Alooma is a data integration product providing ETL capabilities with a focus on output to data warehouse. It also offers pipeline monitoring and error handling protocols.
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Zapier
Score 8.9 out of 10
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The Zapier Automation Platform designed to integrate data between web apps. It is scaled for small to mid-sized businesses, with a functional but limited free version of the program.
Very appropriate for managing an ELT stack -- Alooma handles the 'E' and 'L' pieces very well. Due to the way transformation is setup, it is more on the lightweight side of things and thus works for this kind of stack. For more traditional ETL stacks, Alooma would probably not be the right fit.
Zapier is perfect for simple integrations and setting up generally low-volume accounts that require very little configuration and maintenance. For a distributed structure where a client/outside party is responsible for billing, it’s easy to create an account, put them on a low-cost plan, configure a simple integration and teach them how to alter the setup. Its webhook-based setup is perfect for many simple use cases and there’s no reason to use a more complex or expensive solution.
However, if you have integrations that are increasingly complex (involve parsing, multiple non-linear steps, the integration of non-native APIs), significant in overall volume/data or require additional features (time delays for API limits), Zapier likely isn’t your best choice. Other integration platforms offer higher levels of customization and capability, though they’re typically significantly more complex and expensive.
Ease of use - multiple people in the organization can set up and run Zaps per their specific use cases without much training.
Connectivity - Zapier is able to connect to multiple applications we use on a regular basis.
Functionality - Zapier provides embedded functionality within the app itself (email, data conversion), but also appropriate triggers and actions for apps it connects to.
Versatile - Zapier can execute complicated and simple tasks and thus has many use cases.
More tools on managing the data warehouse itself. Although great on the ingest and transformation of data, more help provided by the tool on managing the outputs would be welcome.
Increase possibilities in the transformation step, rather than single event transformations.
Zapier is very user-friendly. They walk you through each step of the zap-building process in an orderly and easy to understand way. Each step of the zap is tested before moving onto the next step. For simple zaps, you can have them up and running within minutes. For more complicated zaps, it may take some experimentation, but Zapier is there to help you troubleshoot.
Before we purchased Zapier, I contacted support and asked them if Zapier could support my intended workflow (this is actually a selection on their support form - awesome). Within 2 hours, I was contacted by a support team member who seemed sure it would work, but granted me premium access for 2 weeks to try it out for myself. Sure enough, it did! Ever since then, support has replied rapidly to any problems I have experienced and answered my questions within a few sentences.
Haven't used the alternatives, since Alooma was one of the earlier ones to the market. From a cursory viewing, however, the features seem to match relatively similarly.
