5 Alternatives To Fivetran
Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash
Companies that are serious about using raw data for business intelligence need some way to centralize and control that data. Many of them are using specialized vendor products to do so. Fivetran is one choice for getting all of that data wherever it resides and centralizing it in an ELT resource for porting to destination systems.
Extract, Load, Transform or ELT vendor systems provide those modern ways to build information pipelines for business applications like customer relationship management, raw product data sources, and more. In the early days of big data, stakeholders often used open-source systems like Apache Hadoop (with other side utilities combined) – but new vendor products are bringing more design sophistication to these types of data services in a “next-generation” ELT trend.
Why is data important? It’s the lifeblood of any modern business. Companies need ways to bring all of their valuable data assets together from places like Excel spreadsheets or Google sheets, salesforce applications, and other sources.
Fivetran is a great solution and we have written on it several times. However, there are a lot of great alternatives as well.
With that in mind, here are six other vendor products that can be used for ELT solutions.
Estuary.dev
Estuary is a cutting-edge platform designed to revolutionize the way businesses handle their data pipelines. This innovative solution offers a no-code approach to building reliable pipes that don’t require scheduling, supporting both batch/streaming and materialized views in milliseconds. The platform is built on an open-source streaming framework called Gazette, which combines millisecond-latency pub/sub with native persistence to cloud storage, essentially creating a real-time data lake.
One of the standout features of Estuary Flow is its approach to data storage. When a data source is captured, the data is stored in your cloud storage as regular JSON files. This allows you to materialize all of that history and ongoing updates into a variety of different data systems, creating identical, up-to-date views of your data in multiple places, now or in the future. This feature, known as “Collections instead of Buffers”, provides a significant advantage over traditional data pipeline solutions.
Estuary offers “Turnkey batch and streaming connectors”, supporting both real-time and historical data through one tool and providing access to pre-built connectors to approximately 50 endpoints. You can also plug in your own connector through Flow’s open protocol, offering a high degree of flexibility.
Mattillion
Proponents of the Mattillion ELT vendor system give it high marks for good data transformation opportunities. Unlike Fivetran which doesn’t have fully fleshed out transform capabilities and really just relies on DBT to perform its transforms, Matillion provides the end-user post-load transformations. Users can create Transformation Components with a very easy to interact with point and click UI. This can be very favorable for some companies are looking to have a more all in one tool in terms of ELT.
There are some complaints that Mattillion’s strange pricing(but that goes for a lot of tools including Fivetran). Others criticize what they see as a lack of clear documentation for the Mattillion system, where ease of use is a big value proposition for these types of systems, in general.
Overall, Mattillion can be a solid replacement.
Portable
Portable focused on “no-code connections” to bring data in from places like CRM or other ERP modules, as well as external spreadsheets and various silos, and gather it centrally for data warehousing and use. One of the watchwords of this company’s vendor solution is agile support, where there is apparently more of a developed effort to aid clients in micromanaging how this ELT system is used. In general, robust support is a value for any IT implementation, and ELT, with its complex data gathering, is no exception.
Some also argue that the Portable tool is less generic than some other offerings like Fivetran. In the process of critiquing “warehouse centric process automation,” Portable proponents point out that it’s useful to have a system that prioritizes it sources differently than all of the rest of the vendors, and that there’s some amount of generic build common across the industry. That’s as it may be, but for clients trying to put together system upgrades, the proof is in the pudding.
Airbyte
Airbyte is an open-source data pipeline platform that serves as an alternative to Stitch data and Fivetran. Though existing data pipeline platforms offer a significant number of integrations with well-regarded sources like Stripe and Salesforce, there is a gap in the current model that leaves out small services integrations.
Airbyte solves this problem by building and maintaining connectors while fostering a community of users who benefit from one another’s custom connectors. It’s common practice for companies to build custom connectors to support their applications. Airbyte’s open-source model creates a community wherein companies can support one another by building and maintaining their unique connectors.
Connectors on Airbyte run in Docker containers, which allows for independent operating. You can easily monitor each of your connectors, refresh them as needed, and schedule updates. Airbyte first certifies new connectors to ensure they’re ready for production; currently, there are over 46 connectors available. Already, more than 250 companies are benefitting from this open-source data pipeline platform.
Dataddo
Dataddo is a no-code, cloud-based ETL platform that puts flexibility first. It it fully equipped with a wide range of connectors and fully customizable metrics. The platform simplifies the process of creating and implementing an automated data pipeline. Dataddo is capable of seamlessly integrating with your existing data stack, eliminating the need for extra software. The intuitive interface and simple set-up lets you focus on consolidating your data instead of wasting time learning new procedures. The API changes are fully managed so once your pipelines are set, you don’t have to worry about them again. If you need a connector that isn’t provided by Dataddo, it can be easily added within 10 days.
Using ELT Resources
At the end of the day, a company’s chosen ELT solution has to mesh with the technique and strategy involved in the company’s processes. The ELT platform can as mentioned, save coding hours, but it needs to be integrated the right way to provide the best service. That means understanding where data will be deployed at the endpoint and figuring out all of the primary sources that are priorities for centralizing data.
Any of the above resources can work with the right implementation and design. By taking on more of the data center process in an automated and replicating way, the company is easing the burden on its in-house staff and positioning for better scalability and growth. Take a look at some of the top ELT tools, to understand how these are integrated into a commercial context, and what that means in the age of the cloud and SaaS.
Where to Start Building Data Strategy for a Small Business
Why Everyone Cares About Snowflake
What Is DBT and Why Is It So Popular – Intro To Data Infrastructure Part 3
analytics analytics engineering aws Big Data Consulting Data data engineering elt