What are the best ETL Tools and how they help businesses?

Every organization has an enormous amount of data in their systems, with more and more adding to it every day. Most organizations fail to extract potential out of their data, and all relevant information remains stuck in silos.

To cover the inefficiency gap and survive in the ever-changing data landscape, organizations must back their data pipelines with the best ETL tools.

ETL tools are of great importance when it comes to extracting data from several sources and making it compatible before it is loaded into a centralized repository. Here are some of the best ETL tools you can pick to make your data integration process flawless.

The Best ETL Tools that make the task of data integration easier

DataChannel

DataChannel brings you a comprehensive and robust data integration solution that lets you integrate data from multiple sources to a data warehouse. The platform is backed with tried and tested pre-built models that help you sync all your historical & current data present in both cloud and on-premise platforms.

Being a no-code data platform, DataChannel helps you transfer all your crucial data to the desired warehouse and visualize it in any BI tool. With this solution, you can enrich your data and make it analysis-ready without writing a single code.

DataChannel can be your perfect companion when it comes to growing and nurturing your business in the competitive data-driven industry.

Pros:

• Offers you all the customization you need
• Help you manage data across multiple digital marketing channels
• Provide marketing integrations at a granular level
• Allow you to view ad creatives from within the dashboard
• Centralize all your data in real-time
• Accelerate the reporting process

Xplenty

Xplenty is a cloud-based ETL and ELT (Extract, Load, and Transform) platform that helps you combine data from multiple sources. It’s easy-to-understand and intuitive visual interface helps users build robust data pipelines between multiple sources and destinations.

Pros:

• Easy to navigate GUI
• Manage & filter the data before it goes to the data destination
• Offer API connectors to pull data from different sources
• Transform data

Cons:

• Operational errors may occur
• Error messages are not always descriptive
• Lack of real-time data synchronization capabilities
• No on-premise solution

Talend

Talend is an open-source ETL data integration tool that offers compatibility with both on-cloud and on-premise data sources. It offers hundreds of pre-built integrations that make the task of data consolidation easier.

The tool can integrate well with most of the well-known cloud service providers, such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Pros:

• Compatible with different formats like JSON, XML, and CSV.
• Works well with multiple data sources.
• Collects data from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
• Offer real-time integration of data.

Cons:

• For high-level customization, expertise in JAVA is required
• Scheduling and automation is basic.

Improvado

Improvado is a cloud-based marketing data integration tool that combines multiple data sources into a single virtual database. It pulls data from complex silos and presents it on multiple dashboards in real-time. With this tool, you get the choice to view your data in its dashboard or push the same into a preferred data warehouse.

Pros:

• Allows comparison between cross-channel metrics to help you make the right decisions
• Provide raw and mapped data as required
• Compatible with BI tools, like Looker and Tableau

Cons:

• Some features may be a bit complicated
• Sometimes, you have to go back and forth with the support representatives to get your dashboards & reports visualized

Alooma

Alooma is a data integration platform with excellent ETL capabilities. The tool helps you build a powerful data pipeline that will focus on maintaining data quality and eliminating every error, even at the granular level. It also assists you with data migration to any data warehouse of your choice. For organizations working at a large scale, Alooma can be an option to consider.

Pros:

• Works well with multiple data sources
• Simplifies the task of analyzing all data sources
• Can replicate all popular databases
• Allow monitoring data in real-time
• Detects the schema of the database on its own

Cons:

• It takes time for new users to understand its GUI
• Debugging module is a little complex in comparison to other options available

Domo

Domo offers a cloud-based data integration solution that helps you bring all your data in one place. The tool collects data from various sources and displays the same using an interactive format. Its user-friendly interface makes it easier for you to derive crucial business insights to power up your decision-making process. With this solution at your end, making time-sensitive decisions no longer remains a far-fetched task.

Pros:

• Data transmission can be processed without a lot of bandwidth.
• An efficient operating system that helps you make real-time decisions.
• Uses machine learning that facilitate the making of smart decisions for business growth.

Cons:

• Designed keeping corporate users in mind, individuals may get confused with the numerous options available.
• It’s a bit complicated to manage databases.

AWS Glue

AWS Glue, a popular Cloud ETL tool by Amazon, has made its way to help organizations with big data analytics. The tool has simplified the ETL process, and its exceptional support with other AWS ecosystem applications makes it a go-to option.

Being a serverless data integration service, the tool helps you discover, prepare, and consolidate data for analytics, machine learning, and application development.

Pros:

• Allows deployment of applications within minutes
• A scalable solution that grows with your requirements
• Connects with non-standardized SQL data sources

Cons:

• Like other cloud services, AWS is also bound to general computing glitches.
• AWS Paid technical support may push you to go for other options

But how can one know which ETL tool will fit best into their organizational needs?

Choosing the right ETL tool for your business doesn’t work on the concept of one size fits all. Every tool has a few distinctive features, and therefore identifying which tool will work best for your business is crucial.

Before starting your search for the best ETL tool, understand the complexity of your data integration process and consult with analysts.

With the right ETL tool by your side, you can hit deadlines for all your projects and turn into a truly data-driven organization.

Summing-up

The article navigates you through some of the best ETL tools you can use for your business. ETL tools act as the bedrock for your data analytics and data warehousing processes and reveal the secrets hidden in your data.

Therefore, it has become necessary to arm your business with the best ETL tool available in the market.

DataChannel is one such data integration platform that provides you with all the customization you need. By choosing DataChannel, you can automate the task of data integration and get crucial information at your fingertips in real-time. So why wait?

DataChannel – An integrated ETL & Reverse ETL solution

• 100+ Data Sources. DataChannel’s ever-expanding list of supported data sources includes all popular advertising, marketing, CRM, financial, and eCommerce platforms and apps along with support for ad-hoc files, google sheets, cloud storages, relational databases, and ingestion of real-time data using webhooks. If we do not have the integration you need, reach out to our team and we will build it for you for free.
• Powerful scheduling and orchestration features with granular control over scheduling down to the exact minute.
• Granular control over what data to move. Unlike most tools which are highly opinionated and dictate what data they would move, we allow you the ability to choose down to field level what data you need. If you need to add another dimension or metric down the line, our easy to use UI lets you do that in a single click without any breaking changes to your downstream process.
• Extensive Logging, fault tolerance and automated recovery allows for dependable and reliable pipelines. If we are unable to recover, the extensive notifications will alert you via slack, app and email for taking appropriate action.
• Built to scale at an affordable cost. Our best in class platform is built with all ETL best practices built to handle billions of rows of data and will scale with your business when you need them to, while allowing you to only pay for what you use today.
• Get started in minutes. Get started in minutes with our self-serve UI or with the help of our on-boarding experts who can guide you through the process. We provide extensive documentation support and content to guide you all the way.
• Managed Data Warehouse. While cloud data warehouses offer immense flexibility and opportunity, managing them can be a hassle without the right team and resources. If you do not want the trouble of managing them in-house, use our managed warehouse offering and get started today. Whenever you feel you are ready to do it in-house, simply configure your own warehouse and direct pipelines to it.
• Activate your data with Reverse ETL. Be future-ready and don’t let your data sit idle in the data warehouse or stay limited to your BI dashboards. The unidimensional approach toward data management is now undergoing a paradigm change. Instead, use DataChannel’s reverse ETL offering to send data to the tools your business teams use every day. Set up alerts & notifications on top of your data warehouse and sync customer data across all platforms converting your data warehouse into a powerful CDP (Customer Data Platform). You can even preview the data without ever leaving the platform.