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Melissa Data Quality vs Microsoft Data Quality Services 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

Melissa Data Quality
Ranking in Data Quality
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Scrubbing Software (4th)
Microsoft Data Quality Serv...
Ranking in Data Quality
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Quality category, the mindshare of Melissa Data Quality is 4.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Data Quality Services is 2.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Quality Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Melissa Data Quality4.0%
Microsoft Data Quality Services2.1%
Other93.9%
Data Quality
 

Featured Reviews

GM
Data Architect at World Vision
SSIS MatchUp Component is Amazing
- Scalability is a limitation as it is single threaded. You can bypass this limitation by partitioning your data (say by alphabetic ranges) into multiple dataflows but even within a single dataflow the tool starts to really bog down if you are doing survivorship on a lot of columns. It's just very old technology written that's starting to show its age since it's been fundamentally the same for many years. To stay relavent they will need to replace it with either ADF or SSIS-IR compliant version. - Licensing could be greatly simplified. As soon as a license expires (which is specific to each server) the product stops functioning without prior notice and requires a new license by contacting the vendor. And updating the license is overly complicated. - The tool needs to provide resizable forms/windows like all other SSIS windows. Vendor claims its an SSIS limitation but that isn't true since pretty much all SSIS components are resizable except theirs! This is just an annoyance but needless impact on productivity when developing new data flows. - The tool needs to provide for incremental matching using the MatchUp for SSIS tool (they provide this for other solutions such as standalone tool and MatchUp web service). We had to code our own incremental logic to work around this. - Tool needs ability to sort mapped columns in the GUI when using advanced survivorship (only allowed when not using column-level survivorship). - It should provide an option for a procedural language (such as C# or VB) for survivor-ship expressions rather than relying on SSIS expression language. - It should provide a more sophisticated ability to concatenate groups of data fields into common blocks of data for advanced survivor-ship prioritization (we do most of this in SQL prior to feeding the data to the tool). - It should provide the ability to only do survivor-ship with no matching (matching is currently required when running data through the tool). - Tool should provide a component similar to BDD to enable the ability to split into multiple thread matches based on data partitions for matching and survivor-ship rather than requiring custom coding a parallel capable solution. We broke down customer data by first letter of last name into ranges of last names so we could run parallel data flows. - Documentation needs to be provided that is specific to MatchUp for SSIS. Most of their wiki pages were written for the web service API MatchUp Object rather than the SSIS component. - They need to update their wiki site documentation as much of it is not kept current. Its also very very basic offering very little in terms of guidelines. For example, the tool is single-threaded so getting great performance requires running multiple parallel data flows or BDD in a data flow which you can figure out on your own but many SSIS practitioners aren't familiar with those techniques. - The tool can hang or crash on rare occasions for unknown reason. Restarting the package resolves the problem. I suspect they have something to do with running on VM (vendor doesn't recommend running on VM) but have no evidence to support it. When it crashes it creates dump file with just vague message saying the executable stopped running.
Satyam Saxena - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Automation in data management improves with built-in error rejection but technical support needs enhancement
Multiple areas in Microsoft Data Quality Services could be improved, such as its ability to perform changes automatically, as it currently identifies but does not correct data issues. Regular expression processing is complicated and slow. Technical support from Microsoft is poor, as they do not provide adequate assistance with issues encountered in integration or forming automation. Sometimes solutions to problems take several weeks due to a lack of support, relying instead on personal networks and experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Customer service was excellent, and their technical team provides top support for people wanting to use the technology."
"We use their GeoPoints to get the most precise, rooftop level geocoding."
"Getting the most up to date address for our members. We like to keep in touch with membership a few times a year so we want to maintain up to date addresses to be sure they receive any information that we mail to them."
"By far the best pricing and licensing option we have found for a small organization, since we can buy credits in small increments and they don't expire."
"This tool works better for us than using a batch processing system that we do not have enough control over as each record is being processed."
"Melissa Data is cost effective and efficient."
"Personator application was able to append emails, new address if moved, phone number, geocode, and also standardizes existing customer information."
"Since we switched to Melissa Data web services, we do not need to maintain those servers and/or software, and we get the most up-to-date addresses from USPS."
"The primary advantage of Microsoft Data Quality Services is its capability to automate certain tasks, which are otherwise achieved through SQL queries."
"This solution is particularly useful for data enrichment."
 

Cons

"It could always be cheaper."
"One of the problems that we ran into this year was we probably spent over 40 hours finding and trying to drill down to where specific bugs were in the program, which was a tremendous waste of time for us. There were a couple of updates to Windows this year, the program kept crashing. It happened on two different occasions over a period of a few months. Once we told them what the problem was - even though their tech support is great to work with - it literally took probably about two months to fix the issue where we could actually use the program the way we needed to use it."
"We are no longer using Melissa Data to clean up our address information as there are free tools that we can use to do the same thing."
"One thing I would want to have, when you're doing a property search, you can do it either on the FIPS in the APN number or the address itself. For some entries, I'll have the APN number, and some I'll have the address. Apparently it cannot process something when both the FIPS-APN and the address are on there. I have to sort, once with one and once with the other, which is a little bit of a pain."
"It would be helpful if a list of the codes and explanations could be included."
"It changes names to what it thinks it should be when the spelling is different. It should not do this."
"Pricing model."
"Update feature"
"Technical support from Microsoft is poor, as they do not provide adequate assistance with issues encountered in integration or forming automation."
"I would rate my experience with the initial setup a six out of ten, with one being very easy and ten being extremely challenging. So, there is room for improvement in the setup process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Trial subscriptions (via cloud) are very cheap and easy to use. It’s a great way to test Listware to see if you want to go deeper with integration."
"Melissa pricing is competitive."
"​We are concerned that our own pricing is going up every year for Melissa Data products, but we highly recommend the services for people who are routinely sending out mailings."
"I think it's worth the value for me to run it."
"NCOA address verification was a requirement from USPS to send out the mailers. This was the only option that charged per address which was extremely helpful since we are a small non-profit school."
"Understand how may transactions you will be processing so that you can get the right tier pricing."
"It's affordable."
"Be sure to determine how the data is priced (record-based versus credit-based or some hybrid of data and services)."
"The pricing is in the midrange. It's not cheap, but it depends on the licenses you require."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
20%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Data Quality Services?
Microsoft Data Quality Services comes as part of SQL Server without additional costs, making it a competitive solution.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Data Quality Services?
Multiple areas in Microsoft Data Quality Services could be improved, such as its ability to perform changes automatically, as it currently identifies but does not correct data issues. Regular expre...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Data Quality Services?
I use Microsoft Data Quality Services ( /products/microsoft-data-quality-services-reviews ) to handle data inconsistencies, such as missing or improperly formatted data. The tool serves purposes li...
 

Also Known As

No data available
MS Data Quality Services
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Boeing Co., FedEx, Ford Motor Co, Hewlett Packard, Meade-Johnson, Microsoft, Panasonic, Proctor & Gamble, SAAB Cars USA, Sony, Walt Disney, Weight Watchers, and Intel.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Melissa Data Quality vs. Microsoft Data Quality Services and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.