Most businesses have data stored in a variety of locations, from in-house databases to SaaS platforms. To get a full picture of their finances and operations, they pull data from all those sources into a data warehouse or data lake and run analytics against it. But they don't want to build and maintain their own data pipelines.

Fortunately, it’s not necessary to code everything in-house. Here's an comparison of two such tools, head to head.

About Alteryx

Alteryx offers several products:

  • Designer, the company's primary product, is a data preparation and blending tool.
  • Server lets organizations self-host data analytics.
  • Connect is a platform for sharing analytics.
  • Promote helps analytic teams deploy predictive models.
  • Data Sets gives customers Location and Business Insights data sets for analytics.

About Azure Data Factory

Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based data integration service for creating ETL and ELT pipelines. It allows users to create data processing workflows in the cloud,either through a graphical interface or by writing code, for orchestrating and automating data movement and data transformation.

Stitch and Talend partner closely with Microsoft. While this page details our products that have some overlapping functionality and the differences between them, we're more complementary than we are competitive. Microsoft Azure offers lots of products beyond what's mentioned on this page, and we have thousands of customers who successfully use our solutions together.

About Stitch

Stitch Data Loader is a cloud-based platform for ETL — extract, transform, and load. More than 3,000 companies use Stitch to move billions of records every day from SaaS applications and databases into data warehouses and data lakes, where it can be analyzed with BI tools. Stitch is a Talend company and is part of the Talend Data Fabric.

Alteryx LogoAzure Data Factory LogoStitch Logo
FocusETL, transformations, data prepETLData ingestion, ELT
Database replicationFull table; incremental via SELECT/replication keysFull table; incremental via custom SELECT queryFull table; incremental via change data capture or SELECT/replication keys
SaaS sourcesFewer than 10About 20, with several more in previewMore than 100
Ability for customers to add new data sourcesNoNoYes
Connects to data warehouses? Data lakes?Yes / YesYes / YesYes / Yes
Transparent pricingYesYesYes
G2 customer satisfactionHelp4.4/54.6/54.8/5
Support SLAsNoYesAvailable
Purchase processRequires a conversation with salesOptions for self-service or talking with salesOptions for self-service or talking with sales. Also available from the AWS store.
Compliance, governance, and security certificationsNoneHIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, othersHIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2
Data sharingNoNoYes, through Talend Data Fabric
Vendor lock-inAnnual contractsMonth to monthMonth to month or annual contracts. Open source integrations
Developer toolsREST APIREST API, .Net and Python SDKsImport API, Stitch Connect API for integrating Stitch with other platforms, Singer open source project

Let's dive into some of the details of each platform.

Transformations

Alteryx

Alteryx lets users drag tool icons onto its graphical workspace for in-database data cleansing, transformation, filtering, selection, and sorting. Developers can also write custom functions in C++ and XML macro functions and incorporate them into the Alteryx interface.

Azure Data Factory

Azure Data Factory supports both pre- and post-load transformations. Users apply transformations either by using a GUI to map them, or in code using Power Query Online. Azure Data Factory supports a wide range of transformation functions.

Stitch

Stitch is an ELT product. Within the pipeline, Stitch does only transformations that are required for compatibility with the destination, such as translating data types or denesting data when relevant. Stitch is part of Talend, which also provides tools for transforming data either within the data warehouse or via external processing engines such as Spark and MapReduce. Transformations can be defined in SQL, Python, Java, or via graphical user interface.

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Connectors: Data sources and destinations

Each of these tools supports a variety of data sources and destinations.

Alteryx

Alteryx supports integrations with about 80 file formats, storage platforms, databases, data warehouses, and data lakes. It focuses on data preparation and blending more than on providing a wide range of connections to extract data from SaaS sources. Destinations include Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Snowflake, and more than 40 other file formats, databases, and on-premises data warehouses.

Azure Data Factory

Azure Data Factory integrates with about 80 data sources, including SaaS platforms, SQL and NoSQL databases, generic protocols, and various file types. It supports around 20 cloud and on-premises data warehouse and database destinations.

Stitch

Stitch supports more than 100 database and SaaS integrationsas data sources, and eight data warehouse and data lake destinations. Customers can contract with Stitch to build new sources, and anyone can add a new source to Stitch by developing it according to the standards laid out in Singer, an open source toolkit for writing scripts that move data. Singer integrations can be run independently, regardless of whether the user is a Stitch customer. Running Singer integrations on Stitch’s platform allows users to take advantage of Stitch's monitoring, scheduling, credential management, and autoscaling features.

Support, documentation, and training

Data integration tools can be complex, so vendors offer several ways to help their customers. Online documentation is the first resource users often turn to, and support teams can answer questions that aren't covered in the docs. Vendors of the more complicated tools may also offer training services.

Alteryx

Alteryx provides support through an online community and an email ticketing system. Documentation is comprehensive. Both the company and the community provide digital training resources.

Azure Data Factory

Azure Data Factory provides support via online forums and an online support request form. Email and phone support are available. Documentation is comprehensive. Digital training materials are available.

Stitch

Stitch provides in-app chat support to all customers, and phone support is available for Enterprise customers. Support SLAs are available. Documentation is comprehensive and is open source — anyone can contribute additions and improvements or repurpose the content. Stitch does not provide training services.

Pricing

Alteryx

Alteryx provides a 14-day free trial. Alteryx Designer costs $5,195 per user per year. Add-ons are available for an additional cost.

Azure Data Factory

Pricing for Azure Data Factory's data pipeline is calculated based on number of pipeline orchestration runs; compute-hours for flow execution and debugging; and number of Data Factory operations, such as pipeline monitoring.

Stitch

Stitch has pricing that scales to fit a wide range of budgets and company sizes. All new users get an unlimited 14-day trial. Standard plans range from $100 to $1,250 per month depending on scale, with discounts for paying annually. Enterprise plans for larger organizations and mission-critical use cases can include custom features, data volumes, and service levels, and are priced individually.

Get started now

Which tool is better overall? That's something every organization has to decide based on its unique requirements, but we can help you get started. Sign up now for a free trial of Stitch.

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