How often does your marketing team have to switch apps to access data before sending a personalized campaign to your customers? How often does your testing team run scripts to make sure the latest code is compatible with integrated environments? How much time is wasted?
One last question: What if you didn’t need to access all these additional apps and could simply build your own solutions?
ETL (extract, transform, load) tools ingest, format, and store data from multiple sources in a centralized data repository, which is then loaded into specific data warehouses. Using ETL tools is an excellent way to optimize your data’s capabilities and get a 360-degree view of what’s happening in your organization.
Many modern ETL solutions offer low-code functionalities. These make it easier and faster for your non-engineering teams to create fully-functional data pipelines that meet their specifications without the need to write code.
ETL platforms create efficient data pipelines, ensure early detection and mitigation of bottlenecks, and improve cross-collaboration between teams.
For example, if a product manager wants to identify the most used features of their product, they can query a central data analytics repository to understand each feature’s usage. Similarly, a sales representative can view a prospect’s past behavior, interactions, cart abandonments, etc. in a CRM instead of going back and forth with the marketing team.
Let’s look at the top seven ETL platforms. We’ll outline which tools are most suitable for you. We’ll also look at the benefits of using them and share the pros and cons of each tool so you can find a solution that fits your needs and budget. Want an even bigger dive into ETL tools? Check out a list of the top 100 ETL tools in the space.
The 7 best ETL tools that teams actually use
1. Shipyard
Shipyard is a fully cloud-based orchestration platform that lets users extract, transform, and load data from multiple data sources into destinations using automated data pipelines. It takes care of all of users’ needs including data processing, data migration, data management, and data transformation.
Shipyard data orchestration ETL platform
Best for:
Shipyard is an excellent option for enterprises looking for a reliable and powerful ETL tool that’s easy to use and scalable. It offers great accessibility allowing all teams—HR, marketing, sales, product management, engineering, and finance—to build customizable data pipelines for their day-to-day operations.
Top features:
- Ease of use: Shipyard sets up in just a few minutes. Its low-code functionality allows teams to customize data workflows and build virtually anything they need to improve their data pipelines. More technical users can also write their own code in and for Shipyard whether it's Python, Bash, or Node.
- Automations: Shipyard entirely automates your data pipelines—be it moving data from Airtable to your Microsoft SQL Server when a certain action is taken or automatically notifying a team manager when a task is complete in a pipeline.
- Connectors: Shipyard supports dozens of SaaS tools and data sources including: Fivetran, Airtable, dbt Cloud, Amazon S3, spreadsheets. Plus, its integration with GitHub offers continuous version control, up-to-date code, and easy deployments.
- Real-time monitoring: Shipyard provides detailed alerts and a granular monitoring setup to ensure you catch and fix critical breakages in your data pipelines before they impact your business and customers. Its automatic retires and cutoffs further improve your workflow’s resilience without you having to spend time and effort on it.
- Scalable infrastructure: Shipyard scales to meet your demands.
Pros:
- Its user-friendly design makes it possible for anyone to use the tool.
- It offers hundreds of pre-built templates for creating custom pipelines which you can choose to change. Advanced users like data engineers can also automate scripts in the language of their choice. It’s a win-win.
- It provides a drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to quickly modify and customize pipelines as needed.
- Shipyard provides a great knowledge base with extensive documentation, and a changelog is available on their website.
- It offers chat support and lets users schedule a call directly with the customer support team.
Cons:
- No API access to update/create in bulk
- Can't export or store your logs externally
- Processed data is ephemeral, so if something breaks in the middle, it will have to be rerun from the start.
Pricing:
Free plan with paid plans available.
2. IBM InfoSphere DataStage
IBM InfoSphere DataStage is a cloud-native ETL platform that combines data from a large number of enterprise data sources on demand. It then moves data to the required destinations, such as a Snowflake warehouse, using a high-performance parallel architecture.
IBM InfoSphere DataStage ETL platform
Best for:
IBM InfoSphere DataStage is designed for seasoned IT professionals—those who have a strong understanding of SQL and the basic programming languages that the platform uses. It’s suitable for large enterprises that need to move volumes of data from multivariate data sources, mainframes, or large servers to warehouses, data lakes, and other destinations.
Top features:
- IBM InfoSphere DataStage can be integrated with Oracle, IBM, Db2, and Hadoop systems.
- It also enables extended enterprise connectivity and metadata management.
- It allows you to separate ETL job design from runtime and deploy it on the cloud.
Pros:
- It’s a reliable ETL solution that offers intuitive development and excellent parallel processing.
- It provides an easy and fast deployment of integration run times.
- It delivers significant productivity gains by handling endpoint individuality transparently.
- It offers high performance and versatility across various platforms.
- It has the ability to scale large amounts of data.
Cons:
- It has a steep learning curve for beginners (the lack of documentation online makes self-learning even more challenging).
- It produces a great volume of logs, which can make it tough to review and analyze them efficiently.
- It lacks connectivity with heterogeneous systems (e.g.connecting one source as a database and another from a file stored in the Hadoop ecosystem).
- It’s expensive if you need to upgrade and you will certainly need the help of IBM’s support to do so.
Pricing:
Free trial with paid plans available.
3. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)
Oracle Data Integrator is an ETL platform that helps users build, manage, and maintain integrated data workflows across organizations.
Oracle Data Integrator ETL platform
Best for:
ODI is well suited for large organizations with frequent data integration requirements from high-volume, high-performance batch loads to trickle-feed integration processes to SOA-enabled data services.
Top features:
- ODI is fully integrated with other Oracle products such as Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Warehouse Builder.
- It supports databases like IBM Db2, Sybase, Exadata, Netezza, Teradata, etc.
- It leverages a unique E-LT architecture that eliminates the need to have an ETL server, which helps reduce the cost associated with it.
Pros:
- ODI supports the declarative design approach for scalable data transformation and integration processes.
- It works seamlessly with large volumes of enterprise data and supports parallel task execution for faster data processing.
- It gives users access to online training and certifications for ODI.
Cons:
- It’s a complex product to use even for ETL developers.
- It may require a lot of personnel training and testing before implementing it in production for data integration.
- It lacks real-time data support, which is crucial for the setup stage.
Pricing:
Pricing available on request.
4. Pentaho
Pentaho is a business intelligence (BI) software that focuses on batch processes. It offers data integration, reporting, data mining, OLAP services, information dashboards, and ETL capabilities.
Pentaho BI software
Best for:
Pentaho is a user-friendly ETL tool used to transform complex raw data into meaningful insights and reports.
Top features:
- Pentaho is available in two versions—open-source and commercial. Open-source is easy to use and offers basic ETL capabilities, and commercial offers more robust features.
- It runs as an application for on-premise, batch ETL use cases.
- Pentaho can connect to relational databases such as SQL and proprietary enterprise databases such as Db2.
- It offers no-code capabilities that allow users without programming knowledge to easily extract, transform, and load data from multiple sources.
- It works based on the interpretation of ETL processes stored in XML format.
Pros:
- Pentaho offers a drag-and-drop graphical user interface, making it easier for end users to use the platform.
- The licensed version connects to a full spectrum of data sources.
- It has strong community support and offers online, self-paced, and instructor-led learning.
Cons:
- The open-source version has limited ETL capabilities.
- It doesn’t provide support for creating custom connectors to move data from data sources to destinations.
Pricing:
Pricing is available on request.
5. Talend Open Studio
Talend Open Studio is another reliable ETL tool that pulls different types of data from various environments, including relational databases, files, SaaS platforms, and software applications for data warehousing.
Talend Open Studio ETL platform
Best for:
Talend Open Studio works on a code-generation approach—you need to build the code every time you change a logic. This makes it a suitable ETL tool for seasoned data engineers and data analysts who are familiar with Eclipse IDE.
Top features:
- Talend offers commercial products (such as Talend Data Fabric, which includes advanced capabilities like maintaining the integrity and governance of enterprise data) for enterprise use.
- It can be used to merge and transform traditional and big data.
- It supports most on-premise and cloud databases with connectors to different sources, including SaaS.
Pros:
- Talend has a graphical user interface, which makes it easy for developers to design the workflow and modify logic quickly.
- It has more than 900 connectors to open-source and commercial data sources and applications.
- It offers comprehensive support, including technical support, an online library, access to a user community, and a one-stop customer portal.
Cons:
- It isn’t a user-friendly ETL software for non-technical users, especially if they aren’t familiar with Eclipse IDE.
- It has poor connectivity or compatibility with some older mainframe databases.
Pricing:
Free trial and paid plans available.
6. AWS Glue
AWS Glue is a serverless ETL tool that helps users discover, clean, extract, and combine complex data from different sources into data warehouses or data lakes.
AWS Glue ETL tool
Best for:
AWS Glue is a great data integration tool for data engineers and ETL developers to create, run, and monitor ETL workflows. It’s also well suited for enterprises that use SQL database, AWS, and Amazon S3 storage services.
Top features:
- AWS Glue builds event-driven ETL pipelines so users can schedule jobs when data becomes available. For instance, you can run ETL jobs as soon as new data is loaded into Amazon S3 using the AWS Lambda function.
- AWS Glue Data Catalog makes it easier and faster for users to search and access data across multiple AWS data sets without moving the data.
- It offers additional functions such as AWS Glue Studio to help users visually create, run, and maintain ETL pipelines.
- It supports custom SQL queries, making data interactions more flexible.
Pros:
- AWS Glue is an on-demand tool that automatically scales to meet your data integration and storage requirements.
- It offers seamless integration with other AWS services.
- It offers free online courses and provides certification programs.
Cons:
- AWS Glue doesn’t have a user-friendly GUI compared to other ETL software in this list. It requires more technical expertise and coding for development and debugging.
- It has limited AWS documentation which leads to a steep learning curve.
- It can become expensive depending on what type of services you use.
Pricing:
Free and custom paid plans are available.
7. Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory is another serverless data integration platform that offers fully managed services.
Azure Data Factory data integration platform
Best for:
Azure Data Factory is suitable for enterprises that want both their engineering and non-engineering teams to leverage ETL pipelines and accelerate analytics-based decisions.
Top features:
- Azure Data Factory offers pay-as-you-go models for pricing, which helps users manage data and pipelines in a more cost-effective manner.
- It has built-in support for continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows and Git for version control.
- It works with Azure Synapse Analytics to give powerful data visualization and analysis.
Pros:
- It offers both no-code and custom code-based interfaces, which makes it easier for both technical and non-technical teams to build ETL pipelines on their own.
- It allows you to ingest data from more than 90 connectors such as AWS, Db2, Oracle, MongoDB, SQL, MySQL, Salesforce, and SAP.
- Microsoft offers free online training and certifications for Azure Data Factory.
Cons:
- It has a moderate learning curve, and beginners might need some training to get started with the tool.
- It has a lack of helpful documentation and resources.
Pricing:
Pricing is based on usage.
Designing your data pipelines with Shipyard
As an ETL orchestration tool, Shipyard helps teams build, modify, and execute data pipelines with an easy drag-and-drop interface. With our platform you can design pipelines that streamline data integration and management without using data engineering resources. Sign up for our free Developer plan, learn if Shipyard is right for your organization, and let us know if you need help from a real human.
