FME vs Spring Cloud Data Flow comparison

Safe Software and VMware are both solutions in the Data Integration category. Safe Software is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.7, while VMware is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.8. Safe Software holds a 1.8% mindshare in DI, compared to VMware’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Safe Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of VMware users who would recommend it.

FME

Read 5 FME reviews

2,434 Views
1,771 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Spring Cloud Data Flow

Read 9 Spring Cloud Data Flow reviews

1,374 Views
1,033 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

FME

Spring Cloud Data Flow

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

FME and Spring Cloud Data Flow compete in data integration and management. Spring Cloud Data Flow appears to have the upper hand with its superior capability in modern cloud-native architectures.

Features: FME offers an intuitive graphical user interface, diverse connectors for different data sources, and powerful spatial data handling capabilities. Spring Cloud Data Flow provides seamless real-time streaming, exceptional integration with Kafka and Elasticsearch, and a flexible microservices orchestration framework enabling efficient task execution.

Room for Improvement: FME could benefit from improved support for general-purpose data processing beyond spatial data and enhanced cloud-native integration. Better native cloud support and more comprehensive open-source documentation could enhance its appeal. Spring Cloud Data Flow might improve by refining its complex architecture to simplify user onboarding, expanding support for proprietary plugins, and boosting usability for non-developers through enhanced graphical interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: FME offers a straightforward deployment process with excellent customer support, particularly for projects involving spatial data. Spring Cloud Data Flow features robust scalability and cloud service integration but requires significant technical expertise for deployment due to its complex architecture. Customer support is effective for both products, though Spring Cloud Data Flow demands cloud-specific knowledge.

Pricing and ROI: FME typically involves a higher upfront license cost but offers substantial ROI with its spatial data capabilities. In contrast, Spring Cloud Data Flow leverages open-source frameworks for lower initial costs, though its ROI is heavily reliant on the existing infrastructure and processing requirements. Its scalable pricing reflects cloud resource utilization.

To learn more, read our detailed FME vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

FME vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow

April 2025

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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

FME

Ranking in Data Integration

24th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Spring Cloud Data Flow

Ranking in Data Integration

22nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (9th)

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 Spring Cloud Data Flow is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

Alan Bloor

Geographic Information System Developer at Public Sector

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.

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NitinGoyal

Engineering Lead at Naukri.com

Has a plug-and-play model and provides good robustness and scalability

The solution's community support could be improved. I don't know why the Spring Cloud Data Flow community is not very strong. Community support is very limited whenever you face any problem or are stuck somewhere. I'm not sure whether it has improved in the last six months because this pipeline was set up almost two years ago. I struggled with that a lot. For example, there was limited support whenever I got an exception and sought help from Stack Overflow or different forums. Interacting with Kubernetes needs a few certificates. You need to define all the certificates within your application. With the help of those certificates, your Java application or Spring Cloud Data Flow can interact with Kubernetes. I faced a lot of hurdles while placing those certificates. Despite following the official documentation to define all the replicas, readiness, and liveliness probes within the Spring Cloud Data Flow application, it was not working. So, I had to troubleshoot while digging in and debugging the internals of Spring Cloud Data Flow at that time. It was just a configuration mismatch, and I was doing nothing weird. There was a small spelling difference between how Spring Cloud Data Flow was expecting it and how I passed it. I was just following the official documentation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The product is very user-friendly."

"The most valuable features of Spring Cloud Data Flow are the simple programming model, integration, dependency Injection, and ability to do any injection. Additionally, auto-configuration is another important feature because we don't have to configure the database and or set up the boilerplate in the database in every project. The composability is good, we can create small workloads and compose them in any way we like."

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it allows us to use different batch data sources, retrieve the data, and then do the data processing, after which we can convert and store it in the target."

"There are a lot of options in Spring Cloud. It's flexible in terms of how we can use it. It's a full infrastructure."

"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."

"The best thing I like about Spring Cloud Data Flow is its plug-and-play model."

"The dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable."

"The ease of deployment on Kubernetes, the seamless integration for orchestration of various pipelines, and the visual dashboard that simplifies operations even for non-specialists such as quality analysts."

Cons

"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."

"Improvements could be made to mapping presentations."

"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."

"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."

"To get a higher rating, it would have to improve the price and the associated scalability. These are the main issues."

"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."

"The solution's community support could be improved."

"On the tool's online discussion forums, you may get stuck with an issue, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Spring Cloud Data Flow is not an easy-to-use tool, so improvements are required."

"The configurations could be better. Some configurations are a little bit time-consuming in terms of trying to understand using the Spring Cloud documentation."

"I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly."

"Spring Cloud Data Flow could improve the user interface. We can drag and drop in the application for the configuration and settings, and deploy it right from the UI, without having to run a CI/CD pipeline. However, that does not work with Kubernetes, it only works when we are working with jars as the Spring Cloud Data Flow applications."

"There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or refreshing the dashboard."

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."

"FME Server used to cost £10,000; now it can cost over £100,000."

"The product's price is reasonable."

"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."

"If you want support from Spring Cloud Data Flow there is a fee. The Spring Framework is open-source and this is a free solution."

"The solution provides value for money, and we are currently using its community edition."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

30%

Energy/Utilities Company

14%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

17%

Retailer

Healthcare Company

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 GitHub or anything else.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 efficiently. That needs to be added at some point. There must be a technical or comm...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Spring Cloud Data Flow?

There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or r...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Spring Cloud Data Flow?

We had a project for content management, which involved multiple applications each handling content ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and storage for different customers independently. We want...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Spring Cloud Data Flow?

I would definitely recommend Spring Cloud Data Flow. It requires minimal additional effort or time to understand how it works, and even non-specialists can use it effectively with its friendly docu...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

FME

May 2025

Download FME product report

Buyer's Guide

Spring Cloud Data Flow

April 2025

Download Spring Cloud Data Flow product report

Overview

FME is the data integration platform with the best support for spatial data. Run workflows on the desktop or deploy them in a server or cloud environment.

Safe Software

Spring Cloud Data Flow is a toolkit for building data integration and real-time data processing pipelines.
Pipelines consist of Spring Boot apps, built using the Spring Cloud Stream or Spring Cloud Task microservice frameworks. This makes Spring Cloud Data Flow suitable for a range of data processing use cases, from import/export to event streaming and predictive analytics. Use Spring Cloud Data Flow to connect your Enterprise to the Internet of Anything—mobile devices, sensors, wearables, automobiles, and more.

VMware

Sample Customers

Shell, US Department of Commerce, PG&E, BC Hydro, City of Vancouver, Enel, Iowa DoT, San Antonio Water System

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

FME vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow

April 2025

Free Report: FME vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow

Find out what your peers are saying about FME vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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