Maia by Matillion vs. Workato

Great: Need to query simpler APIs, or utilize well known services such as GSheets etc.? Matillion has got some of the best and easiest to use connectors out there. Not so great: Do you need have a competent CI/CD flow that you will be able to update / compare from Matillion as well as other sources at the same time? Good luck, you will need to be extra careful, as you might have to have a deeper dive into your servers Terminal each time you have a git conflict.

Incentivized

Well Suited

• Business Process Work Flows, File Management, Small/Medium # of Records Queried (<~1000)
• Closing a sales deal in system one kicks off work flows in system two for implementation
• Notification of key events in system one via text, outlook event, etc
• While I note management of two-way integrations needs improvement, it is a strength of Workato and easier to set up here than in any other tool.
• Support for connectors business processes require (Docusign, Dropbox, Outlook, Quick Base, Salesforce, etc)

Needs Improvement -

• Management of two-way integrations. It's often a bit of a struggle to create the appropriate fields in both systems to ensure redundant jobs are not run nor infinite loops created. That said, Workato does provide some documentation to counter this.
• Working with Large Data Sets (1000+)

Incentivized

• The user interface of your data pipelines makes it easier for people who aren’t as techy as data engineers to observe what's going on.
• Customer support is quick, not always as efficient as you would want it to be, but still.
• Nice documentation available.

Incentivized

• Workato is very easy to pick up and use. You'll be creating complex recipes within days. The UI, workflow, formulas, and other features are very intuitive.
• Workato is very powerful. The native connectors it has to hundreds of software already, allows users to make substantial automation and integrations, but the HTTP connector makes it seem like it has no boundaries. If you are using software that isn't a native Workato connector but it has an API, you can use their HTTP connector to make calls to and from.
• Workato is always making improvements to its platform. This includes adding more connectors, more features, updating current connectors to be more powerful, or expanding on other tools it offers.

• Static and monolithic, it will show its limits when running multiple concurrent jobs.
• Github and versioning implementation is messy and broken. Don't use it.
• There's not way to see/query the system resources, just wait for a server to crash due to out of memory. An admin panel would be appreciated + some env variables with updated info.
• API implementation is cumbersome and limited.
• There's no concept of hub and worker engine, everything happens of the same server (designing workflows and executing them). Having separate light ETL engines to run job could be better. (sort of docker/kubernetes/lambda functions).
• Handling of variables is limited especially for returned values from sub components.
• Some components could return more metadata at the end of their execution instead of the standard one.
• Billing is badly designed not taking into account that the server is hosted by the client. Expensive.
• We had several issue with migration where starting a new instance was required and then migrating the content. It was painful and time consuming also have to deal with support and engineering team on Matillion side.
• CDC doesn't work as expected or it is not a mature product yet.

Incentivized

• Customization has a bit of a learning curve associated with it. Be prepared to expand your programming knowledge for any deep customization, however having the option to customize is critical
• Online training material is out there, but can be a bit cumbersome to read through and retain. More straight-forward online training material would help 10 fold

Matillion is easy to use and flexible to debug. Performance are good and support is giving us a good service level. There are still some technical points to be developed more (such as SAP extraction). but easy flows are really fast to be developed. We are also using a tool for migration from other tools, and it is useful as Matillion is producing XML code.

Incentivized

We need to develop Enterprise Application Integrations and Workato was not designed for this

Easy tasks are really easy, and complex tasks are still possible. With prior knowledge of general data warehousing principles and experience with other data transformation tools, it's straightforward to get familiar with and use Matillion. I initially used minimal external support from a partner for some more complex tasks but very soon could work entirely independently with Matillion.

Incentivized

The sheer work Workato eliminates from people's daily jobs is simply a great contribution to people's productivity and a boost to capability. It actually strikes the balance between business and tech teams. It also reduces dependency on developers, and speeds up their delivery too. The only reason it's not a full 10/10 is for the price - it's a bit expensive for what we'd like, and their batch or high data volume processing can be improved.

Overall, I've found Matillion to be responsive and considerate. I feel like they value us as a customer even when I know they have customers who spend more on the product than we do. That speaks to a motive higher than money. They want to make a good product and a good experience for their customers. If I have any complaint, it's that support sometimes feels community-oriented. It isn't always immediately clear to me that my support requests are going to a support engineer and not to the community at large. Usually, though, after a bit of conversation, it's clear that Matillion is watching and responding. And responses are generally quick in coming.

Incentivized

They employ an extremely knowledgeable team of problem solvers. I've never had a disappointing interaction or one that has left me still searching for answers. I know that when I ask for help, they'll partner with me until we find a solution together

Incentivized

We were able to control on access and built various enviroment for implementation

Incentivized

We discovered that we could not use Workato for our more complex, large enterprise integrations. It was useful for simple workflows that matched the prebuilt recipes.

We selected Matillion primarily because of it's ability to connect to numerous data sources and easily create transformation jobs. While Fivetran does a better job managing and examining deltas, it is not easy to use and is very non user friendly. SSIS was not a good fit for our team and required a significant amount of attention and server management that we did not want to invest in.

We found Workato to be easier to use, more powerful and more robust than other solutions we tested at the time. It simply does the trick and allowed us to implement all that we needed in all the precise details we needed. It gave us all the power, flexibility and autonomy we needed without bogging us down with unjustified complexity. Workato came through for us and that's why we keep using it after three intense years.

We're using Matillion on EC2 instances, and we have about 20 projects for our clients in the same instance. Sometimes, we're struggling to manage schedules for all projects because thread management is not visible, and we can't see the process at the instance level.

Incentivized

• Time savings -- we could custom code nearly everything Matillion does, but it would take days/weeks instead of minutes/hours.
• There's a bit of a learning curve to truly unlock Matillion's potential, and that can be frustrating for some new users, but once you get over that curve, the possibilities are endless.
• It allows us to centralize the hundreds of way to bring data in, so that even if you have to troubleshoot what someone else wrote, it's easy to jump in and understand what is happening.

Incentivized

• Workato is an unusual type of software in that it’s very much middle-wear, which means it’s extra important for stake holders in your company (especially those who won’t be interacting with Workato on a daily basis) to see the ROI that Workato can provide. Typically ROI is in developer time, as well as replacements for other SaaS tools. For our team, we move 2X as fast and need 1/2 the developers, so the ROI is just incredible.