Data analytics

7 Best Big Data ETL Tools for Marketing Businesses in 2024

Big data refers to a large volume of complex data that can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. As this type of data grows exponentially, it’s impossible to process using traditional methods, such as relational databases. 

To analyze big data, you need an ETL tool to first move it from a source to a data warehouse. Let’s check out this year’s lineup of the best big data ETL tools.

Whatagraph marketing reporting tool
Nikola Gemes

Apr 05 2023 5 min read

Best Big Data ETL Tools for Marketing Businesses

Table of Contents

    What are ETL tools?

    ETL tools are applications that help users execute the ETL process. ETL stands for extract, transform, load, which is a process for moving your data from various data sources to a single repository where it becomes ready for analysis and reporting. 

    As big data ETL processes require a large number of scheduled processes for data migration, big data ETL tools have become essential for coordinating and executing those activities on a large volume. 

    This is why it’s essential to choose an ETL tool that fulfills your data management use case, but also one that your team can use without outside assistance. 

    We formed our best ETL tools list on three criteria

    1. Key Features
    2. Pricing
    3. Use case

    Easily build a marketing data warehouse with Whatagraph

    Top 7 big data ETL Tools

    Now let’s see what our lineup of the best big data ETL tools has to offer. 

    1. Whatagraph

    Whatagraph is an automated data pipeline that helps marketing teams load data from multiple marketing data sources to Google BigQuery, a data warehouse based on the Google Cloud Platform.  

    You can use Whatagraph’s data transfer service without any coding knowledge while effectively eliminating manual work. Using our platform, you can complete the data transfer in just four steps:

    1. Connect the destination
    2. Choose the integration
    3. Set the schema
    4. Schedule the transfer

    In the last stage, you can also set the transfer frequency — when and how often you want your data to move to BigQuery.

    select a source of your data transfer

    Key features:

    • Move data from a source to BigQuery in just 3 steps
    • No maintenance and infinite scalability
    • No coding or developers required 
    • Intuitive user interface
    • Transparent and easy-to-understand pricing plan
    • Data visualization via drag-and-drop dashboards. 

    Whatagraph is a tool that scales up or down depending on your business needs. 

    You might base your marketing strategy on insights from your LinkedIn Ads or Google Ads campaigns and be happy with it for the time being. 

    However, when you want to add more channels, like Google Analytics or Instagram, Whatagraph scales up to deliver.

    Whatagraph pricing:

    Whatagraph has three pricing plans based on the number of data sources and users, with unlimited reports included in all three packages.

    Data transfers to BigQuery are available as an add-on to each pricing plan or as a standalone service for a flexible fee per transfer per month. 

    Who is Whatagraph for?

    Marketing agencies and in-house teams looking to extract large volumes of data from multiple digital marketing platforms to store it in BigQuery and create compelling marketing reports using that data.  

    If you’re updating your tech stack, writing tons of reports using different-sourced data, or simply want to keep your business data safe in one place, start a free trial and find out how Whatagraph can help. 

    2. Talend

    Talend is an open-source ETL tool that offers a portfolio of big data integration and management tools. Their flagship tool, Talend Open Studio for Data Integration, is available through a free, open-source license. 

    Talend is available in three separate editions and provides wide connectivity, built-in data quality, and native code generation to support big data technologies. It offers functionalities to build basic pipelines for Hadoop, NoSQL, MapReduce, Spark, machine learning, and IoT. 

    Key features:

    • Multi-/hybrid-cloud and on-premises integration flexibility
    • Data profiling to identify data quality issues
    • Specialized connectors for moving large amounts of data
    • Additional unstructured data capability and capacity

    talend-2.jpg

    Source

    Talend pricing: The Big Data Platform package is quote-based so you need to reach out to get a quote for your specific needs. 

    Who is Talend for? 

    Data engineers and teams with basic coding skills for pipeline building, data preparation, and application integration.  

    3. Informatica

    Informatica is an on-premise big data ETL tool that supports data integration with different traditional databases. It delivers real-time data on demand and is capable of data capturing (extracting information from documents and converting it into data). 

    Informatica has a centralized error logging system that logs errors and rejects the data into relational tables, which allows the technical team to correct the errors. 

    Key features:

    • Enterprise-level data integration
    • Data security through complete user authentication, granular privacy, and secure data transfer
    • Simplifies design processes by allowing users to search and profile data, reuse objects across teams and projects, as well as leverage metadata
    • Able to communicate with a range of on-premise and cloud data sources

    Informatica pricing

    The basic plan starts at $2,000 a month, but the final tab depends on the data sources, security, etc. However, Informatica doesn’t offer transparent pricing, while the Amazon Web Services AWS and Microsoft Azure integration are pay-as-you-go based. 

    Who is Informatica for?

    Large companies that are looking for advanced big data transformation, dynamic partitioning, and data masking. 

    4. Hevo Data

    Hevo Data is a no-code pipeline that performs data replication for loading data into data warehouses. With more than 150 integrations, it can move data from a wide range of SaaS apps and relational databases, NoSQL databases, and load it into any warehouse, including Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Snowflake. Hevo not only allows you to load your big data into a data warehouse but to enrich it with built-in code transformations. 

    Key features:

    • Drag-and-drop interface
    • Intuitive dashboards for monitoring pipeline performance
    • ETL platform with scalable architecture 
    • Live chat and round-a-clock support even during the trial period

    Hevo.png

    Source

    Hevo pricing

    • Hevo Free — $0/month for 50 connectors and single sign-on
    • Hevo Starter — $239/month for 150 connectors and free setup assistance
    • Hevo Business — quote-based package for teams with many data sources and high data volume

    Who is Hevo for?  

    Marketing agencies that handle data extraction, transformation, and load into multiple data warehouses. 

    5. CloverDX

    CloverDX is a Java-based ETL solution that you can use to automate big data integration. It supports data transformations and loading with many data sources like XML, JSON, CRMs, emails, etc. It comes with job scheduling and monitoring and offers a distributed environment with a highly scalable architecture. 

    CloverDX allows businesses to reduce the cost of data processing and improve the data flow by automating the process. 

    Key features:

    • Connects to any data source or output
    • Eliminates repetitive tasks through an automation-first approach
    • Scalable runtime on-premise or in the cloud
    • Able to publish data to databases, files, APIs, or messages

    CloverDX pricing

    CloverDX has a usage-based pricing model which is not transparent. You need to contact the vendor for pricing details. 

    Who is CloverDX for?

    Large and small companies in diverse industries that want to build and manage data pipelines while eliminating data silos and avoiding vendor lock-in. 

    6. Fivetran

    Fivetran is an automated data integration platform that brings ready-to-use connectors, transformations, and analytics templates that adapt to changing APIs and schemas. Fivetran can synchronize data from databases, event logs, and cloud applications. 

    It’s an excellent choice for businesses looking to connect external SaaS services to extract and load data into data lakes and warehouses for data science and analytics purposes. 

    Key features:

    • Resilient, automated data pipeline that transforms data with standardized schemas 
    • Supports cloud-based data warehouses like BigQuery, Snowflake, Microsoft Azure SQL, and Amazon Redshift. 
    • Logging and reporting capabilities
    • Scalable cloud platform on demand

    Fivetran.png

    Source

    Fivetran supports a large number of SaaS data sources while allowing users to add their own custom integrations. It’s practically built only for tech-savvy people. 

    Fivetran pricing

    • Fivetran Starter — $120 per month
    • Fivetran Standard Select — $60 per month
    • Fivetran Standard — $180 per month
    • Fivetran Standard Select — $240 per month

    Who is Fivetran for?

    Data analysts who need access to centralized data but don’t want to spend time maintaining their own pipelines or ETL systems. 

    7. Keboola

    Keboola is a cloud-based data integration tool that connects data sources to analytics platforms. It supports the entire ETL process, from the point of data extraction and preparations to cleansing, and data warehousing, all up to ingestion, enrichment, and loading. 

    Keboola supports more than 200 integrations and creates workflows where users can build their own data applications or integrations using GitHub or Docker while automating low-value repetitive activities.

    Key features:

    • Pulls data from a variety of sources, including email, web pages, PDFs, and other documents
    • Multiple project architecture
    • Public, private, and hybrid cloud deployments with the region and cloud provider selection
    • Different backend options (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Synapse)

    Keboola pricing:

    • Keboola Free Tier — $0/month for 120 minutes of computational runtime and 1 connection project
    • Keboola Enterprise Plan — quote-based pricing for multiple project architecture and public/private cloud

    Who is Keboola for?

    Data engineers, data analysts, and analytics engineers who need to collaborate on analytics and automation as a team on all actions from extraction, transformation, data management, and pipeline orchestration to ELT.  

    Verdict

    This is our choice of the best big data ETL tools for marketing agencies, so you can take your pick and select the one that best suits your needs. 

    If you’re looking for an open-source ETL platform, Talend and CloverDX would be good choices. 

    However, if you’re looking for a real-time data pipeline to integrate big data from various sources into a data warehouse with only 3 clicks, try Whatagraph. 

    When designing Whatagraph’s data transfer function, we had two types of customers in mind.

    1. Marketing agencies that manage multiple channels for hundreds of clients 
    2. Non-technical in-house marketing teams

    We developed a data integration and reporting tool that simplifies moving large volumes of data to BigQuery to the level of point-and-click and drag-and-drop.  

    Try Whatagraph and transfer data to a warehouse in 4 simple steps

    Published on Apr 05 2023

    Whatagraph marketing reporting tool

    WRITTEN BY

    Nikola Gemes

    Nikola is a content marketer at Whatagraph with extensive writing experience in SaaS and tech niches. With a background in content management apps and composable architectures, it's his job to educate readers about the latest developments in the world of marketing data, data warehousing, headless architectures, and federated content platforms.