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Alation Data Catalog vs Zaloni Data Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alation Data Catalog
Ranking in Data Governance
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (2nd)
Zaloni Data Platform
Ranking in Data Governance
37th
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Preparation Tools (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 5.9%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zaloni Data Platform is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Brahma Lam - PeerSpot reviewer
Has metadata cataloging features but needs changes in domain model
The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature.  The tool's domain model needs to be changed.  Alation Data Catalog is stable.  The solution is scalable.  Alation Data Catalog's deployment is easy. I rate it a nine out of ten. Deployment takes only two to three hours to complete.…
reviewer1476264 - PeerSpot reviewer
Solid multi-ingestion tool but with poor exception handling
The major pain point with Zaloni is that their exception handling is not good. If any event happens (an event is when the job stops in the middle of the process), it doesn't tell you at which point it failed and it doesn't tell the operations team how they should take corrective actions unless you call Zaloni and then identify the issues. That is one issue. Another issue is that sometimes your jobs fail and if you run it a second time, it will go through. A third area it could be improved is the deployment process. When you want to deploy anything, it has a lot of manual processes. For example, you have to create your password in an encrypted format, and then you have to use a lot of manual deployment process. They should actually be building something else, like using Jenkins or automating their process. I have suggested to them that they have to improve their deployment process because they want everyone to run a manual deployment. It takes a lot of time, about half a day, for any single deployment. Then test it, then it might not work, and then reverting back is not easy because of the manual deployment process. I think in recent versions they added a lot of upgrades and additional features including a lot of integrations. Before it was just AWS, later they extended it to Azure. I'm not sure how they have extended it to GCP. It has some built-in features and a lot of improvements now because the UI and the features were not easy to navigate. Regarding showing the metrics, it's okay. I will say it's neither easy nor hard, there is whatever is required. Lastly, on the governance side, it's not very good. We faced some issues with the Ranger version. Ranger was an authentication tool on big data and Zaloni had some compatibility issues with the Ranger at that time. Later they said those are all going to be resolved, but at that time it had some issues. I'm not sure whether it was working with the Sentry or not.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alation Data Catalog was very useful for sharing SQL queries easily in a platform."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"The solution is used to query MySQL clients and store data and documentation."
"Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."
"Alation Data Catalog provides a nice interface for connecting to the database, querying the data, and working on it."
"The most valuable features of Alation Data Catalog are the simplicity in onboarding data sources, the security in securing the data sources, and the way the various users of Alation Data Catalog communicate with each other through a messenger."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"You can create a lot of ingestions based on the file levels or based on the time."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to map data and write workflows with logic inside them."
 

Cons

"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"I know that this has been on their roadmap and they're working on it, but as a whole, there's an untapped reservoir of capabilities within their article features that could be used and built upon."
"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"Although the solution performs far better in terms of data cataloging, its data governance capabilities need improvement."
"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."
"Alation Data Catalog is not user-friendly for business users. Its user experience is comparable to a Wikipedia page, lacking good visualization."
"Alation Data Catalog needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution."
"Technical support is in need of improvement."
"The major pain point with Zaloni is that their exception handling is not good. If any event happens, it doesn't tell you at which point it failed and it doesn't tell the operations team how they should take corrective actions unless you call Zaloni and then identify the issues. That is one issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A three-year agreement is better than a one-year rolling 12-month agreement from a price point of view. I'd recommend looking at a three-year deal because you can't stand up a catalog and produce value in 12 months."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alation Data Catalog?
The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alation Data Catalog?
I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solut...
What needs improvement with Alation Data Catalog?
When issues arise, two key concerns arise. First, how can we perform root cause analysis faster? Second, how can we optimize resource allocation, considering the associated costs? Every customer is...
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Also Known As

Alation
ZDP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
CDS Global, AIG,
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Zaloni Data Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.