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Informatica PowerCenter vs StreamSets vs WhereScape RED 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.1
Informatica PowerCenter is valued for its flexibility, stability, and effectiveness in handling diverse and complex data for reports.
Sentiment score
8.1
StreamSets speeds up data processing, boosts efficiency and revenue, simplifies tasks, enhances security, and reduces costs significantly.
Sentiment score
7.0
WhereScape RED offers varied returns, with some users experiencing quick ROI, efficient development, and substantial gains.
It also plays a vital role in revenue calculations, net asset valuations, and other key factors that support customer data and investment data pipelines.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Customer service and technical support receive mixed reviews, highlighting varying levels of responsiveness, resource availability, and user experiences.
Sentiment score
6.7
StreamSets support is responsive and knowledgeable, offering effective solutions, though response times and technical handling could improve.
Sentiment score
8.3
Customer service is often excellent and prompt, although some feel support wanes post-purchase and seems money-driven.
I have occasionally needed to communicate with the technical support of Informatica PowerCenter, especially when raising cases for complex mappings and performance optimization to identify bottlenecks in transformations.
I like the technical support provided by Informatica.
IBM technical support sometimes transfers tickets between different teams due to shift changes, which can be frustrating.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Informatica PowerCenter excels in scalability and versatility for data management, though costs and setup complexity are concerns.
Sentiment score
7.6
StreamSets is scalable and flexible, favored for cloud use but could improve auto-scaling for large data migrations.
Sentiment score
6.6
WhereScape RED efficiently scales with large data, improves ETL processing, and enhances speeds using ELT and SQL features.
In the cloud, scaling up and down becomes easy when working with cloud providers.
For scalability, I would rate Informatica PowerCenter between eight to nine.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Informatica PowerCenter is highly rated for stability, with few issues, mostly resolved by hotfixes, ensuring reliable performance.
Sentiment score
7.8
StreamSets is praised for stability and reliability, despite minor memory issues, with high user ratings and market competitiveness.
Sentiment score
6.6
WhereScape RED's stability varies; it's praised for maturity and speed, yet some report resource and debugging challenges.
Informatica PowerCenter is stable and can scale well.
The product is very stable with very few issues encountered in production.
 

Room For Improvement

Informatica PowerCenter users seek improved affordability, a modern interface, better integration, and scalability for enhanced efficiency and user-friendliness.
StreamSets struggles with integration, real-time processing, clarity in UI, memory issues, security, documentation, and cloud storage performance.
WhereScape RED suffers from scalability issues, lacking performance efficiency, enhanced documentation, better GUI, and improved support for multi-database environments.
With Informatica PowerCenter, I am looking for an AI interface that looks at the underlying data model of the databases and the metadata of the tables, allowing the developer to provide instructions on what data sources to connect to and how to apply or create Transformations.
Informatica Cloud and its support becomes quite expensive for the organization compared to peers such as SnapLogic or Netezza, which offer lower pricing.
Utilizing more stored procedures from Oracle databases in an easy way would significantly boost performance.
It would be beneficial if StreamSets addressed any potential memory leak issues to prevent unnecessary upgrades.
 

Setup Cost

Informatica PowerCenter, although costly, is valued by large enterprises for its comprehensive features and effective complex data handling.
StreamSets provides flexible pricing models, with varied user satisfaction, favoring larger enterprises over smaller companies due to cost.
WhereScape RED's flexible developer-based licensing and native SQL code provide cost-effective, vendor-independent data warehousing solutions with quick ROI potential.
The price of Informatica PowerCenter is high, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.
I find that the pricing and licensing for Informatica PowerCenter align with its quality.
 

Valuable Features

Informatica PowerCenter provides robust, scalable ETL solutions with user-friendly design, supporting extensive databases and seamless data integration.
StreamSets offers intuitive interface, extensive connectors, and features accessible to non-technical users for seamless data integration and manipulation.
WhereScape RED streamlines data warehousing with automation, agile support, user-friendly interface, and compatibility with leading methodologies.
The system supports real-time integration, which is essential for many of my tasks.
The most valuable features of Informatica PowerCenter that I have found so far include transformations, the ease of connectivity with different source systems, and the parameter files.
The functions in Informatica PowerCenter that I have found most valuable are the way it manages the volume of data, the push down optimization, and the performance aspects of it, mostly related to parallelism techniques.
It allows a hybrid installation approach, rather than being completely cloud-based or on-premises.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Informatica PowerCenter is 6.0%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StreamSets is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhereScape RED is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Informatica PowerCenter6.0%
StreamSets1.5%
WhereScape RED1.0%
Other91.5%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Garima Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported complex data pipeline creation but performance tuning and monitoring responsiveness need improvement
Sometimes, I see various performance issues with Informatica PowerCenter, including caching concerns, whether it's a joiner transformation or other transformations, so I believe the team can enhance the performance perspectives of these transformations. Additionally, sometimes the Informatica Monitor hangs or takes time to open the current run or logs, which the team can also look into. Informatica is transitioning to cloud solutions and discontinuing on-premise support after 2026, so when we discuss Informatica Cloud and its support, it becomes quite expensive for the organization compared to peers such as SnapLogic or Netezza, which offer lower pricing. Informatica Cloud Intelligence's pricing is notably high.
Ved Prakash Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for data transformation and helps with column encryption
We use various tools and alerting systems to notify us of pipeline errors or failures. StreamSets supports data governance and compliance by allowing us to encrypt incoming data based on specified rules. We can easily encrypt columns by providing the column name and hash key. If you're considering using StreamSets for the first time, I would advise first understanding why you want to use it and how it will benefit you. If you're dealing with change tracking or handling large amounts of data, it could be cost-effective compared to services like Amazon. It's easy to schedule and manage tasks with the tool, and you can enhance your skills as an ETL developer. You can easily migrate traditional pipelines built on platforms like Informatica or Talend to StreamSets. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
reviewer1618884 - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick to set up, flexible, and stable
The scheduling part I don't like due to the fact that it allows you to schedule as a parent and child and other things, however, the error trackability has to be a little more user-friendly. It's also not user-friendly in the sense that it loads all the jobs and there are not enough filters so that it doesn't need to load everything. If the job fails, you don't get any type of alert or email. It would be ideal if there was some sort of automated alert message. Technical support isn't the best. It would be ideal if we understood how to do it in a card exception regarding exclusion, where the card is captured separately rather than filling the whole process on the data inbound side. Certain workloads like this are organized in such a way where you seem to be doubling the work as opposed to streamlining the process.
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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
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise72
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
Azure Data Factory is flexible, modular, and works well. In terms of cost, it is not too pricey. It offers the stabil...
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 ...
Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Complex transformations can easily be achieved using PowerCenter, which has all the features and tools to establish a...
What do you like most about StreamSets?
The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It...
What needs improvement with StreamSets?
One issue I observed with StreamSets is that the memory runs out quickly when processing large volumes of data. Becau...
What is your primary use case for StreamSets?
We are using StreamSets for batch loading.
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Also Known As

PowerCenter
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
Availity, BT Group, Humana, Deluxe, GSK, RingCentral, IBM, Shell, SamTrans, State of Ohio, TalentFulfilled, TechBridge
British American Tobacco, Cornell University, Allianz Benelux, Finnair, Solarwinds and many more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Talend and others in Data Integration. Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.