In this stage where Data Analytics is growing, an ETL platform that performs Data Integration in lesser time comes in handy. Informatica is one of the best data integration tools. Its customer retention rate is 94%[1], and over time, it has developed strong customer loyalty.
Although it is the best ETL platform for the IT industry, it is not the best for the telecommunication, health care, and insurance industries because of its non-transparent pricing structure and because it requires some level of programming expertise and knowledge.
Furthermore, it is not an open-source platform, which poses difficulties for users because it offers less flexibility and less data reliability.
Today’s market is flooded with ETL tools such as Hevo Data, Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, SAP HANA Cloud, Alteryx, etc. The right ETL tool can be selected based on the use case, scalability, error handling capability, performance optimization, and cost optimization.
This article describes the Top 10 Informatica Competitors and Alternatives extensively. Based on the use case and requirements of an organization, a suitable ETL Solution is chosen.
Table of Contents
The Need For An Informatica Alternative
- Inefficient Workflow Management: Informatica uses several client tools to deploy a single workflow. This makes it perplexing and complex for the user. Most ETL tools deploy workflows in minutes, making it easy for the customer to manage the tool and handle it easily.
- Not an Open-source Tool: Informatica does not have an open-source version. This makes it difficult for customers to afford the maintenance fee, which is quite expensive. Most companies prefer flexible licensing to access, use, and distribute it among users. Many open-source ETL tools exist today, such as Hevo, Talend, Pentaho, etc.
- Integration with Other Technologies: Informatica does not support the incorporation of code written in other languages. Compatibility with programming languages such as Java, Python, R, etc., is a functionality offered by various ETL tools to make the users’ lives easier. Without this functionality, the user will have to construct multiple hops in a data pipeline which is tedious and time-consuming.
- In-efficient Transformations: Large tables in Informatica require more memory and CPU when performing a lookup transformation. The use of more memory and CPU for transformation results in the waste of valuable resources. Other ETL tools use less memory and the CPU, preserving the memory.
- Non-transparent Pricing: Informatica does not have a clear and transparent pricing plan. It uses a dashboard to estimate the usage and offers a pre-paid subscription based on the demand. ETL tools have fixed pricing that is defined as monthly or quarterly.
What are the Top 10 Informatica Alternatives?
We have listed the Top Informatica Alternatives based on the use case, scalability, pricing structure, ease of deployment, budget, data processing speed, and setup time.
Here’s the list of Top 10 Informatica Alternatives:
Hevo Data
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Best Informatica Replacement for teams that need Real-time data.
Hevo, a fully-managed Data Pipeline platform, offers seamless data replication and transformation. With Hevo, you can replicate data from a growing library of 150+ plug-and-play integrations and 15+ destinations — SaaS apps, databases, data warehouses, and much more.
Without writing a single line of code, Hevo fully manages and automates the process of not only loading data from your chosen source but also enriching the data and changing it into a form that is suitable for analysis. Due to its fault-tolerant architecture, data is handled securely, consistently, and without any data loss.
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It provides a consistent & reliable solution to manage data in real-time and always has analysis-ready data in your desired destination. It allows you to focus on the key business needs and perform insightful analysis.
Pros
- Transparent Pricing: Say goodbye to complex and hidden pricing models. Hevo’s Transparent Pricing brings complete visibility to your ELT spending. Choose a plan based on your business needs. Stay in control with spend alerts and configurable credit limits for unforeseen spikes in the data flow.
- Pre-Load Transformation: Format your data on the fly with Hevo’s preload transformations using either the drag-and-drop interface or our nifty Python interface.
- Intuitive UI: Using Hevo you can automate and control end-to-end data pipelines – from combining raw data to driving last-mile business actions – all within one intuitive, zero-maintenance platform.
- Ease of Use: Hevo’s UI is very intuitive and easy to learn. With a couple of clicks, you can easily build scalable pipelines.
| Informatica | Hevo Data |
| Does not offer transparent pricing. | Hevo offers transparent pricing with a free trial and a starter pack of $239/month. |
| Slightly complicated to use. | Easy-to-use friendly UI. |
| Free trial not available. | Free trial available. |
Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services
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Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services is a platform for creating high-performance Data Integration solutions, including ETL packages for Data Warehousing.
Data sources and destinations for extracting and loading data; transformations for cleaning, aggregating, merging, and copying data; management database, for managing package execution and storage; and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for programming the workflow functions of SSIS are all included in this software.
Who Should Use Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services?
SSIS is used as an integration service to manage SQL Server objects and data, copy or download files, load data warehouses, clean and mine data, and manage complex business problems.
Pros
- It has connections to numerous sources.
- It makes managing projects and packages simple.
- It is extensible and highly customizable.
- It allows for the easy deployment and configuration of SSIS and allows developers to reuse scripts across various projects.
Cons
- For use with JSON, it isn’t always effective.
- For new users, it frequently becomes complicated and challenging to learn.
- Connection managers can occasionally be challenging to configure.
- Third-party tools that support SSIS can be difficult to find.
- Complex coding and experience with developers are required.
| Informatica | Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services |
| Deployment is complex. | Easy deployment and configuration. |
| More Expensive | Less Expensive |
| No clear pricing plan. | Pricing is clear, for SSIS A4 V2 it is $328.290/month |
SAP HANA Cloud
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SAP HANA Cloud provides a single place to access, store, and process all enterprise data in real time. It is a cloud-native platform that makes multi-cloud or hybrid system landscapes less complex.
Using SAP HANA Cloud as a stand-alone solution or as an addition to your current on-premise environment you can utilize the cloud features like automatic software updates, elasticity, and low total cost of ownership.
Who Should Use SAP HANA Cloud?
Customers who need a platform that can integrate with various services and have a reasonable amount of data can benefit from SAP HANA Cloud without having to worry about setting up and maintaining a platform and servers.
Pros
- Real-time analysis and decision-making capabilities are offered by SAP HANA. Large amounts of data can be processed while the business is running thanks to it. As a result, it offers quick real-time insights.
- Data processing and transactions are incredibly quick thanks to in-memory database technology because the data is stored in RAM. So, from there, data can be processed quickly and directly.
- You can use SAP HANA to perform data integration and aggregation from various applications and data sources without interfering with currently running business operations. Additionally, you can also incorporate SAP Business Object BI solutions with it.
Cons
- SAP HANA does not support all ERP Products. ERP users who want to use SAP HANA must modify their architecture to make it HANA compatible.
- SAP HANA server has shut down when it is under a lot of computational and data processing load.
- Utilizing hybrid HANA solutions, such as having it run partially in the cloud and partially on-premise, results in numerous problems and poor performance.
| Informatica | SAP HANA Cloud |
| Transaction and Data Processing are slower as compared to SAP HANA Cloud. | Faster Transaction and Data Processing. |
| Does not support parallel processing. | Supports parallel processing with OLTP and OLAP support. |
| Does not allow data aggregation from different sources. | Allows data aggregation from different sources. |
Alteryx
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Alteryx is a visual workflow tool that combines spatial processing and ETL capabilities. To provide geographic business intelligence in support of sales, marketing, and operations challenges, it enables you to quickly access and transform a variety of databases, including spatial databases.
It enables users to access, modify, analyze, and output data quickly. This can be done once, but more frequently, people use the procedure regularly (daily, weekly, or monthly).
Who Should Use Alteryx?
With Alteryx, data engineers can easily automate the data preparation process. This enables business users to quickly start using Alteryx without having to have any technical knowledge.
It is also strongly advised for data science use cases like geospatial and predictive solutions.
Pros
- Alteryx is adaptable because it makes it simple to create various project types. It can assist you in making your data visualizations appear polished and appealing.
- Alteryx allows users to quickly iterate and test out various business scenarios because it processes information up to 30 times faster than other conventional tools. It is suitable for advanced data analytics use cases because it can handle files up to 50GB in size, processing larger file sizes than other tools.
- Alteryx is a great tool, especially when working with Big Data and streaming data that needs to be integrated into the workflow, as it supports all different types of data sources and is not constrained by any particular databases or formats.
Cons
- Due to the nature of its algorithms, Alteryx can occasionally process data slowly. You must make sure that your computer has enough resources, such as memory and disc space, to prevent this from occurring too frequently.
- The price of Alteryx can be a problem for those who are just starting in the field. Depending on how many users you have and the level of support they need, you might need to pay them up to $1,000 or more per year for their services.
- Although Alteryx allows for basic data visualizations and exploration, it is not a good tool for creating intricate dashboards or reports.
| Informatica | Alteryx |
| Free trial not available. | Free trial available. |
| Slower compared to Alteryx. | Faster in processing data. |
| Does not Incorporate multiple functions for data analysis. | Incorporates multiple functions for data analysis such as Statistical analysis, Spatial analysis, etc. |
Talend
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Talend is a Data Integration ETL tool. It offers software solutions for Data Management, Big Data, Integration, Data Quality, Data Preparation, and Application Integration. With its graphical tools and wizards, Talend’s tool makes it simple to automate Big Data Integration.
This enables the company to create a working environment for Apache Hadoop, Spark, and NoSQL databases for tasks that are carried out in the cloud or on-premises.
Who Should Use Talend?
Talend is a great tool for quick daily integrations because it reduces development time and makes it simple. Talend Open Studio can be learned and used by average citizen developers in a matter of weeks. It works well for any type of data migration between different systems.
Pros
- Business logic for applications can be developed centrally with the aid of many connectors.
- The overhead of repository management and deployment is decreased by continuous integration.
- Due to its connections to all the major data sources, it also integrates the entire analytical perimeter in terms of data quality, making it possible to integrate the various sources and destinations more simply and reliably than with others.
Cons
- Only Talend’s Enterprise editions offer the scheduling feature, which is a very basic one; the open studio distribution is not available.
- You must purchase the Real-time big data package for Talend to support spark streaming and Machine Learning.
- Installation and Driver Configurations are time-consuming and complex.
| Informatica | Talend |
| Supports only Commercial Data Integration. | It employs a wide range of open-source and paid-for data integration solutions. |
| You can get free access to Talend’s open-source edition. | To use Informatica, you must purchase a single-user license and a multi-user license. |
| Does not support Java. | Supports Java. |
| Deployment requires advancement in automation. | Deployment is easy and simple. |
IBM InfoSphere DataStage
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A tool from IBM called IBM InfoSphere DataStage is used to design, develop, and execute data-moving and transforming jobs. It offers a visual framework for creating jobs that transfer data between source and target systems.
Data warehouses, Data Marts, Operational Data Stores, Real-time Web Services, Messaging Systems, and other business applications can all receive the transformed data.
Who Should Use IBM InfoSphere DataStage?
Data analysis for business trending and customer banking aging reports is done using IBM InfoSphere DataStage. It would be useful for determining when the most recent transaction was completed and when the upcoming transaction would take place.
In terms of Accessibility, GUI Management, and User Navigation, IBM InfoSphere DataStage can be of great assistance.
Pros
- The best mapping product that is highly effective at managing project data and scaling.
- Reporting functions are easy to use and all the features can be easily customized.
- One of its best features is Data Collaboration.
Cons
- It is difficult to manipulate deep functions.
- Utilizing cloud services to manipulate tools is difficult.
- Big data management is difficult.
| Informatica | IBM InfoSphere DataStage |
| Debugging the workflows and mappings is very hard with Informatica. | Mapping is highly effective and helps manage projects in IBM InfoSphere DataStage. |
| Does not support parallelism. | Supports component, data, and full pipeline parallelism. |
| Does not have any special reporting capabilities. | Reporting Functions that are easy to use and highly customizable. |
Integrate.io
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The platform Integrate.io enables businesses to combine, refine, and prepare data for cloud analytics. It does this by providing a coding- and jargon-free environment.
Every business can instantly connect to a variety of data stores using Integrate.io, which also offers a wide range of pre-built data transformation components.
Who Should Use Integrate.io?
Any data team that needs to be responsive and agile should use Integrate.io as a tool. It allows your analytics team to begin performing worthwhile analysis almost immediately and saves you a significant amount of development time each month.
Pros
- Application Integration boosts worker productivity. Employees won’t have to repeatedly key in the same information into different systems because it will all be in one system. Additionally, they won’t have to constantly sift through various systems to find what they need to do their jobs.
- Customer Data Integration (CDI) is the process of gathering information about customer behavior from various sources and combining it to make it simple for all departments to access. The outcome is a data source, also referred to as a 360-degree customer view, that can aid in improving the customer experience.
- Through integrations with several important business tools, such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and HubSpot, Integrate.io can help promote accuracy.
Cons
- Integrating data from multiple systems introduces new security flaws. Data transfers through new system gateways create vulnerabilities that hackers might use.
- Multiple systems are not simply combined into one system when they are integrated. It merely connects them. Each system still needs to undergo maintenance and upgrades. The process for upgrades can be difficult and time-consuming if your business controls all the systems.
- You’ll have to pay for access to each system separately if you’re integrating with third-party systems. Depending on how many systems there are, the price increases.
| Informatica | Integrate.io |
| Requires a trained data engineer to operate the platform. | It is easy for anyone to use. |
| Powerful ETL but complex. | Combines Powerful ETL with ease of use. |
| High licensing fees and auxiliary costs. | No auxiliary costs and pricing is based on the number of connectors. |
Pentaho
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Pentaho Reporting is a suite for developing relational and analytical reporting. Pentaho supports the creation of reports in several formats, including HTML, Excel, PDF, Text, CSV, and XML.
Pentaho can accept data from a variety of data sources, including SQL databases, OLAP data sources, and even the Pentaho Data Integration ETL tool. The ETL capabilities offered by Pentaho Data Integration make it easier to collect, clean up, and store data in a suitable format.
Who Should Use Pentaho?
Companies that need to integrate real-time ETL as a data source and need to migrate data between various databases and applications use Pentaho. Additionally, it is used in programs that execute and schedule Hadoop jobs and quickly prototype ROLAP schemas.
Pros
- ETL operations are made simple and practical.
- Large amounts of data can be handled by it.
- It is simple to comprehend and effective at resolving complex data integration issues.
Cons
- The handling of unstructured data by transformations is poor.
- Access to online resources is not integrated properly.
- Compared to other tools, online reading resources are fewer.
| Informatica | Pentaho |
| Is not open source. | Is open source. |
| Does not support BI Standard Reporting. | Supports BI Standard Reporting. |
| Does not support Data Discovery and Visualization. | Supports Data Discovery and Visualization. |
| Does not have Mobile Capabilities. | Has Mobile Capabilities. |
Fivetran
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Fivetran is a very thorough ELT tool that is gaining popularity every day. It enables the effective gathering of customer information and business processes from relevant servers, websites, and applications.
The obtained data is then transferred to additional software for Analytics, Advertising, and Data Warehousing.
Who Should Use Fivetran?
Most of the companies that use Fivetran are high-growth software firms that want to connect external SaaS services to extract and load data into their own data lakes and warehouses for Data Science and Analytics.
Pros
- Connectors need to be built and maintained, which takes time, resources, and expertise. 150 Prebuilt Connectors are available from Fivetran, and more are always being added.
- Routing, error recovery, incremental loading, and scheduling are just a few of the pipeline management tasks that Fivetran handles. As a result, the workload is reduced.
- Fivetran is a SaaS product, so there is no software to set up or servers to maintain.
Cons
- There are occasional delays in the Integration process. Since there isn’t much information available about the service Fivetran is attempting to use or predictions as to when a delayed connection might catch up, it makes it difficult and time-consuming.
- Fivetran uses dbt to manage challenging transformations that normalize data into appropriate data structures for analytics. There are multiple tools and managing them becomes a tedious process.
- Fivetran lacks more comprehensive data management features like Data Virtualization, Data Governance, and Data Quality capabilities that are present in more enterprise-focused tools.
| Informatica | Fivetran |
| Lacks transparent pricing | Has pricing that is both transparent and clear starter package costs $120 per month. |
| Creating a pipeline is difficult. | Pipeline creation is simple and easy. |
| SaaS connectors are limited. | There are many SaaS connectors in Fivetran. |
AWS Glue
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AWS Glue is a fully managed ETL service that makes it easy and affordable to categorize your data, clean it up, enrich it, and reliably move it between different data stores and data streams.
AWS Glue is made up of a central metadata repository called the AWS Glue Data Catalog, an ETL engine that creates Python or Scala code automatically, and a flexible scheduler that manages dependencies, job monitoring, and retries.
Who Should Use AWS Glue?
When your use cases are primarily ETL and you want to run tasks on a serverless Apache Spark-based platform, AWS Glue is advised. It is also advised for complex ETL, such as joining streams and dividing the output in Amazon S3 by the nature of the data.
AWS Glue has built-in functionality to handle semi-structured or dynamically changing streaming data and generates customizable ETL code to prepare your data while it is in flight.
Data streams can be loaded into your data lake or data warehouse using Glue to apply both its built-in and Spark-native transforms.
Pros
- Since Glue is serverless, managing resources is not necessary. You give up some control over the resources your jobs use in exchange for this.
- Glue is simple to use and sets up quickly. A wizard-style interface is used to manage workflows, and many common transforms can be set up quickly.
- Numerous AWS services are integrated into Glue as a source or destination endpoint. Additionally, Athena tables, for example, can be sourced from Glue catalogs, which makes it very simple to expose data for ad-hoc querying.
Cons
- The computing resources are really out of your control. The only instance types that Glue provides are General Purpose, Memory-intensive, and Machine Learning.
- Spark is powered by Glue, which only permits Python or Scala scripts.
- Glue can recognize schemas, but cannot distinctly do it. You might need to write a custom classifier for complicated and/or nested data structures, which are complex. Additionally, testing classifiers can significantly increase the setup time.
| Informatica | AWS Glue |
| Secure agent to be installed in a computer for set up. | Easy Set up as it is serverless. |
| Is only scalable when deployed on a cloud using individually priced secure agents. | Scaling is automatically handled because of serverless architecture. |
Final Thoughts
The Top 10 Informatica Alternatives in the ETL market were covered in this article. You can choose from these top Informatica alternatives based on your company’s needs in terms of flexibility, data visualization capabilities, data connectors, technical know-how, use case, and price.
Hevo is the best option for you if you require seamless data integration without the need for coding.
Visit our Website to Explore Hevo
Hevo, a No-code Data Pipeline, provides you with a consistent and reliable solution to manage data transfer between a variety of sources and a wide variety of Desired Destinations with a few clicks. Hevo has pre-built strong integrations with 150+ data connectors (including 50+ free sources) that connect with over a destination of your choice – SaaS apps, databases, data warehouses, and much more.
It allows you to simply export, load, transform & enrich your data to make it analysis-ready so that you can focus on your key business needs and perform insightful analysis.
Want to take Hevo for a spin? Sign Up for a 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite firsthand. You can also have a look at the unbeatable pricing that will help you choose the right plan for your business needs.
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Harshita is a data analysis enthusiast with a keen interest for data, software architecture, and writing technical content. Her passion towards contributing to the field drives her in creating in-depth articles on diverse topics related to the data industry.