The Best Data Integration Tools

Data integration refers to bringing your data from multiple sources into a single database or system. You can only integrate data by using data integration tools. This process is critical to business data management because it allows organizations to use all their data, regardless of where it is stored.

Research shows that the global data integration and integrity software market was $10.75 billion in 2021. They expect the value to increase to 29.16 billion by 2029, with a 13.6% CAGR. Several data integration tools are available on the market, each of which has its strengths and weaknesses. First, let’s understand what a data integration tool is.

What Is a Data Integration Tool?

A data integration tool is a software application that helps organizations connect disparate data sources and bring them together into a single, centralized view. They perform data mapping, transformation, and cleansing. Data integration tools combine data from multiple sources, including databases, ERP systems, CRM systems, and other applications.

By integrating data from these different sources, organizations can get a complete view of their business operations and make better-informed decisions.

Types of Data Tool

There are different types of data tools available in the market today. Therefore, choosing the best that matches enterprises’ needs is crucial.

• Open-source data integration tool
• proprietary data integration tool
• On-premises data integration tool
• Cloud-based data integration tool

22 Best Data Integration Tools

Below is a list of the best data integration tools in the market today.

1. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)

Oracle Data Integrator is a platform for building ETL solutions using Oracle’s SQL Loader and XML Developer toolsets.

It is set to deliver unique next-generation business intelligence and allows efficient ETL processes to derive valuable insights.

ODI integrates easily with oracle data warehouses, making it a favorite among Oracle users.

In addition, it provides superior developer productivity and a flow-based declarative user interface.

Features

• High-performance architecture with considerable data support
• Provides interoperability with Oracle Warehouse Builder (ODB)
• Provides SOA-enabled and event-driven services
• Supports XML
• Programmatic access to Oracle’s OBIEE 12c Essentials cloud applications through Java APIs

Pros

• Supports Big Data
• Enables data virtualization
• Vast options for transformations
• Best choice to handle complicated data transformations

Cons

• Not easy to implement and might require expertise.
• Error messages are not clear, making it hard to debug

2. Integrate.io

Intergrate.io has a unique next-generation approach to data integration, allowing you to link your data sources and make them more accessible to your business.

This database integration software solution provides an ETL solution for easy data flow automation with a low-code and no-code method, which makes it a superior choice, especially for users with no tech experience.

With this tool, you can use data integration, case package designer, data replication transformation, and more.

After extracting the data from their sources, integrate.io helps clean, normalize and transform it before loading it into the warehouse.

It helps minimize data preparation and optimize data analysis to provide timely results.

With Integrate.io, the cost depends on the number of connectors. The minimum connectors are two; source and destination.

Features

• It has an intuitive UI(user interface) and also allows the use of REST API
• Cutting-edge data security such as SSL/TLS encryption, and SOC compliance, among others
• Provides Salesforce to Salesforce integrations
• Simple ETL and ELT processes
• Heterogeneous data source and data destination that has over 120 integrations, including BI tools, data warehouse, SAAS platform, and cloud storage

Pros

• Excellent technical support
• Easy to setup and of use
• A helpful tool for ETL pipeline
• Great API tool for migration cost

Cons

• Hard to debug errors
• Has little documentation

3. Informatica PowerCenter

Informatica PowerCenter is a cloud-based data integration and governance platform. It ranks among the most powerful ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools today.

PowerCenter provides organizations with a single pane of glass for managing their data.

In addition to the core functionality (integration, governance, and analytics), it also provides an Application Programming Interface (API) to enable developers to expand its functionality.

Furthermore, it has a GUI capability and an easy drag and drop feature. On top of ETLcapability, it also provides data quality, masking, data replication, and master data management, among other services.

Features

• Trusted by large to mid-size organizations because of its agile process that enables timely delivery
• Provides an end-to-end integration platform
• Allows quick rapid prototyping, profiling, and validation
• Provides simple access and integration of data no matter the source
• Easily connects to cloud application sources.

Pros

• Provides easy transformations
• It transforms enormous amounts of data.
• Ease of use
• A stable tool with easy monitoring capabilities

Cons

• The user interface is a little difficult at the start, especially for beginners.
• Hard to understand and debug error messages
• Use a lot of memory.

4. Hevo Data

Hevo Data is an end-to-end data pipeline tool that allows you to extract, transform and load data for business analysis. This tool is widely known for its simple data transformations.

With Hevo, data teams can consolidate and streamline data from scattered sources and load it into their warehouse. As a result, the integration helps save time, leading to timely decision-making.

Hevo Data has a free package you might want to try if you’re just starting with analytics. Otherwise, their price starts at $239/month.

Features

• Allows for an end-to-end data integration with easy implementation in minutes
• Offers inbuilt preload transformations to allow easy data formatting. You can also use the preload transformation feature to generate analyzed data- ready for quick decision-making.
• You can easily monitor and observe pipeline health in a real-time view of data flow. Furthermore, Hevo Data provides real-time alerts and activity logs so you can be on top of things.
• With Hevo, you can scale with no data loss and little delay, thanks to a fault-tolerant architecture.
• You can pick from 150+ plug-and-play integrations such as SAAS, file systems, databases, and others.
• Supports ETL and ELT

Pros

• Extremely user-friendly
• Easy to set up
• Seamless data integration
• No coding is needed.
• Excellent customer support
• Perfect for mid-sized companies and accounting industries

Cons

• High CPU usage
• Transformations can be confusing, making it necessary to understand the data source.
• You’re unable to schedule pipeline jobs.

5. Qlik Replicate

Qlik is among data analysts’ most versatile and powerful replication tools. It replicates, synchronizes, consolidates, distributes, and ingests data from different sources such as data warehouses, Hadoop, and databases.

The Qlik platform allows different configurations to suit your needs. In addition, it provides for higher batch loads with less time. For example, it helps reduce a significant insurer’s nightly batch load time from 6 to 8 hours to 10 minutes.

Features

• Accelerates data integration for timely analytics by using a simple drag and drop interface, eliminating manual coding
• Efficiently process big data loads.
• Supports data integration across all major platforms and all data types
• Provides high throughput and low latency with centralized monitoring and control
• Delivers SAP data in near real-time analytics
• Improve data transfer for cloud-native environments

Pros

• Intuitive and easy to use
• Meets all data replication needs
• Replicates data in near real-time
• Excellent for managing data pipelines and data transformation
• Easy to implement and offers excellent centralized monitoring

Cons

• Slightly outdated
• You might need support with customization.

6. SnapLogic

SnapLogic is among enterprise solutions’ leading cloud-based data integration tools (iPaaS). It offers high-performance and fast data integration services to enterprises.

This tool comes with 500+ pre-built connectors and provides simple low code or no code options to perform data integration.

Features

• Provides integration to big data sources
• Capable of scalability
• High-end security for transferring data
• It comes with an intelligent system for error detection, alerting, and creating log reports on the error.
• Real-time validation
• Allows for data agnosticism (structures, unstructured, and semi-structured)
• Provides reporting tools to view ETL job progress to keep you on top of your data
• It comes with 500+ pre-built connectors.

Pros

• Vast built-in integrations
• Ease of use
• Easy tracking of feeds
• Great customer service
• Offers value for money

Cons

• It needs a learning curve, especially for beginners.
• It does not connect to quite a few data sources.
• Limited options for connecting with cloud solutions.

7. SAP (System Application and Products) Data Services

Gartner named SAP the best data leader for data integration in 2021. SAP Data Services provides data visualization capabilities for structured and unstructured data. It allows workflow development and execution from different sources such as applications, databases, flat files, Web Services, and more. Furthermore, it transforms and integrates data to provide meaningful information.

This tool also helps improve your enterprise data quality to deliver timely data for decision-making or other business insights.

SAP Data Services serves businesses with 10001+ employees, especially in the IT industry.

Features

• Allows integration with all enterprise data sources
• Provides native-text data processing
• Have data quality dashboards to show issues across all applications
• High-performance and scalability, thus enabling parallel processing, bulk data loading, and grid computing

Pros

• Offers value for money
• Valuable ETL functionality
• Excellent for big giant companies
• Suitable for profit and loss calculations
• Great product for data integration

Cons

• Vague error description that takes time to debug
• Large code can be difficult to handle

8. Microsoft Azure Data Factory

Microsoft Azure Data Factory (ADF) ranks highly among data orchestration tools for data migration. This tool enables data migration onto a single data structure to prevent data loss when transferring between on-premises or cloud systems.

In addition, it offers hybrid data integration by visually integrating data sources with over 90 free builds in data connectors.

Its intuitive interface allows you to construct ETL and ELT processes, orchestrate and monitor data pipelines without coding, or write your code.

Further, the integrated data is passed to Azure Synapse Analytics to provide business insights.

Features

• You can easily rehost and build ETL and ELT with built-in Git and CI/CD support.
• It offers a pay-as-you-go payment option as you enjoy serverless cloud service.
• Provides high-end security by encrypting data during transit
• It’s highly scalable as it can handle big data due to time slicing and parallelism capabilities.
• It allows you to monitor activities manually and also enables you to set up alerts that will monitor your pipelines.

Pros

• No upfront costs
• Excellent for large data
• Great integration capabilities
• The powerful and reliable data integration tool
• Easy to scale data flows, SSIS nodes, and data integration units
• It’s flexible and has good monitoring.
• Easy drag and drop interface

Cons

• Debugging can be difficult.

9. ZigiWave ZigOps

ZigOps is a seamless end-to-end data integration tool that allows you to link your data from different sources into a single, unified platform. It is best known for its flexibility and no-code integration features. This tool is available in iPaaS and on-premises systems. Additionally, it integrates with Monitoring, ITSM, DevOps, CRM, and cloud systems.

With the help of the available templates, which are customizable, you can easily automate your workflows in less than 5 minutes. The platform can integrate complex systems and support advanced data mappings.

On top of this, it provides a secure way of integrating data as it does not store any data in the database for on-premises integration.

Features

• No codes or additional scripts are required.
• Allows for advanced mappings to customize the integration to match your needs
• Synchronizes data in real-time
• It acts as a connector between two platforms via APIs, so you won’t have to change anything during integration.
• It provides predefined templates; you only customize them to fit your needs.
• Integrates with over 300 platforms
• It allows you to use an integration hub for easy data exchange.

Pros

• Easy to set up
• Easy to use since there is no coding involved.
• Great customer support
• Offers value for money

Cons

• Most customers say that ZigOps works exceptionally except for some common issues when using systems, such as bugs.

10. Fivetran

Fivetran platform seamlessly and automatically prepares, cleans, and loads data to your preferred destination. It offers a great selection of connectors that effectively replicate events, application files, and databases in a cloud warehouse.

Fivetran is an easy-to-use tool that keeps up with schema and API changes by analyzing data quickly to provide meaningful business insights.

Users highly rate this tool’s metadata management as being exceptional. Fivetran is suitable for medium-sized companies with 51-1000 employees and the Computer Software sector.

Features

• Synchronization from non-native sources

Pros

• Easy to set up
• It’s scalable
• It offers excellent security features.
• It has a wide range of ingesting plugins
• Provides automatic schema migration
• Data replication from any source

Cons

• It can sometimes experience delays.
• Expensive compared to alternatives

11. Jitterbit Harmony

Jitterbit is a cloud-based data integration tool that seamlessly integrates thousands of applications, data, and systems. It supports Saas, on-premise, and Cloud-based applications.

Jitterbit combines the power of APIs, artificial intelligence, and integration to accelerate innovation for its customers. The Jitterbit Harmony allows you to design, deploy and manage the integration process.

The platform also uses an intuitive graphical interface, which makes it easier to use. Furthermore, the tool includes AI features such as real-time language. Translation, speech recognition, and recommendation systems help you make better decisions.

Features

• Powerful workflow designer
• Connect to any app using an inbuilt connector
• It has an API manager to support its full cycle.
• use graphical interface
• Supports batch processes
• It comes with an inbuilt template that is easily customizable.
• Use smart agents integration engines
• Access and control your system from anywhere
• Encrypt and authenticate transactions using SSL and x.509 to keep your data safe

Pros

• It makes integration with Salesforce easy.
• Ease of use
• Excellent customer support
• It’s stable and reliable.

Cons

• Logging needs improvement
• Debugging can be difficult.

12. IRI Voracity

IRI (Innovative Routines International) has been in business for quite some time. This company provides customers with an all-in-one data management platform known as IRI voracity. It combines data discovery, governance, migration, and analytics metadata framework on Eclipse.

Voracity use case includes Big data analytics, ETL modernization, and data governance. With this platform, you can discover, integrate, migrate, govern, analyze and curate.

Features

• Multiple source connections (structured and unstructured)
• Multiple target definitions to achieve synchronized data
• Use FAct extract (FACT) to accelerate data acquisition. It works with My SQL, DB2 Sybase, UDB, and SQL Server, among others.
• Data mapping
• Data cleansing and validation and enrichment for high-quality data and reliable ETL and BIG
• Hadoop transforms with MapReduce 2, Storm Spark, Spark Stream, or Tez processing for unlimited scalability.
• CoSort(SortCL)4GL DDL/DML to consolidate, simplify metadata and save I/Os

Pros

• Excellent for ETL jobs and bigdata
• Fast execution, even in complex situations
• Offers value for money
• Excellent user interface enabling ease of use

Cons

• It’s expensive

13. Dell Boomi

Boomi is a Cloud-based integration platform from Dell. The tool helps you eliminate the complexity of manual integration of on-premises and cloud applications. Boomi allows its users to seamlessly integrate data applications and customers using a drag and drop user interface, data mapping tools, and an excellent collection of connectors. You can use Boomi in Cloud, on-premise, or hybrid systems.

Boomi uses low-code or no-code connectors and offers customization capabilities to suit your needs. The platform is better known for real-time and batch integration.

Boomi is suitable for all businesses with 1000+ employees and the IT and Services industry.

Features

• Accelerate time to value
• Supports API and EDI connections
• Support deal time and batch integration
• It comes with a comprehensive library connection.

Pros

• No entry fee
• Easy to set up
• Versatile and customizable
• It has a user-friendly interface.
• Great connectors
• Reporting tools are excellent.
• Allows fast Big Data migration
• Unified reporting porting

Con

• Should improve portability, reliability, and maintainability
• Bad governance and DevOps capabilities

14. Denodo

Denodo is among the top data integration tools known for its incredible virtualization capabilities. It helps join multi-structured data sources from databases, enterprises, Cloudbases, and Big Data systems.

The Denodo integration platform combines disparate data in real time to reduce the time used to prepare data, leading to high development costs. Denodo makes data more accessible to business users, contributing to developing a more robust data culture.

Features

• Built-in automation and intelligence
• End-to-end data capabilities
• Supports Big Data such as Hadoop distributions or NoSQL data stores etc.
• Real-Time data integration of on or off-premises
• Self-service capabilities enable users to develop business insights quickly.

Pros

• Simple to implement
• Excellent technical support
• Great platform for virtualization
• Excellent overall capability
• Fast and reliable

Cons

• They need to improve on their DevOps
• A little buggy
• Lack of enough documentation

15. Microsoft My SQL Server Integration Services (SIIS)

SIIS is a data integration and workflow application tool. Its key feature is the data warehousing tool that enables you to extract, transform and load (ETL) data.

This integration tool allows you to load data from one database, including Oracle, SQL Server, and Excel files.

The SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) runs and maintains the SIIS packages and projects to function efficiently.

SIIS offers graphical Integration Services to develop business insights with no code. In addition, it provides you with extensive Integration Services for you to add customizations using code to fit your needs.

Features

• Seamless data integration from different sources
• Provides a data mining query and lookup transformation
• Graphical tools for creating packages with no code
• Inbuilt data connectors
• Use the Windows Wizard workflow function
• Master and metadata management

Pros

• Perfect for ETLs
• It is reliable, easy to learn and use.
• A good tool for transforming and merging data from disparate sources
• Makes data mapping
• It is very effective.

Cons

• It is not scalable.
• Difficult to integrate using standard APIs and tools

16. IBM DataStage

International Business Machine, commonly referred to as IBM, is a multinational technology company widely known for hardware and software production. With its vast experience, IBM has a data integration tool, IBM InfoSphere DataStage. This tool is rich in integration and monitoring capabilities, providing stable business insights.

In addition, IBM DataStage it’s an open-source platform that is AI-powered to accelerate the delivery of insights for analytics. It offers next-generation data integration capabilities to help your business a notch higher. It has a modern user interface and architecture that allows you to perform ETL tasks seamlessly.

Additionally, it offers a large selection of pre-built connections and levels to facilitate seamless data transfer between various cloud services and data warehouses, including IBM Netezza.

Features

• It lets you manage data and analytics lifecycle.
• Automated delivery pipelines lead to a decrease in development costs.
• Utilizes the best-in-class parallel engine and load balancing to enhance throughput
• Supports integration of traditional and Big Data
• A comprehensive collection of pre-built connectors

Pros

• Excellent mapping tools
• It enhances business decisions.
• Great functionality and performance
• Excellent expert support

Cons

• Complex syntax
• Its documentation is not the best.

17. Pentaho Data Integration (PDI)

Pentaho is a business intelligence platform that provides data integration, mining, and ETL capabilities. Hitachi Data Systems acquired Pintaho and later merged with Hitachi Vantara. Hitachi Vantara brings a cost-effective data integration platform known as Pentaho Data Integration (PDI).

Pentaho can manage high volumes of data with a data orchestration tool to reduce the time and complexity of data pipelines.

This tool comes in versions: Pentaho Price Edition and Pentaho Community Project. Both tools use codeless pipeline development, although the former has many more features than the latter.

Features

• Supports batch data movement
• Less time to access, transform and blend data from multiple sources
• Improved data pipeline quality
• Broad connectivity
• Secure reporting
• Flexible data architecture

Pros

• Fast data retrieval
• It contains too many bugs.
• It user friendly and excellent for beginners.
• Rich and flexible
• Great for small and medium businesses

Cons

• Slow customer support and a small community
• Too expensive

18. Talend

Talend provides a platform to help you integrate and manage data from all sources to a clean and complete source. It has over 1,000 connectors and components to access any data source, including on-premises and cloud.

This tool also has a drag-and-drop interface that makes integration 10x faster than hand coding.

Features

• Develop and deploy reusable data pipelines
• Support for complex workflows
• Enables you to connect to over 1000 connectors and connections
• Support extensive data integration to advanced data analytics or Spark platforms
• Embedded data quality throughout the integration process to prevent insufficient data
• Development tools that you can use for design deployment, testing, and integration process

Pros

• Consistent and frequent updates
• It’s reliable
• Great support team
• Ease of use
• Allows you to preset metadata
• Fairly priced

Cons

• A little buggy
• Inadequate documentation

19. Dataddo

Dataddo has a straightforward cloud-based platform that allows flexible data integration. It has over 100+ connectors that allow you to easily extract, transform, and load data from various sources, such as CRMs and marketing channels.

This tool helps automate time-consuming ETL processes by providing a no-code interface that helps you create data flow within minutes. With Dataddo, there’s no limitation on your destinations.

Features

• Customizable data sets
• No code platform making it easy to understand
• Deploys Big Data within minutes
• High-end security during data movements such as SOC2 and ISO compliant
• Central management system for tracking progress in the data pipelines

Pro

• Great customer support
• Easy to implement
• Suitable for those without technical knowledge and also for the tech-savvy
• Easy connection to data visualization

Cons

• The web user interface can be slow.
• Sometimes there is a delay in the data source.

20. Adeptia

Adeptia is a data integration-cum – business application tool that allows business users with no technical knowledge to use it easily. This platform simplifies the data integration process by using innovative business management to provide timely and reliable insights.

Adeptia uses a visual drag-and-drop for data mapping to easily specify data formats.

Features

• B2B data exchange
• EDI integration
• Monitoring board to view data in real-time
• Has a messaging center to keep track of all communication inside and outside your company
• Provides an encrypted data environment to secure your data
• Supports most data formats, such as CSV, text, Excel, XML, JSON, databases, and others

Pros

• It’s a no-code platform, making it easy to use.
• Great functionality
• Offers value for money
• Excellent customer support
• Great for beginners

Cons

• hard to troubleshoot errors
• Needs more documentation

21. Elixir

When you have Big Data to integrate, think of the state of art platform Elixir. Elixir is an open-source data integration tool that ensures you can easily integrate and customize even the biggest data. It integrates well with different data sources, such as NoSQL, databases, Big Data Ecosystem, and others.

Features

• Real-time integration of big data and metadata management solutions, data governance, and data quality best practices
• Provides secure data pipeline, integrity, and data management
• Data implementation and deployment, which allows integration with vast data sources
• You can choose a cloud application that meets your business needs.
• Highly customizable enterprise solutions
• Cognitive insights using AI and machine learning
• Enable digital transformation within the cloud

Pros

• Excellent with Big Data pipelines
• Provides real-time analytics
• Integration with vast data sources
• Excellent technical support

Cons

• Less staff to offer support, although there have been improvements

22. Mulesoft Anypoint Platform

Mulesoft is an open-source platform that offers data integration services to enable a business to connect to multiple cloud sources or on-premise systems. Mulesoft was acquired by Salesforce, becoming Salesforce Integration Technology.

Mulesoft Anypoint platform allows users to improve their applications with unique features such as monitoring tasks from the backend and pre-built templates. In addition, it has a massive collection of tools, such as API Designer, Anypoint analytics, Anytime Exchange, Visualizer, Cloudhub, and more.

The Mulesoft tool is suitable for public and private clouds and those with outdated systems.

Features

• Builds APIs with speed and quality
• Anypoint Flex Gateway allows you to deploy and implement modern structures.
• Uses out-of-the-box security, including ISO 27001, GDPR, SOC, and other
• Monitor, diagnose, and troubleshoot your APIs in real time

Pros

• Great monitoring capabilities
• Can simplify product development
• Increases productivity
• Easy to use

Frequently Asked Questions About Data Integration Tools

Both experts and amateurs often have questions about the efficiency of the available data integration tools in the market. Below are some questions to help you get answers to common issues people often want to know.

What should I consider when choosing data integration platforms?

Finding the right data integration tool for your organization depends on several factors:

• Size and complexity of your data
• How many data sources do you need to integrate?
• The budget you have for the project

Also, check whether the platform you want to use has these features:

• Ease of use
• Scalability and flexibility
• Security and Compliance
• Type of data integration tool
• Real-time integration

What is the purpose of data integration?

The purpose of a data integration tool is to unify data from different sources into one unified database.

Companies that want to analyze their data and decide based on their need to integrate their data before doing so. This is because it’s hard to make sense of data when you have different types of data sources. So, it allows for an easy and effective way to access your data, making it easier to work with the information and make timely decisions.

Is data quality important in data integration processes?

The quality of data is critical in data integration. The reason is that the more accurate and reliable your information is, the more likely it is to be accepted by other systems. Also, good quality data will help get valuable insights, enhanced productivity, timely decisions, and revenue growth. So ensure your data is as accurate and reliable as possible before integrating it with other systems.

Is data integration similar to ETL?

No, there’s a difference. The practice of merging meaningful and valuable data from various sources to provide consumers with a uniform viewpoint is known as data integration, while the process of extracting, converting, and loading data into a data warehouse environment is known as ETL.

In summary, the list of the best data integration tools is endless. We hope you’ll find our article helpful in choosing the best platform that will help you solve your business issues. Be sure to select one that has a friendly user interface, scalable, and helps speed up and grow your revenue.