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FME vs Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs SSIS 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of FME is 1.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SSIS is 7.9%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Ryan Ferdon - PeerSpot reviewer
Low-code makes development faster than with Python, but there were caching issues
If you're working with a larger data set, I'm not so sure it would be the best solution. The larger things got the slower it was. It was kind of buggy sometimes. And when we ran the flow, it didn't go from a perceived start to end, node by node. Everything kicked off at once. That meant there were times when it would get ahead of itself and a job would fail. That was not because the job was wrong, but because Pentaho decided to go at everything at once, and something would process before it was supposed to. There were nodes you could add to make sure that, before this node kicks off, all these others have processed, but it was a bit tedious. There were also caching issues, and we had to write code to clear the cache every time we opened the program, because the cache would fill up and it wouldn't run. I don't know how hard that would be for them to fix, or if it was fixed in version 10. Also, the UI is a bit outdated, but I'm more of a fan of function over how something looks. One other thing that would have helped with Pentaho was documentation and support on the internet: how to do things, how to set up. I think there are some sites on how to install it, and Pentaho does have a help repository, but it wasn't always the most useful.
BobAmy - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust and does a good job of handling overload conditions
We purchase an add-on called task factory primarily to allow bulk delete, update, and upsert capability. I'd like to see this be part of the standard package. I believe there are ways to build a model and set variables so that it can be a generic process. In my next system, I would like to have a generic process that would handle all the logging and processing in a model that can be modified and enhanced as the need for a better process, or different statistics to be logged is discovered. I'd want this in a way that the model can be changed and all the processes, with their unique parameters, could all be changed with the model upgraded. I believe they should add some features that help to create the code using a model. This would allow for continuous improvement of the model uses and easy replication of all the different programs that use the model.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"It has standard plug-ins available for different data sources."
"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."
"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."
"Its drag-and-drop interface lets me and my team implement all the solutions that we need in our company very quickly. It's a very good tool for that."
"The fact that it's a low-code solution is valuable. It's good for more junior people who may not be as experienced with programming."
"The amount of data that it loads and processes is good."
"The graphical nature of the development interface is most useful because we've got people with quite mixed skills in the team. We've got some very junior, apprentice-level people, and we've got support analysts who don't have an IT background. It allows us to have quite complicated data flows and embed logic in them. Rather than having to troll through lines and lines of code and try and work out what it's doing, you get a visual representation, which makes it quite easy for people with mixed skills to support and maintain the product. That's one side of it."
"Provides a good open source option."
"It is easy to use, install, and start working with."
"This solution allows us to create pipelines using a minimal amount of custom coding."
"It's my understanding that the product can scale."
"The interface is very user-friendly."
"The performance and stability are good."
"The ability of SSIS to transform and transport data is extremely valuable to me. It allows for intelligent extraction and manipulation of data during the process. Improved error handling would enhance ETL processes further. I haven't directly utilized the data flow components but they seem capable of supporting complex data integration needs."
"In SSIS, the scope is not only to handle ETL challenges, but it will allow us to do so many other tasks, such as DBA activities, scripting, calling any .exe or scripts, etc."
"Its compatibility with Microsoft products has been very valuable to our company. It fits well within the architecture."
"The scalability of SSIS is good."
"The setup was easy. All Microsoft products are easy to set up."
"The workflow features have been very valuable. You can have automated workflows and all the steps are controlled. The workflow functionality of integration services is excellent."
 

Cons

"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."
"To get a higher rating, it would have to improve the price and the associated scalability. These are the main issues."
"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."
"I'm still in the very recent stage concerning Pentaho Data Integration, but it can't really handle what I describe as "extreme data processing" i.e. when there is a huge amount of data to process. That is one area where Pentaho is still lacking."
"Lumada could have more native connectors with other vendors, such as Google BigQuery, Microsoft OneDrive, Jira systems, and Facebook or Instagram. We would like to gather data from modern platforms using Lumada, which is a better approach. As a comparison, if you open Power BI to retrieve data, then you can get data from many vendors with cloud-native connectors, such as Azure, AWS, Google BigQuery, and Athena Redshift. Lumada should have more native connectors to help us and facilitate our job in gathering information from these new modern infrastructures and tools."
"The product needs more plugins."
"In terms of the flexibility to deploy in any environment, such as on-premise or in the cloud, we can do the cloud deployment only through virtual machines. We might also be able to work on different environments through Docker or Kubernetes, but we don't have an Azure app or an AWS app for easy deployment to the cloud. We can only do it through virtual machines, which is a problem, but we can manage it. We also work with Databricks because it works with Spark. We can work with clustered servers, and we can easily do the deployment in the cloud. With a right-click, we can deploy Databricks through the app on AWS or Azure cloud."
"I would like to see support for some additional cloud sources. It doesn't support Azure, for example. I was trying to do a PoC with Azure the other day but it seems they don't support it."
"The performance could be improved. If they could have analytics perform well on large volumes, that would be a big deal for our products."
"In the Community edition, it would be nice to have more modules that allow you to code directly within the application. It could have R or Python completely integrated into it, but this could also be because I'm using an older version."
"Some of the scheduling features about Lumada drive me buggy. The one issue that always drives me up the wall is when Daylight Savings Time changes. It doesn't take that into account elegantly. Every time it changes, I have to do something. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying."
"We purchase an add on called task factory primarily to allow bulk delete, update and upsert capability. I'd like to see this be part of the standard package."
"I would like to see better technical documentation because many times information is missing."
"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."
"SSIS has a difficult learning curve when dealing with complex transformations."
"Involving a data lake or data engineering aspects would be useful. While it is there, we need more features included."
"I would like to see better integration with Power BI."
"The performance of this solution is not as good as other tools in the market."
"The security could be improved, as it is more important in our context."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"FME Server used to cost £10,000; now it can cost over £100,000."
"The price of the regular version is not reasonable and it should be lower."
"We are using the Community Edition. We have been trying to use and sell the Enterprise version, but that hasn't been possible due to the budget required for it."
"The cost of these types of solutions are expensive. So, we really appreciate what we get for our money. Though, we don't think of the solution as a top-of-the-line solution or anything like that."
"I mostly used the open-source version. I didn't work with a license."
"There is a good open source option (Community Edition)​."
"For most development tasks, the Enterprise edition should be sufficient. It depends on the type of support that you require for your production environment."
"Sometimes we provide the licenses or the customer can procure their own licenses. Previously, we had an enterprise license. Currently, we are on a community license as this is adequate for our needs."
"You need to go through the paid version to have Hitachi Lumada specialized support. However, if you are using the free version, then you will have only the community support. You will depend on the releases from Hitachi to solve some problem or questions that you have, such as bug fixes. You will need to wait for the newest versions or releases to solve these types of problems."
"It comes bundled with other solutions, which makes it difficult to get the price on the specific product."
"SSIS is a cheaper option compared to the cost of other ETL tools."
"People have to opt for a perpetual-based licensing model."
"This solution is included with the MSSQL server package."
"SSIS is fairly well-priced - I would rate it at four out of five."
"This solution has provided an inexpensive tool, and it is easy to find experienced developers."
"The solution is available at a lesser price than that of Informatica."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user90069 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Government
30%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 Git...
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 ...
What needs improvement with FME?
The one thing that always appears in the community is the ability to make really easy loops to loop through data effi...
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivan...
What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?
In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hi...
What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?
My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good j...
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 ...
What do you like most about SSIS?
The product's deployment phase is easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SSIS?
Utilizing SSIS involves no extra charges beyond the SQL Server license. It's an economical choice for my clients.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
SQL Server Integration Services
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shell, US Department of Commerce, PG&E, BC Hydro, City of Vancouver, Enel, Iowa DoT, San Antonio Water System
66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
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 Microsoft, Informatica, Talend and others in Data Integration. Updated: May 2025.
851,451 professionals have used our research since 2012.