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 StreamSets

The StreamSets DataOps Platform includes five components:

  • Control Hub is the dashboard for building, deploying, and operating data flows.

  • Data Collector is an open source tool for designing streaming data pipelines with both a graphical UI and a command-line interface.

  • Data Collector Edge is a data ingestion and analytics tool for IoT and cybersecurity edge systems that runs via an ultralight agent.

  • Data Protector discovers and secures sensitive data as it moves through a pipeline, to aid compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, and other regulations.

  • DataFlow Performance Manager adds historical comparisons and data SLAs for availability, accuracy, and security.

  • About Informatica

    Informatica offers a portfolio of data integration products as well as tools for master data management, data quality, data cataloging, and API management. Informatica started out with on-premises tools but now offers a cloud platform as well.

    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.

    StreamSets LogoInformatica LogoStitch Logo
    FocusETL, transformations, data prepData integration, ETLData ingestion, ELT
    Database replicationFull replication or change data captureFull table; incremental via change data captureFull table; incremental via change data capture or SELECT/replication keys
    SaaS sourcesOnly SalesforceMore than 80More than 100
    Ability for customers to add new data sourcesYesYesYes
    Connects to data warehouses? Data lakes?Yes / Yes Yes / YesYes / Yes
    Transparent pricingNoNoYes
    G2 customer satisfactionHelpNot Rated4/54.8/5
    Support SLAsAvailableAvailableAvailable
    Purchase processRequires a conversation with sales Requires conversation with salesOptions for self-service or talking with sales. Also available from the AWS store.
    Compliance, governance, and security certificationsHIPAA, GDPR HIPAA, SOC 2, SOC 3, Privacy ShieldHIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2
    Data sharingNo Yes, through Informatica CloudYes, through Talend Data Fabric
    Vendor lock-inAnnual contracts. StreamSets Data Collector is open source, other parts of the platform are proprietary. Annual contracts. No open sourceMonth to month or annual contracts. Open source integrations
    Developer toolsSeveral APIs Informatica Developer Tool, REST API, Connector ToolkitImport 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

    StreamSets

    StreamSets comes with more than 50 pre-load transformation processors, which users can drag and drop onto a graphical workspace. Processors can look up, remove, convert, parse, and aggregate data from various sources. Developers can write their own custom processors in Java, Java Expression Language (EL), JavaScript, Jython, Groovy, and Scala.

    Informatica

    Informatica has been an on-premises product for most of its history, and much of the product is focused on preload transformations, which is an important feature when sending data to an on-premises data warehouse. Informatica includes a library of prebuilt transformations and the ability to build custom transformations using a proprietary transformation language.

    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.

    StreamSets

    StreamSets Data Collector (SDC) supports more than 40 storage and database sources, plus Kafka Streams and MapR Streams; no SaaS integrations are available other than Salesforce. Destinations include Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Lake, and more than 30 other database, storage, and streaming platforms.

    Informatica

    Informatica provides Cloud Connectors for more than 100 applications and databases. The only cloud data warehouse destination it supports is Amazon Redshift. It also support Pivotal's Greenplum on-premises platform. The only data lake destination it supports is Microsoft Azure SQL Data Lake. Developers can create new connectors using Informatica Connector Toolkit.

    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.

    StreamSets

    StreamSets provides support through a Zendesk ticketing system. Documentation is comprehensive. Digital training materials are available.

    Informatica

    Informatica provides three levels of support. Basic Success is available during business hours. Premium Success offers 24x7 support for Priority 1 cases. Signature Support offers 24x7 support for all cases. Documentation is comprehensive. The company offers training through Informatica University.

    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

    StreamSets

    StreamSets provides a 30-day free trial. Pricing isn't disclosed.

    Informatica

    Informatica has many products, each of which may have several optional components. The base version of Integration Cloud starts at $2,000 per month. The pricing of add-on tiers is undisclosed. Informatica provides a 30-day free trial for many of its products.

    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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