ETL tools assist in gathering data from diverse sources, transforming it, and storing it where you can extract insightful conclusions to drive your business. Of course, the center of any modern business is data. Whether it’s product information, a shipping window estimate, how much time you spend on your smartphone, or anything else, it’s everywhere. When properly processed and used, systems, devices, and services provide data that may be used to make better business decisions. Unfortunately, however, an excessive quantity of data floating about on the internet makes it challenging for you to extract useful information from it.
To make smarter decisions and give consumers the best possible experience, businesses today need a solution that can efficiently and securely manage data. An ETL tool does that. Integrating your data into one place to analyze and transform helps you make better decisions and establish realistic objectives. Let’s learn everything there’s to know about ETL tools, what they accomplish, and how you can use them to get business-driven insight.
How Do You Define ETL?
Extract, Transform, and Load is referred to as ETL. In a nutshell, ETL is a data integration process where a business receives data from several sources and stores it in a single, integrated data store. To drive their business more quickly, businesses employ the process to build a stronger data warehouse. The work is done in three phases.
Data Extraction – Well, you need to EXTRACT data from numerous sources and store it in a single, central database.
Data Transformation – Well, to make sense of this raw data, you need to TRANSFORM it by combining and deduplicating it while maintaining its quality.
Loading Data – To implement it, this data must be LOADED into the intended destination.
What Are ETL Tools?
ETL tools enable you to combine data from several sources and transform it before storing it in a single location. These technologies assist businesses in implementing data integration strategies by collecting many data sources and combining them into a single data warehouse. ETL tools make different data sources work together. Because of this, the process is essential for creating better business information and carrying out more thorough data management plans.
ETL vs. ELT
Despite having differences in their working styles, ETL and ELT are relatively comparable. ETL works well when dealing with smaller data sets that demand challenging transformations. However, ELT works best when dealing with a lot of both structured and unstructured data. Find out the main differences between the two in this section.
1 – ELT stands for Extract, Load, and Transform, whereas ETL stands for Extract, Transform, and Load process.
2 – Data is transferred from the source to the destination during ETL. However, ELT eliminates the need for data staging by using data stores to perform common transformations.
3 – Because ETL transforms the data during the process, it provides additional security while carrying out fundamental transformations. When sensitive data is loaded first, ELT works well.
4 – ETL is really good for more reliable, effective, and quick data analysis. ELT, on the other hand, could be better for quick analysis.
How Do ETL Tools Operate?
For firms that are driven by data, ETL is a great solution. Assisting them in delivering data in the proper format and working is fantastic for any business. ETL tools have a variety of uses and forms based on the setting and purpose. While some programs have extremely simple features, others have more sophisticated features that are best suited for seasoned users. The objective of streamlining and simplifying the process is something you will find in every tool, though. The following describes how the ETL tool work.
1 – EXTRACT data from many sources by the organization’s objective.
2 – To obtain useful information and business intelligence, TRANSFORM the same data from its original raw form to an understandable one.
3 – LOAD the modified data into a cloud or on-premises data warehouse to use it for reporting and analytics to develop your business strategy.
The visual framework helps consumers comprehend how data moves from sources to destinations. In order to retrieve your data from difficult issues, ETL tools provide monitoring, error management, and logging features.
Why Are ETL Tools Necessary?
Businesses may bring their data from various sources, transform it, and load it into an on-premises or cloud-based data warehouse using ETL tools. In order to turn plain data into useful and strong business insight, data scientists can simply access and analyze data. What benefits would employ an ETL tool provide you?
1 – ETL complies with its requirements and helps you build a visible data flow, allowing you to make better business decisions and enhance user experience.
2 – It provides dynamic and useful visualization solutions from your database or apps to give you insights you can act on.
3 – You may automate data collection, transformation, and consolidation using an ETL tool rather than performing everything by hand. You may save time and effort in this way.
4 – It improves the efficiency and performance of the entire process.
5 – An ETL tool is capable of managing huge and complicated data.
6 – It enables sophisticated data cleaning and profiling.
Let’s look at some of the best ETL tools that can help you use data to drive your business.
The Best ETL Tools For SMBs You Can Use
We’ve compiled a list of ETL Tools for SMBs to help you find the right one.
1. Supermetrics
Whether it’s a data warehouse, data lake, market visualization tool, spreadsheet, or BI tool, Supermetrics can help you gather the marketing data you need and bring it all to your preferred reporting, storage, and analytics platform. Then, effectively organize your marketing data to keep you from lagging. Without a sample or time pass, you may instantly bring dimensions and metrics from the marketing platforms into the primary reporting; all you receive is pure data. Start sorting and filtering your data once you’ve transferred it to your favorite storage place. You may also check performance to determine what is functioning and what is not.
Last but not least, prepare your dashboard for optimization by automating reporting and scheduling data transfers while cutting off hours of manual work. If you want to build gorgeous dashboards, Supermetrics has got your back. You merely need to work on the spreadsheet’s number crunching or upload your data into the data warehouse. Discover what occurs after selecting your marketing data destination. Then, extract your marketing data using bespoke output formats or JSON or CSV formats. Spend 14 days with full access to Supermetrics without needing a credit card. Select your preferred data destination and obtain pricing if you are satisfied.
2. Matillion
Without any coding experience, use Matillion Data Loader to manage CDC and batch pipelines simultaneously. A cloud-native platform makes it simple to do contemporary analytics. Many businesses that missed the opportunity to collect information in time may transform that data into helpful information. With Matillion’s cloud-native ETL solutions, you can maintain your market position. It helps organizations transform straightforward data into analytics-ready and actionable data in minutes for improved business decisions and fresh insights. With the aid of transformation and a complete cloud integration platform, your data teams can easily load almost any data from any source into the cloud. To load the data into the cloud data warehouse, Matillion extracts, transform and load it.
Well, to acquire everything you want to drive your business, use the Matillion ETL tool, which allows you access to the cloud’s flexibility, economies, and power. To enhance the value of your data, be sure to give people accessible, quick, and simple access. Use Matillion’s vast selection of pre-built and out-of-the-box connections for the most widely used databases and apps. You may either build new connections or download them from the community in minutes. To provide the power and benefits of each cloud platform, Matillion supports nearly all cloud data warehouses, including Delta Lake, Snowflake, Microsoft Azure Synapse, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, and more. Every premium plan has a free trial period, so you may start it for nothing and choose from the options offered.
3. Dataddo
With Dataddo, you can easily connect all your data sources to storage and dashboards. It helps you easily travel to any destination and gather marketing data from any source. You can monitor all the incoming data from the management center using Dataddo, so don’t worry about integration. Well, from the moment you sign up and connect it to your data pipelines to moving the data from source to destination, this solution takes care of everything quickly. In addition, Dataddo manages all pipeline updates, so you won’t have to worry about missing data due to faulty pipelines.
Non-technical individuals may use Dataddo’s no-code, streamlined platform like a pro, thanks to its powerful data manipulation features. Additionally, you may bring your data because it works with BI tools and a data warehouse. Dataddo provides a good night’s sleep and works for your system. Additionally, Dataddo supports a wide range of file servers, like Google Sheets or Amazon S3, as well as a wide range of cloud storage, including AWS Redshift or Google Big Query, as well as on-premise data warehouses like PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Maria DB. Use the unstoppable platform from Dataddo instead of sorting and starting working. Get a 14-day free trial or pay $35 per source every month to get it.
4. Skyvia
Get a global cloud data platform for data administration, backup, networking, and integration with Skyvia. It is a fully cloud-based platform that eliminates the need for manual deployment or upgrade processes while providing cloud scalability and agility. Skyvia doesn’t provide a coding wizard-based solution to address the demands of business customers and IT professionals with little to no coding experience. You can quickly build and manage data pipelines with Skyvia. You can connect your on-premises and cloud data to automate and simplify your operations, whether you are a tiny startup or a large corporation. Additionally, moving your business data between different cloud apps effortlessly takes a few clicks. Skyvia allows you to manage your cloud data, keep your data secure in one place, and connect with multiple OData consumers by sharing actual data via REST API. You can also protect and query any data from any browser with easy visual Query Builder or SQL. Start with a $15/month entry-level bundle.
5. Hevo
With Hevo, you can set up dependable marketing data pipelines in minutes. It is an extremely user-friendly, code-free data pipeline that loads data quickly from any source to the warehouse in real time for improved analytics. Over 100 ready-to-use connectors for SaaS apps, SDKs, streaming services, cloud storage, and databases are supported by Hevo. It easily connects to any data source and analyzes it using various formats. Then, all the data is loaded into the data warehouse and made ready for further analysis by Hevo’s completely automated and controlled data pipeline.
Hevo’s user-friendly interface lets you create a pipeline with only a few mouse clicks. Anybody on your team may quickly set up the data pipeline. As a result, it saves time while creating the main product. Give Hevo the authority to manage all of your pipelines and upcoming activities. With this ETL tool, you don’t need ETL scripts or Cron tasks for your marketing data. Hevo has the ability to efficiently prepare or transform data and find errors. Your pipelines will scale with the expansion of your business since they can handle millions of records without delay.
6. Stitch
Use Stitch Data to use the analysis-ready data, quickly migrate your marketing data from over 130 sources into a data warehouse, and get answers more quickly. It enables you to evaluate worthwhile insights in more and less time while maintaining data pipelines. Give your data teams options with Stitch’s built-in extendable and straightforward ETL. The extensibility features of Stitch enable your team to proceed whenever it needs any data source. By putting your market data in your infrastructure, you get the power to safeguard, control, and analyze it. With Stitch’s orchestration features, you can give your data flow more transparency and control. Additionally, it helps you load data into your chosen platforms, extract data from the sources that matter, and analyze it using Stitch’s top-notch capabilities. Moreover, from performance to security, expand its features using the open source option. With a free trial, you may start.
7. Integrate
Integrate and power all operational systems and business decision-making to transform your data house into a data platform. It helps deliver a better customer experience, more revenue, and quicker growth. It supports eCommerce businesses that need real-time reporting to grow and run their business. They may use their data to integrate and power the growth of several sectors. In order to find operational efficiencies and build accurate projections, you may enhance customer experience with real-time inventory, carrier, and fulfillment performance reporting. Turn your data into insightful insights immediately by starting your 7-day free trial.
8. AWS Glue
With AWS Glue, you can get a scalable, serverless, and straightforward data integration service and simplify your work when finding, combining, and preparing data for machine learning, app development, and analytics. All the characteristics you need for data integration are included in AWS Glue. So start your analysis immediately and use your data in minutes rather than hours or days. It carries out many distinct tasks, including extracting and finding data from many sources and cleaning, combining, normalizing, and enriching data.
You will encounter both graphical and code-based interfaces to make data integration easier. AWS Glue Data Catalog also makes it simple for users to find and access data. With only a few clicks, ETL developers and data engineers can easily define, monitor, and execute ETL workflows. You may visually enhance, normalize, and clean data without writing any code. SQL may also merge and duplicate data from different data repositories. You can automate your data integration procedure to scale your business and obtain quicker data integration using AWS Glue. So that you can know the price based on your demands, AWS will give you the flexibility of choosing your personalized estimate.
9. Informatica
To drive your business in the right direction, create an intelligent data enterprise with Informatica and manage all your data on a single platform. In the market, something in your data helps you stand out. Through its Intelligent Data Management Cloud (a cloud that is solely used for data management), Informatica enables you to transform your data from basic information to business insight. Industry-leading data management solutions enable your data to be more powerful, no matter your business type.
To accelerate your analytics and AI initiatives and drive cloud modernization, integrate, access, and consume all the data. Use a marketplace to enhance the value of privacy regulations and keep up with daily developments as another way to protect your data. To optimize experiences, online sales, and supply chains, get a complete view of all your data in a single window for improved insights. Well, to quickly update apps and automate business processes, Informatica distributes and synchronizes all the data. To learn how this solution works, access the free trial.
10. Fivetran
With Fivetran, easily centralize data and provide customers with quicker and more accurate insights. It enables you to connect safely to the apps and data databases that drive your business more quickly. To gather what you need to build a data-driven business, choose the destination of your selection to bring data from the data warehouse and/or other sources. You may accelerate the analytics with integrated transformations. Finally, you may free up time to focus on the main game by letting Fivetran’s pipelines update continually and automatically with fully managed connections. It is a simple platform that updates API changes and provides deep data insights in minutes.
Fivetran promises a 99.9% uptime rate, which means you’ll never be without service. Well, for you to sit and focus on the rest, it will handle all pipeline work. Fivetran expertly prepares, cleans, and delivers your data to the ideal destination, regardless of the nature of the data. In addition, you may get thorough security and quicker insights with pre-built transformations, governance, privacy, 24/7 support, and advice. Check out Fivetran’s case studies, discover what it can achieve, and learn how data centralization works by joining millions of others. Pick from various options starting at $60/month, which allows one user up to a 0.5M use cap, or start it for free.
FAQs:
ETL vs. ELT: What Are The Differences?
Both do the same things but in different ways. For example, ETL transforms the marketing data on a different server before processing it. ELT, on the other hand, transforms the marketing data that is included in the data warehouse or data store.
What Are The ETL Tools Features?
Connectivity, workflow automation, business analytics, and reporting are a few features.
What Are The ETL Tool Types?
Enterprise software ETL tools, open source ETL tools, cloud-based ETL tools, and custom ETL tools are a few examples of these categories.
Consider The Following:
The Bottom Line:
To build data pipelines and connect stakeholders and leaders with the data they need to work efficiently, ETL technologies offer a central location for all of your data. No matter how difficult the work is, this will enable your data teams to reach new heights of uniformity and efficiency. Choosing the finest ETL solution for your business is a smart decision. To make better business decisions, it will assist you in extracting, transforming, and load data to your storage platform.