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Census vs SSIS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Census
Ranking in Data Integration
44th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SSIS
Ranking in Data Integration
2nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Census is 0.4%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SSIS is 4.0%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SSIS4.0%
Census0.4%
Other95.6%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2784462 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Data activation has become faster and business teams access consistent customer insights
Census has been very useful to us as a reverse ETL layer. We have reduced engineering efforts, which has translated into tens of thousands of euros per year in avoided development and maintenance costs, faster and more accurate customer activation, and other improvements that we achieved using Census. Census is faster than our previous approach. Census has enabled faster activation of analytic data into CRM and marketing platforms in our case. Another key benefit is the elimination of manual exports and custom integration scripts, consistent customer data across analytical and operational systems. The best feature that Census offers is that it works directly on top of the data warehouse, preserving a single source of truth. Another valuable feature is that Census provides excellent support for CRM, marketing, and customer-facing platforms. Census creates a single source of truth by making the data warehouse the only place where business logic and data definition live and by ensuring that all downstream operational systems are consumers, not owners of data. All customer attributes, metrics, and segments are defined once, directly in the data warehouse, using SQL and existing data models. Census was useful for us because of the fast time to value, as new syncs can be configured and deployed quickly without custom development. It also ensures that data models are clean and well-defined in the data warehouse after we start using Census. Based on delivery metrics and team feedback, the benefit is that the time to activate new use cases was reduced from weeks to days. Engineering effort dedicated to reverse ETL pipelines decreased by sixty to seventy percent. Maintenance overhead for custom integration was almost completely eliminated, and marketing and growth teams accelerated experimentation cycles significantly. From a cost perspective, reduced engineering effort translated into tens of thousands of euros per year in avoided development and maintenance costs, and faster and more accurate customer activation improved campaign effectiveness and business responsiveness.
reviewer2318280 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tech Lead at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Reporting has become streamlined for year-end data checks but integration still needs improvement
When I talk about SQL Server, I am working with SSIS, the data integration tool. I am not entirely sure if I use SSIS as a library of transformations or if I personally work with an extensive library of transformations. I have integrated SSIS with SQL Server Management Studio, and I am very satisfied with the integration as it is integrated well. I am not using the debugging feature in SSIS because the developers would be the ones that would actually utilize it. I have noticed that in 2022, AI functionality has actually been implemented already. I would rate this review overall at a 7.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Reverse ETL makes warehouse data more accessible to business teams, saves repetitive work, and helps improve the consistency of customer information across platforms."
"Based on delivery metrics and team feedback, the benefit is that the time to activate new use cases was reduced from weeks to days, engineering effort dedicated to reverse ETL pipelines decreased by sixty to seventy percent, maintenance overhead for custom integration was almost completely eliminated, and marketing and growth teams accelerated experimentation cycles significantly."
"The catalog of connectors and the integration with dbt have made my daily work easier because, regarding the number of connectors available, there are two hundred or more connectors, so it is difficult to have a destination that does not work for you, and using the integration with dbt allows me to reuse analytical models I already have."
"The initial setup was easy, and we also used some YouTube videos for guidance."
"SSIS is an easy way to do data integration from various data sources; it doesn't matter whether it's a database, flat files, XML, or Web API, it can talk to them and join them all together."
"This is one of the best analytic tools for a person or enterprise."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"The packaging and how it is organized is good for someone that really has never seen ETL before."
"The setup is easy to use and understand."
"The most valuable thing is that it is easy to connect with Microsoft tools."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more advanced data quality checks, clearer error messages when a sync fails, and easier troubleshooting for complex workflows."
"I think Census could be improved by offering some advanced custom configurations or complex mappings that may have a higher learning curve, and the cost forecasting at large scale sometimes requires too much attention, and the information provided about it could be improved."
"The areas for improvement are complex transformation logic because it must still be handled upstream in the warehouse, and cost predictability requires attention at high data volumes."
"Sometimes when we want to publish to other types of databases it's not easy to publish to those databases."
"Tuning using this solution requires extensive expertise to improve performance."
"This solution needs full support for real-time processing."
"When I compare Talend and SSIS, Talend provides more features. With Talend, we can handle a large volume of data. Talend is usually used to treat a large volume of data, which makes it better than SSIS on the data side. Talend also has a very good Talend Management Console to schedule the jobs and do other things. It can also be easily connected to version control tools such as GitHub or SVN. The last time I used SSIS, it was connected through TSS for the Windows Console version. I am not sure it has been improved or not. If it is not improved, Microsoft should improve it. They should change the product to provide another console."
"If you run SSIS from the local system, it will lag, but it will work properly if you host on the cloud somewhere."
"The solution should offer more information online for users of SSIS."
"Sometimes when we want to publish to other types of databases it's not easy to publish to those databases. For example, the Jet Database Engine. Before the SSIS supported Jet Database Engine but nowadays it doesn't support the Jet Database Engine. We connect to many databases such as Access database, SparkPros databases and the other types of databases using Jet Database Engines now and SSIS now doesn't seem to support it in our databases."
"Sometimes, there are compatibility issues with some features. From time to time, I also face issues when trying to migrate. If I misconfigure things when I use Snapshot, the migration will fail.It can take a long time to migrate huge amounts of data, so it would be nice if that could be faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"This solution is a free of charge addition to our SQL licence. However, the only way this tool can be utilized is as a feature of the SQL licence, which may make it unattractive to organizations who don't wish to purchase the wider-ranging licence."
"If you don't want to pay a lot of money, you can go for SSIS, as its open-source version is available. When it comes to licensing, SSIS can be expensive."
"The solution is economical. You don't have to worry about the pricing as long as you're installing both services on the same server."
"It comes bundled with other solutions, which makes it difficult to get the price on the specific product."
"The solution comes free of cost."
"This solution is included with the MSSQL server package."
"SSIS is a cheaper option compared to the cost of other ETL tools."
"We have an enterprise license for this solution."
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Comparison Review

it_user90069 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Expert at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 20, 2014
Informatica PowerCenter vs. Microsoft SSIS - each technology has its advantages but also have similarities
Technology has made it easier for businesses to organize and manipulate data to get a clearer picture of what’s going on with their business. Notably, ETL tools have made managing huge amounts of data significantly easier and faster, boosting many organizations’ business intelligence operations…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Census?
Census has been performing very well overall. One area that may need improvement is that sometimes a custom setup is very difficult to configure. This was the case with our Intercom segment setup. ...
What is your primary use case for Census?
Census is a versatile data synchronizing solution that solves a wide range of data management problems for our business. With Census, we were able to reduce the sync time taken to transfer data fro...
What advice do you have for others considering Census?
I would rate Census an eight out of ten according to my experience. I feel it is not quite a ten because sometimes a custom setup is very difficult to configure. This was the case with our Intercom...
Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?
SSIS PowerPack is a group of drag and drop connectors for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, commonly called SSIS. The collection helps organizations boost productivity with code-free compo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SSIS?
Pricing is pretty reasonable, so I would rate it at a 5. However, it could be a bit cheaper.
What needs improvement with SSIS?
SSIS could be integrated with more services, such as Power BI, to make the reporting structures more user-friendly. The initial setup for SSIS is somewhat complex in the beginning, but once you und...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SQL Server Integration Services
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Amazon.com 2. Bank of America 3. Capital One 4. Coca-Cola 5. Dell 6. E*TRADE 7. FedEx 8. Ford Motor Company 9. Google 10. Home Depot 11. IBM 12. Intel 13. JPMorgan Chase 14. Kraft Foods 15. Lockheed Martin 16. McDonald's 17. Microsoft 18. Morgan Stanley 19. Nike 20. Oracle 21. PepsiCo 22. Procter & Gamble 23. Prudential Financial 24. RBC Capital Markets 25. SAP 26. Siemens 27. Sony 28. Toyota 29. UnitedHealth Group 30. Visa 31. Walmart 32. Wells Fargo
Find out what your peers are saying about Census vs. SSIS and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.