply. An intuitive tool that lets you understand the functioning in a short period is a major factor that should not be ignored. You shouldn’t be incorporating a tool that takes too long to get a hang of, which might hurt business efficiency and revenue in the long run.
• Need for Advanced Capabilities: Pick a Tableau ETL tool that provides essential features like Predictive Modeling, Advanced Mapping, ETL Job Scheduling, and Data Testing. With the advent of technology, a bare-bones Tableau ETL tool wouldn’t suffice your Data Analysis needs in the long run. So you should keep in mind the scale of operations and future capabilities before deciding on the best Tableau ETL tool in the market for you.  
• Steps Required for Data Preparation: You should go for a Tableau ETL tool that gives you relevant options for cleaning and preparing the data. For instance, you can use Tableau Desktop for converting data to Tableau date formats, rename fields, and hide unused columns. For more advanced capabilities you can browse through third-party ETL tools to find a Tableau ETL tool that caters to your needs. 
• Data Source Requirements: ETL tools can help connect to different types of files like CSV, Excel, or databases and applications. Depending on the sources you rely on for gathering data, pick a Tableau ETL tool that fits your needs. 
• Total Cost of Ownership: You need to keep in mind the budget allocated for acquiring a Tableau ETL tool, the essential functionalities you require in that tool, and the time and money it would take to train your employees to use Tableau ETL tools. 

Understanding the Top 4 Tableau ETL Tools

When you have to deal with complex data preparation, you will need to shift your attention to the available third-party best ETL tool for Tableau to give you what you are looking for. There are a over hundred ETL tools available in the market, that make Tableau ETL integration a worthwhile investment in the long term.

Here you can look at four key Tableau ETL tools, that will be doing the rounds this year. These Tableau ETL Tools are:

1. Hevo Data
2. Tableau Prep
3. Altair Monarch
4. Adverity
5. Microsoft Power Query
6. Matillion
7. Alteryx
8. KNIME

1. Hevo Data

A fully managed No-code Data Pipeline platform like Hevo helps you integrate and load data from 150+ different sources to a destination of your choice in real-time in an effortless manner.

Hevo with its minimal learning curve can be set up in just a few minutes allowing the users to load data without having to compromise performance. Its strong integration with umpteenth sources provides users with the flexibility to bring in data of different kinds, in a smooth fashion without having to code a single line. 

Some of the cool features of Hevo

• Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
• Schema Management: Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects the schema of incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
• Live Monitoring: Hevo allows you to monitor the data flow so you can check where your data is at a particular point in time.

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Hevo Data Pricing

The different pricing models available are as follows:

• Free: This plan is offered free of cost.
• Starter: This plan starts from $249/user/month.
• Business: This plan is customizable. You can get a quote from them to get an affordable price that fits your budget.

You can learn more about Hevo Data’s pricing models here.

2. Tableau Prep

A Data Analyst spends nearly 80% of the time cleaning and preparing the data, and only 20% of the time is given to actual data analysis. Therefore to reduce the time it took to actually clean and prepare the data, Tableau came up with the tool: Tableau Prep.

Tableau Prep has several functionalities that let you visualize and examine your data.

Features

• Data Extraction and Connection.
• Identification of Issues and Errors.
• Understanding your Customer Data (Number of distinct values, data types of fields, number of records, etc).
• Data Enhancement.
• Modification of Data.
• Output Analysis-Ready Data.

This tool houses intuitive drag-and-drop and drop-down menus to visualize your ETL process in Tableau. Tableau Prep allows you to extract data from various data sources:

• MySQL
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• Amazon Aurora
• Microsoft SQL Server, to name a few.  

Tableau Prep Pricing

The pricing for Tableau Prep is divided into 3 categories:

• Individuals: A single paid plan called Tableau Creator costs $70/user/month billed annually.
• Teams and Organizations: There are 3 sub-plans in place to cater to your needs.
  • Tableau Creator: $70/user/month billed annually.
  • Tableau Explorer: $35/user/month billed annually.
  • Tableau Viewer: $12/user/month billed annually.
• Embedded Analytics: This plan is customizable.

3. Altair Monarch

Altair Monarch is a key ETL tool that allows you to extract data from PDFs, text files, web pages, and reports. Altair automates Machine Learning and data transformation processes and tasks to extract value from your customer data.

With Altair, you can operationalize your pipeline performance in real-time and speed up the process of data preparation and transformation to obtain cleaned datasets within seconds.

Key features of Altair

• Altair automates time-consuming tasks with the help of repeatable workflows that can be operated without any coding knowledge.
• With Altair, you can combine, clean and export data to tools like Tableau which makes it a key Tableau ETL tool.
• Altair allows you to focus on outliers without losing sight of the bigger picture.
• It also allows users to build their own real-time data monitoring pipelines to track the metrics relevant to their enterprise.
• It further allows you to successfully analyze the impact of alternative responses on future operational performance. 

Altair allows you to export to or update the data sources present in Tableau Server.

You can do this by providing the necessary information in the sub-tab Server > Tableau Server of the Application Default Settings dialog.

A necessary prerequisite for exporting data to Tableau Server would be the installation of the Tableau TABCMD program. This is a command-line utility that allows users to automate administrative tasks on the Tableau Server site.

With over 80 pre-built data preparation functions, Altair makes the data preparation tasks completely error-free and ensures that more time is spent on data analysis using BI tools like Tableau.

This makes Altair a popular choice for an effective Tableau ETL tool. 

Altair Monarch Pricing

Altair Monarch costs $1995/user/year for anyone looking for self-service data preparation software.

4. Adverity

Adverity is meant for data-driven marketers. It is a Marketing Analytics platform that allows them to make better decisions and significantly improve performance. It allows enterprises to manage and connect their data sources in a single platform.

Features of Adverity

• It offers key Marketing operation features like Data Collection, ROI Tracking, Customer Insights, and Multi-User Access.
• It provides the key functionalities of transformation, extraction, loading, and automation.
• The Adverity platform ensures your enterprise keeps up with the latest developments with high scalability.
• It allows the users to build customized dashboards that come with Campaign Insights, Multichannel Tracking, and Brand Optimization to help you get the best out of your data in terms of actionable insights.

Adverity’s data collection capabilities coupled with a powerful transformation engine allow Tableau users to analyze the customer data on a granular level like never before at a much greater speed.

This integration is highly beneficial as it allows the discovery of actionable insights from high-end data discovery and data visualization capabilities. This integration aims to provide a custom analytics and marketing reporting solution to address the e-commerce and Marketing specific business needs and challenges.

Adverity Pricing

The pricing plans for Adverity are customizable. All you need to do is ask them for a quote and get a pricing plan to fit your budget. 

5. Microsoft Power Query

Microsoft’s range of productivity tools smoothly interacts with Power Query, a potent data preparation tool that is accessible in Excel and Power BI. Strong data transformation capabilities, a user-friendly interface for Excel users, and native interaction with Power BI for data visualization are some of its advantages. This is an obvious ETL option that you should at least take into consideration in any review if Microsoft is already being used in your company.

Some Key features of Microsoft Power Query

Links to a wide variety of data sources

Power Query allows you to import and work with data from several locations in a single environment by connecting to hundreds of data sources, such as files, databases, online services, and cloud storage systems.

An abundant transformation library

You can do several data cleansing and modification activities, including filtering, sorting, removing duplicates, splitting columns, merging tables, and more, using its extensive library of built-in transformations.

Reusable queries

Reusable queries are easy to make and save, which will expedite your work and provide consistency throughout workbooks and projects.

Smooth integration

The fundamental features of Power Query are compatible with a number of Microsoft applications, so you can use your transformations across platforms and have a consistent experience.

Microsoft Power Query Pricing

There is a free version and a premium version of Power Query with a free trial available. The paid version begins at $10 per month.

6. Matillion

The Data Productivity Cloud, a cloud-native ETL platform by Matillion, provides a large number of data sources and destinations. Its connectivity with well-known cloud data warehouses like Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Snowflake, together with its scalability and ease of use, make it stand out. Matillion is a good option for businesses with a variety of data demands because of its strong transformation capabilities and support for intricate data workflows. Compared to Tableau Prep, it requires a little more technical development and has a cost structure depending on environment runtimes. 

Some Key features of Matillion

• Browser interface with drag-and-drop functionality. Create complex, potent ETL/ELT tasks.

• Push-down ELT technology processes complicated joins over millions of rows in seconds by using the power of your data warehouse.

• As you construct your ETL/ELT tasks, you may get real-time feedback, validation, and data previews within the application.

• Integrated teamwork. Together, construct occupations in various areas.

• Import/export, server-side undo, and version control.

• You may connect to and get data from more than 80 pre-built connections to well-known web services, in addition to having the option to build your own connector. 

Matillion Pricing

There are three price tiers offered by Matillion: basic ($2.00/credit), advanced ($2.50/credit), and enterprise ($2.70/credit). Each tier has a free trial available. 

7. Alteryx

An extensive toolkit for data integration, transformation, and analysis is provided by the reputable data preparation and analytics platform Alteryx. Alteryx is a well-liked option for customers searching for an all-in-one solution that handles both data preparation and sophisticated analytics because of its visual workflow designer, support for a variety of data sources, and advanced analytics features. Alteryx has been sluggish to adopt cloud-native features for its flagship Alteryx Designer tool for creating data prep pipelines because of the high cost of developer licenses.

Some Key features of Alteryx

• Regardless of your degree of coding experience, you may utilize either a code-free or code-based interface. You may write code in this interface using the C++, Python, or R languages.

• Alteryx Designer quickly gathers and combines data from several sources, resulting in quicker insights that support more informed decision-making.

• By enabling analytics scalability, repetitive operations may be automated or updated as needed to save time.

• Businesses can choose from a variety of software options offered by Alteryx Designer based on their specific needs. Alteryx Analytics Gallery, Alteryx Analytics Server, Alteryx Connect, and Alteryx Promote are all directly integrated with it. It is also feasible to integrate with R, Python, Tableau, Power BI, SAP, Sharepoint, Salesforce, Github, and Microsoft Azure technologies.

• Using firmographic, geographical, and demographic data for data analysis aids in the production of well-informed business choices.

• The whole analytics workflow may benefit from predictive analytics, and with Alteryx Designer, obtaining, preparing, and modeling data can all be done on one platform. The same might be used to share the outcomes. 

Alteryx Pricing

Alteryx begins at $5195.00 per user annually for price. Alteryx offers only one plan, Alteryx Designer, which costs $5195.00 annually per person.

8. KNIME

KNIME is an open-source data analytics platform with several capabilities for data transformation, preparation, and analysis. Compatibility with a wide range of data sources, community-driven development, and an extensive library of pre-built nodes are among of its strong points. Because of its adaptability and extensibility, KNIME is a cost-effective solution for enterprises wishing to customize their data operations.

Some Key features of KNIME

• Although KNIME Analytics does not come with a business intelligence dashboard functionality, one may create one with the extensive toolkit that is included.

• When it comes to interactive charts for data reporting, KNIME includes several extremely useful ones. These make it possible to manipulate and see individual segments.

• Geo-mapping is one element of KNIME that is quite helpful, especially for direct marketers.

• A set of nodes offered by KNIME can help with predictive analytics. These may be produced as graphs and charts with ease.

KNIME Pricing

Knime starts at $99 for small teams and is free for individual members.

Conclusion

In this article, you have explored the Tableau ETL tools in detail. This exploration included pit stops like the factors determining your choice of the best Tableau ETL tool specific to your use case and a few key Tableau ETL tools to look out for this year.

Extracting complex data from a diverse set of data sources can be a challenging task and this is where Hevo saves the day! Hevo offers a faster way to move data from Databases or SaaS applications into your Data Warehouse to be visualized in a BI tool.

Hevo is fully automated and hence does not require you to code. The Automated data pipeline helps in solving this issue and this is where Hevo comes into the picture. Hevo Data is a No-code Data Pipeline and has awesome 150+ pre-built Integrations that you can choose from.

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Hevo can help you Integrate your data from numerous sources and load them into a destination to Analyze real-time data with a BI tool such as Tableau. It will make your life easier and data migration hassle-free. It is user-friendly, reliable, and secure.

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