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Elastic Search vs FME comparison

 

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

Elastic Search
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (5th), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (6th)
FME
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (32nd)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2817942 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Logging and vector search have transformed observability and empowered reliable ai agents
Elastic Search is not specifically being used for certain purposes. I deploy Elastic Search database on the cloud and use cloud services so that nobody can attack. However, I do not use Elastic Search to resolve attack issues. The basic main purpose of Elastic Search, as of now, I feel it can do more in the AI area. Sometime I saw that when I am developing RAG and have to generate the embeddings, which I call metadata, sometimes it tries to fail. That durability or issue handling should be improved, but apart from that, I did not find anything as of now. As per my use case, whatever I am using seems pretty good. Apart from that, some definitely improvement will be there. One improvement is that it should be faster. Whenever I am searching any logs, it takes much time. For example, if I open my log in Notepad or a similar tool, I can search the text within a second. With Elastic Search, it takes a little bit of time, ten to fifteen seconds. That can be improved. Sometimes, engineers take time to assign when I create a ticket.
Gert Booysen - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Solutions Leader at GE Vernova
Extensive format support and reliable integration enhance data management while new pricing model requires reassessment
I haven't had any input or requirements from any customers that are not currently covered, so I don't have any additional needs that were identified or raised to me. Regarding pricing, with the model changes that they've implemented a while back, it actually made it more expensive to use, especially on the server side. They changed the licensing model, and that made customers think it is overpriced. Some customers were actually looking at alternatives. Pricing with the model changes was perceived negatively. I work primarily with enterprise customers, Vodacom, Eskom, so it's tier-one customers. For small customers, this solution is a bit too expensive. They don't really use it and just do direct integration on smaller implementations. This is basically used by tier-one customers. FME is still able to save time and money for clients. It's still a good investment. Regarding similar products to FME, GE developed a product called Data Fabric. That is a real-time operational integration platform, Data Fabric Network Connect, which is a GE Grid OS product. It is actually more expensive than FME, but the purpose is different as it's operational. The vendor in this case is GE, and it's a company that we bought that used to be called Greenbird. In current use scenarios, FME is still leading compared to Data Fabric. The GE product has a different application.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has a lot of features; they have machine learning jobs they can implement, I'm not there yet, but I can use anomaly detection to see there are various processes that can find users that aren't supposed to log onto certain machines."
"X-Pack provides good features, like authorization and alerts."
"Overall, considering key aspects like cost, learning curve, and data indexing architecture, Elasticsearch is a very good tool."
"From the customer side, Elastic Search is super fast and very efficient, delivering results quickly."
"Elastic Search positively impacts my company with many benefits across multiple use cases; for example, it enables quick dashboard setups for client reviews and presents data efficiently, ensuring good user experience."
"We can easily collect all the data and view historical trends using the product. We can view the applications and identify the issues effectively."
"I would say that Elasticsearch is better than all the other solutions."
"Implementing the main requirements regarding my support portal​."
"All spatial features are unrivaled, and the possibility to execute them based on a scheduled trigger, manual, e-mail, Websocket, tweet, file/directory change or virtually any trigger is most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of FME is the graphical user interface."
"The most valuable feature of FME is the graphical user interface. There is nothing better. It is very easy to debug because you can see all steps where there are failures. Overall the software is easy to optimize a process."
"We make minor subtle changes to the workbenches to improve it. We can share the workbenches. We don't have to use GitHub or anything else."
"From my reseller perspective, the best features in FME are the ease of operation and the fact that it works."
"FME's features that I have found most valuable are that it has a very friendly user interface, you don't need to use a lot of code, it has a lot of connectors and few forms, and it has a strong facial aspect that can do a lot of facial analysis."
"It has standard plug-ins available for different data sources."
"FME is spatially aware and understands how to deal with the conversion of spatial objects and their attributes."
 

Cons

"I don't see improvements at the moment. The current setup is working well for me, and I'm satisfied with it. Integrating with different platforms is also fine, and I'm not recommending any changes or enhancements right now."
"The setup is somewhat complicated due to multiple dependencies and relations with different systems."
"Logstash has been a challenge and needs improvements in data ingestion reconciliation."
"It needs email notification, similar to what Logentries has. Because of the notification issue, we moved to Logentries, as it provides a simple way to receive notification whenever a server encounters an error or unexpected conditions (which we have defined using RegEx​)."
"The solution must provide AI integrations."
"It should be easier to use. It has been getting better because many functions are pre-defined, but it still needs improvement."
"The GUI is the part of the program which has the most room for improvement."
"There is another solution I'm testing which has a 500 record limit when you do a search on Elastic Enterprise Search."
"FME can improve the geographical transformation. I've had some problems with the geographical transformations, but it's probably mostly because I'm not the most skilled geographer in-house. The solution requires some in-depth knowledge to perform some functions."
"Improvements could be made to mapping presentations."
"The one thing that always appears in the community is the ability to make really easy loops to loop through data efficiently. That needs to be added at some point."
"We are looking at the possibility of using Glue instead of FME, using the native AWS product."
"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."
"FME is a great tool, but I don't know if we can scale it up since the prices are high and we would need to convince the decision makers to provide more budget."
"Regarding pricing, with the model changes that they've implemented a while back, it actually made it more expensive to use, especially on the server side."
"To get a higher rating, it would have to improve the price and the associated scalability. These are the main issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a free version, and there is also a hosted version for which you have to pay. We're currently using the free version. If things go well, we might go for the paid version."
"The solution is affordable."
"The price of Elastic Enterprise is very, very competitive."
"The price could be better."
"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
"The pricing model is questionable and needs to be addressed because when you would like to have the security they charge per machine."
"​The pricing and license model are clear: node-based model."
"It can move from $10,000 US Dollars per year to any price based on how powerful you need the searches to be and the capacity in terms of storage and process."
"FME Server used to cost £10,000; now it can cost over £100,000."
"We used the standard licensing for our use of FME. The cost was approximately €15,000 annually. We always welcome less expensive solutions, if the solution could be less expensive it would be helpful."
"The product's price is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
25%
Energy/Utilities Company
12%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
The pricing for Elastic Search is mainly budgeted according to the organization budget, so we take it as a yearly subscription, and that is acceptable since we do get a fair discount when we are ta...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
When we get the logs, it is mostly about how we edit the configurations and how we make changes according to the requirements of our organization. In these cases, the logs sometimes can be a bit in...
What is your primary use case for ELK Elasticsearch?
I am the Elastic Search admin for my organization, and we are using Elastic Search to handle the traffic to GCP. The monitoring of all the clusters and all the deployments are quite good, and compa...
What needs improvement with FME?
I haven't had any input or requirements from any customers that are not currently covered, so I don't have any additional needs that were identified or raised to me. Regarding pricing, with the mod...
What is your primary use case for FME?
The use cases for FME are mainly integration to the GE Smallworld product. GE Smallworld is a GE product, and we are using it to integrate with other third-party products into GE Smallworld and ADM...
What advice do you have for others considering FME?
The overall rating for FME is eight out of ten, and I prefer the feedback to be anonymous. My job title is Senior Solutions Architect.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
Shell, US Department of Commerce, PG&E, BC Hydro, City of Vancouver, Enel, Iowa DoT, San Antonio Water System
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Informatica, Palantir and others in Cloud Data Integration. Updated: August 2026.
909,948 professionals have used our research since 2012.