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Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs SAS Access comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Pentaho Data Integration an...
Ranking in Data Integration
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAS Access
Ranking in Data Integration
60th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Access is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics1.8%
SAS Access0.8%
Other97.4%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Michelle Lawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines complex data workflows and has supported automated customer payment notifications
I haven't used Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics in a couple of years, so I don't know how it can be improved. I was pretty pleased with it and was self-taught on it, working a lot with their team at various times, but they were surprised that I was able to learn it all by myself. The documentation is not bad, and documentation is the main thing that any product can do to make themselves better because the easier it is to find examples of what you're trying to do improves the learning curve. I think it took me the longest to learn how to do the asynchronous processing and have things wait for other things to finish processing before continuing on in the workflow. I choose 8 out of 10 because the one reason that it's been rejected at T-Mobile is that everything has to go through a provisioning process and has to get approved, meaning the actual code base has to be investigated by T-Mobile before they'll allow us to use tools of that nature. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to get that approval; I don't know if it's on Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' side or if it's on our side. The more you can make it easier for companies to feel comfortable that your product is secure, robustly tested and bug-free, and free of any other kind of negative hacks, the more quickly it will get accepted.
Robert Heck - PeerSpot reviewer
Co Owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH
The solution is stable, scalable, and flexible
I rate the solution eight out of ten. The number of people required to maintain the solution is dependent on the other applications running. The solution in itself does not require a lot of maintenance. The solution is flexible and I recommend it when you have more complex applications with special requirements.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It allows for very quick development due to the intuitive interface."
"Developed ETL processes to load a data warehouse has improved our data integration capabilities."
"After using this product, we could do some of the things much faster than before."
"It is a very good tool if you need to work with data."
"The most valuable thing for me is that it enables a technical product manager to be able to write ETL jobs themselves, which saves developers time so that they can do more important things."
"We have seen at least 30% savings in terms of effort, which has helped us to price our service and products more aggressively in the market and win more clients."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to create many API integrations. I'm always working with advertising agents and using Facebook and Instagram to do campaigns. We use Pentaho to get the results from these campaigns and to create dashboards to analyze the results."
"It is easy to use, install, and start working with."
"The most valuable feature is you have native access to the external databases."
"The SAS/ACCESS ability to connect creates an elegant simplicity."
"The most valuable part of SAS/ACCESS is what it is made for: connecting to remote systems that are not part of your physical SAS environment."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the ease of access to the data in those databases."
 

Cons

"The technical support does not reply in a timely manner. The support they have in place does not work very well."
"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."
"The support from Hitachi is not the greatest, the fixing of bugs can take a really long time."
"Searching repository for reports or dashboards"
"I work with different databases. I would like to work with more connectors to new databases, e.g., DynamoDB and MariaDB, and new cloud solutions, e.g., AWS, Azure, and GCP. If they had these connectors, that would be great. They could improve by building new connectors. If you have native connections to different databases, then you can make instructions more efficient and in a more natural way. You don't have to write any scripts to use that connector."
"I would like to see improvement when it comes to integrating structured data with text data or anything that is unstructured. Sometimes we get all kinds of different files that we need to integrate into the warehouse."
"Support for common Hadoop utilities can be expanded, such as bulk load with composite row keys for HBase, and include drivers for Impala out-of-the-box."
"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."
"The solution can provide access to the newer databases that come out sooner."
"The solution's pricing and licensing are expensive."
"The pricing model needs to be reconsidered and adjusted."
"The primary way that this product can be improved is by adjusting their pricing model."
"I can't really recall any missing feature or general improvement that is needed. We don't really add too many new kinds of databases and therefore our needs are already met."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We did a two or three-year deal the last time we did it. As compared to other solutions, at least so far in our experience, it has been very affordable. The licensing is by component. So, you need to make sure you only license the components that you really intend to use. I am not sure if we have relicensed after the Hitachi acquisition, but previously, multi-year renewals resulted in a good discount. I'm not sure if this is still the case. We've had the full suite for a lot of years, and there is just the initial cost. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"The solution reduced our ETL development time by a lot because a whole project used to take about a month to get done previously. After having Lumada, it took just a week. For a big company in Brazil, it saves a team at least $10,000 a month."
"You don't need the Enterprise Edition, you can go with the Community Edition. That way you can use it for free and, for free, it's a pretty good tool to use."
"I use it because it is free. I download from their page for free. I don't have to pay for a license. With other tools, I have to pay for the licenses. That is why I use Pentaho."
"It does seem a bit expensive compared to the serverless product offering. Tools, such as Server Integration Services, are "almost" free with a database engine. It is comparable to products like Alteryx, which is also very expensive."
"There was a cost analysis done and Pentaho did favorably in terms of cost."
"If a company is looking for an ETL solution and wants to integrate it with their tech stack but doesn't want to spend a bunch of money, Pentaho is a good solution"
"The pricing has been pretty good. I'm used to using everything open-source or freeware-based. I understand that organizations need to make sure that the solutions are secure, and that's basically where I hit a roadblock in my current organization. They needed to ensure that we had a license and we had a secure way of accessing it so that no outside parties could get access to our data, but in terms of pricing, considering how much other teams are spending on cloud solutions or even their existing solutions, its price point is pretty good. At this time, there are no additional costs. We just have the licensing fees."
"The solution's pricing and licensing are expensive."
"The pricing model is complex and is based on modular packages as well as the size of the applicable environment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise32
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...
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 Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...
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 job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...
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Also Known As

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
SAS/Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Los Angeles County, West Midlands Police, Credit Guarantee Corporation, Canada Post, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SAS Access and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.