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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
6.6
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)
FME
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (23rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Louis McCoy - PeerSpot reviewer
Searches through billions of documents have become impressively fast and consistent
The seamless scalability is something I see as among the best features Elastic Search offers. The speed with which Elastic Search is able to search through all of the documents we place into it is quite remarkable, as we search through 65 billion documents in less than a second in most cases, on a constant consistent basis. I find configuring relevant searches within Elastic Search platform very straightforward. Elastic Search is easily scalable. The customer support for Elastic Search is quite good. I advise others looking into using Elastic Search to think about the future of your platform and where you intend it to be in five years, and based on that, which version of Elastic Search best suits the needs of your platform. Additionally, jump into the AI products first as you're in the planning phase so that as you're filling out your data, the AI products and machine learning products can enrich the data real-time early on in the process, which will save you a lot of time later. The overall performance of the platform, scalability of the platform and other additional features, especially when it comes to AI, really earn the nine.
Alan Bloor - PeerSpot reviewer
Great for handling large volumes of data, but it is priced a bit high
When I do coding, I think about every single function. Some of these functions can be very elementary, like doing a substring or some capitalization. But FME removes all that coding because it's a transformer, so the time to develop an application to get to a point where you're producing results is decreased massively. It used to take weeks and months to develop software, and now I can use something like FME, and within one day, we get results. We can look at and validate data. 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature for us is the analytics that we can configure and view using Kibana."
"A good use case is saving metadata of your systems for data cataloging. Various systems, like those opened in metadata and similar applications, use Elasticsearch to store their text data."
"It helps us to analyse the logs based on the location, user, and other log parameters."
"It is easy to scale with the cluster node model.​"
"The full text search capabilities in Elastic Search have proven to be extremely valuable for our operations."
"I like how it allows us to connect to Kafka and get this data in a document format very easily. Elasticsearch is very fast when you do text-based searches of documents. That area is very good, and the search is very good."
"The initial installation and setup were straightforward."
"The stability of Elasticsearch was very high, and I would rate it a ten."
"It has standard plug-ins available for different data sources."
"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."
"FME is spatially aware and understands how to deal with the conversion of spatial objects and their attributes."
"It has a very friendly user interface. You don't need to use a lot of code. For us that's the most important aspect about it. Also, it has a lot of connectors and few forms. It has a strong facial aspect. It can do a lot of facial analysis."
"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. 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."
"From my reseller perspective, the best features in FME are the ease of operation and the fact that it works."
 

Cons

"Elastic Enterprise Search could improve its SSL integration easier. We should not need to go to the back-end servers to do configuration, we should be able to do it on the GUI."
"We see the need for some improvements with Elasticsearch. We would like the Elasticsearch package to include training lessons for our staff."
"The reports could improve."
"They should improve its documentation. Their official documentation is not very informative. They can also improve their technical support. They don't help you much with the customized stuff. They also need to add more visuals. Currently, they have line charts, bar charts, and things like that, and they can add more types of visuals. They should also improve the alerts. They are not very simple to use and are a bit complex. They could add more options to the alerting system."
"Something that could be improved is better integrations with Cortex and QRadar, for example."
"There are potential improvements based on our client feedback, like unifying the licensing cost structure."
"Elastic Search could benefit from a more user-friendly onboarding process for beginners."
"Technical support should be faster."
"Improvements could be made to mapping presentations."
"We are looking at the possibility of using Glue instead of FME, using the native AWS product."
"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."
"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."
"To get a higher rating, it would have to improve the price and the associated scalability. These are the main issues."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
"The basic license is free, but it comes with a lot of features that aren't free. With a gold license, we get active directory integration. With a platinum license, we get alerting."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"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."
"We use the free version for some logs, but not extensive use."
"Although the ELK Elasticsearch software is open-source, we buy the hardware."
"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
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Government
34%
Energy/Utilities Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise36
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
We could benefit from refining the machine learning models that we currently use in Elastic Search, along with the possibility to integrate agents, intelligent artificial intelligence, form of agen...
What do you like most about FME?
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FME?
The pricing is really bad. Last year, they rebranded the whole pricing structure. It used to be moderately priced at about £400 per user per year. Now they've changed the whole thing, and it's expe...
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...
 

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 Elastic Search vs. FME and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.