10 Best Salesforce ETL and ELT Tools in 2025

The modern business landscape is completely data-driven, putting a lot of pressure on the ability to manage and integrate information. Salesforce is a powerful CRM platform that generates substantial volumes of valuable customer information using its ecosystem of applications, features, and tools.

While it is true that information is one of the most important resources for any business right now, most of that information cannot be useful to an organization just by existing. In order for CRM data to become valuable, it has to be structured and manipulated in a certain way – it is something that data integration methods specialize in. 

Two of the most known methods are ETL and ELT – Extract-Transform-Load and Extract-Load-Transform, respectively. In this article, we aim to cover the topic of ETL and ELT software, explaining its advantages, shortcomings, and recommendations for picking a specific solution.

Salesforce and the value of structured data

Before we dive into the topic of ELT and ETL tools or methods, it would be wise to briefly discuss why these solutions have to exist in the first place. The main reason is obvious – the accuracy and relevancy of information allow Salesforce to provide the best possible information about customer relations, with a complete 360-degree overview of customer interactions.

However, the sheer volume of storage an average company deals with on a regular basis is simply outstanding. Salesforce itself knew that years ago, which is why each company only has a limited data storage capacity, and purchasing additional storage space in Salesforce itself is a very expensive endeavor. 

That way, Salesforce can still provide its services as a cloud-native solution with a multi-tenant nature. Yet, the issue of data storage is now on the shoulders of the companies themselves. There are many issues that could dramatically reduce both the accuracy and the relevancy of information in Salesforce if it is stored in an external environment as-is, with per-transition query limits, slow data transfer speeds, and so on.

Data warehouses

Luckily, most of the issues above are easily resolved by using data warehousing solutions. The most noteworthy examples of such environments are Google Big Query, Snowflake, and Amazon Redshift, all of which are designed to store and analyze large data volumes, no matter if the information itself is pulled from a database or some other source.

Extracting Salesforce data into these warehouses improves the efficiency of data management and allows for advanced analytics beyond what Salesforce has to offer while providing a complete 360 view of customer information pulled from other enterprise environments.

Salesforce was not designed with data storage as a primary purpose in mind. As such, it is necessary to create a proper data synchronization strategy to be able to use the analytical results of data warehouses in Salesforce while also providing the warehouse in question with the most up-to-date information from Salesforce and other sources.

Challenges with data integration in Salesforce

Data integration is a known challenge for many Salesforce users, but it has many risks that might introduce their own issues if dealt with incorrectly. Some of the most common challenges of data integration in this context are:

• Poor data quality;
• Lack of data validation rules;
• Data or field type mismatch;
• Lack of understanding when it comes to integration complexity;
• No clear integration strategy, and so on.

Fortunately, a lot of these issues can, in turn, be mitigated or resolved by implementing a competent ETL or ELT tool for your Salesforce environment. Establishing a concrete data quality policy would also assist greatly here. 

It should be noted that the nature of Salesforce makes it a very poor selection for data storage en masse. As such, the overwhelming majority of use cases for ETL and ELT solutions in this article are going to assume that the data is getting integrated from Salesforce and into another target location – which is going to be the aforementioned data warehouse for many Salesforce environments. For example, it is common for organizations to extract their Salesforce information into warehouses to perform long-term trend analysis and comprehensive business intelligence – everything that is going to be difficult to do from within Salesforce.

ETL and ELT tools in Salesforce: the definition

Data integration management in Salesforce uses two main approaches: 

• Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) tools are the traditional approach to data integration, in which the information in question is transformed before being uploaded into Salesforce. It is a great option for most situations where there is a necessity to follow complex data cleansing protocols or strict compliance requirements, ensuring consistent data quality across the board.
• Extract-Load-Transform (ELT) tools use a slightly more modern way of interacting with information, leaving the transformation process to Salesforce’s own internal processing features. Companies with strong Salesforce development capabilities and straightforward data transformation thrive with ELT tools with faster initial loading times and better flexibility, among other advantages.

Data replication is also seen as an alternative approach to data integration, with the most significant difference being the fact that data replication does not transform information in any way during or after integration. 

The importance of ETL and ELT tools in Salesforce

The value of ETL and ELT tools extends way beyond basic data integration, bringing in a lot of other advantages:

• Data consistency in complex environments with multiple systems.
• Routine data management task automation.
• Support for complex business processes.
• Better real-time decision-making.
• Easier ways to maintain compliance and data quality standards.

The expansion of the digital footprint for each business in a modern-day environment made seamless data integration in Salesforce a necessity to remain competitive instead of a minor advantage in this field. 

Trends in the market of ETL/ELT tools for Salesforce in 2024-2025

The overall landscape of the data environment market in Salesforce goes through significant changes to this day, and there are several key trends that are worth mentioning because of their influence on the market.

• Real-time integration for data processing is slowly becoming the new norm for Salesforce users, moving away from more traditional batch processing to enable businesses to act based on the most up-to-date information, which can be a substantial competitive advantage in certain cases.
• AI-powered automation includes intelligent data mapping and transformation, which can dramatically reduce the complexity of data management efforts while also making the end results more accurate and efficient.
• Zero ETL software is a substantial paradigm shift in data integration that eliminates the necessity for three traditional processes (extract, transform, load) altogether. It enables real-time direct data sharing between applications and data warehouses, significantly reducing the complexity and maintenance overhead of such data pipelines.
• Cloud-native software tends to provide seamless scalability and extensive flexibility, both of which can be major advantages for Salesforce environments, simplifying business adaptation without the necessity to invest substantial resources into infrastructure modification.
• The open-source movement has expanded a lot over the recent years, providing many cost-effective solutions for data integration that can rival proprietary tools in terms of the feature set and performance. The rapid community-driven improvements and extensive customization capabilities are just a few examples of what such solutions can offer now.
• Security and compliance have both become a necessity for modern data integration tools, with support for major privacy regulations and built-in data governance capabilities being practically commonplace for most modern ETL and ELT environments. That way, data integration software can also assist companies with maintaining compliance and protecting sensitive information at the same time.
• Low-code and no-code platforms have gotten through a lot of development in a relatively short time frame, offering competitive alternatives to complex data integration environments. The addition of visual interfaces and drag-and-drop capabilities reduces the dependency on the technical expertise of each user while also speeding up implementation times.
• Pro-code platforms remain a cornerstone of data integration, providing the highest possible level of flexibility and control as a more customizable alternative to low-code and no-code environments. Solutions such as Heroku allow for the creation of highly customizable data pipelines with complex transformation logic. Their relevance is still at an impressive level to this day, showing how many companies value the power and customization these traditional development tools can offer compared with more modern alternatives.

Data management in Salesforce is going through a stage of growing demand right now, facilitated by multiple digital transformation initiatives, exponential data volume growth, and business intelligence requirements for modern reporting processes. The necessity to follow regulatory frameworks and compliance rules changes the field even further, putting additional restrictions and requirements on how information should be handled and secured. 

These trends are going to continue shaping the data integration topic in Salesforce in the near future, putting a lot of pressure on selecting the correct ETL or ELT solution for your company’s needs and obligations.

Criteria for choosing the best Salesforce ETL or ELT tool

The choice between ETL and ELT tools depends on the company’s preferences and a number of other factors. However, there is also a surprisingly large number of features that are shared between the two, which allows us to share our recommendations in terms of preferred criteria for both ETL and ELT solutions at the same time.

Setup and ease of use

Interface intuitiveness is a common recommendation for practically any software. Both ELT and ETL solutions should be able to offer comprehensive documentation to assist with integration, as well as a number of pre-built connectors for common data sources. Additionally:

• ETL tools provide their own middleware interfaces outside of Salesforce
• ELT tools aim to leverage Salesforce’s existing configurations and APIs in the most efficient way possible while also offloading all transformation processes to a target storage location, minimizing the reliance on Salesforce’s capabilities in this regard.

Flexibility and customization

Customization is a factor that depends completely on the nature of the software’s operations: 

• ETL tools often move towards providing complex data cleansing routines and multi-faceted external transformation capabilities.
• ELT tools focus on efficient Salesforce data extraction and loading while maintaining lighter interaction with Salesforce and offloading transformations to the target system, be it a data lake or a data warehouse.

Performance and data processing

The location of data processing has a surprisingly large influence on the total performance of the Salesforce environment during transformation processes:

• ETL tools tend to put a bigger pressure on Salesforce in terms fo performance due to the usage of larger, more complex queries, placing a bigger load on the infrastructure during extraction processes.
• ELT tools reduce Salesforce’s workload after data extraction due to the ability to offload data transformation tasks to the target storage location, thus causing a lesser performance impact.

A hybrid data processing approach is also possible in some cases but is difficult to talk about due to the highly personalized nature of each instance of a hybrid data processing system.

Scalability

Multiple factors contribute to the scalability of a data processing solution, including data volume handling capacity, governance considerations, API limits, and the lack of significant restructuring for fast-growing businesses. Additionally:

• ETL users should review the capabilities of the infrastructure that the software provides.
• ELT users would have to look out for the platform processing capabilities of the solution.

Real-time integration

Latency requirements and system impact are common factors that contribute to the performance of real-time integration. With that being said:

• ETL tools can offer real-time processing pipelines in some cases, but they are not the primary focus of any ETL tool, and the feature itself is not universally available either.
• ELT tools mostly rely on Salesforce’s APIs for data extraction in real-time, but real-time processing is only available to a select number of destination systems and is not a commodity in the industry.

Pricing structure

The total cost of ownership for such software can be somewhat difficult to calculate due to the existence of both immediate and scaling costs, as well as training and implementation expenses. Additionally:

• ETL tools also include the cost of tool licensing, infrastructure, and maintenance.
• ELT tools should consider platform resource usage and Salesforce API consumption (indirect costs), as well as tool licensing.

Compliance and security

Security and compliance needs of ETL and ELT software do tend to differ in their priorities outside of the standard feature set (audit logging, compliance certification, encryption, etc.):

• ETL tools prioritize middleware security, external processing, and data transmission protection.
• ELT tools use Salesforce’s built-in security and compliance capabilities during extraction while relying on a target platform’s feature set in this department when it comes to data transformation and loading.

Salesforce ETL software examples

Due to the multifaceted nature of this topic, we are going to present three separate groups of Salesforce data integration software examples. 

• Group one will cover some examples of notable ETL software on the market.
• Group two shall do the same for the ELT software. 
• Group three would provide a few options for hybrid ETL/ELT solutions.

The table below is going to be used for future reference in our classification.

Software category	Solution Name	Details
ETL	MuleSoft	Significant focus on API-driven integration with batch/real-time ETL processing.
	Jitterbit	Middleware-based ETL solution with transformation capabilities and a selection of prebuilt connections.
	Adeptia Connect	Focuses on business-to-business data integration and transformation capabilities.
ELT	Workato	Real-time integration with extensive automation and limited transformative capabilities.
	Fivetran	Significant focus on automated ELT, transferring raw data into warehouses for further processing.
	Matillion	Purpose-built ELT solution for cloud data warehouses – BigQuery, Snowflake, etc.
	Panoply	ELT capabilities in combination with data management and data ingestion for cloud data warehouses.
Hybrid (ETL w/ELT capabilities)	Integrate.io	Works great as an ETL tool but also supports ELT workflows for cloud platforms.
	Informatica	Comprehensive ETL tool capable of providing ELT workflows to modern data warehouses.
	Skyvia	Primarily offers cloud-based ETL capabilities but also has limited ELT functionality.

Our list of ETL software recommendations is going to include:

• MuleSoft
• Jitterbit
• Adeptia Connect

MuleSoft

MuleSoft and its Anypoint Platform offer versatile data integration capabilities to allow for establishing powerful connections between Salesforce and many other data sources using an API-led approach to connectivity. The platform can be deployed both in the cloud and on-premise, and the drag-and-drop interface dramatically simplifies most integration processes. Some of the most distinguishable capabilities of MuleSoft are its reusable API components, as well as its DataWeave transformation language that tends to speed up integration development.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.5/5 based on 686 customer reviews.
• Capterra – the aggregated score of 4.4/5 based on 570 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 8.0/10 based on 114 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Convenient centralization capabilities that allow for managing several platforms or integrations at once.
• Interface user-friendliness with easy access to most features.
• Support for custom connector creation.

Disadvantages:

• Relatively weak debugging capabilities.
• The user interface is buggy in some places.
• MuleSoft is not as flexible with large data volumes as some of its competitors.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• There is no public pricing information available on the MuleSoft website.
• The pricing in question depends on the number of integrations, cores, and environments, but the exact cost can only be acquired via a personalized quote.

Summary of reviews about MuleSoft:

MuleSoft is an enterprise-grade data integration solution with comprehensive API management capabilities for Salesforce and other environments. Its API-led approach is incredibly effective, has proven itself highly advantageous for large enterprises, and reduces the development time of complex integrations. However, the solution is significantly more expensive than most of its competitors, and that does not include the necessity to provide dedicated training courses for employees to compensate for the overall complexity of the software.

Jitterbit

Jitterbit is a flexible cloud integration solution that can seamlessly connect the Salesforce environment with other enterprise systems. The intuitive Harmony platform ensures fast and convenient integrations while pre-built connectors and templates accelerate deployment even further. The Process Builder feature opens up many opportunities for workflow automation, as well, and the Project Management feature set is a great help for tracking and managing complex integration combinations.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.6/5 based on 553 customer reviews.
• Capterra – the aggregated score of 4.4/5 based on 45 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 7.0/10 based on 44 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Easy data integration between systems and platforms.
• Relatively simple configuration for data integration processes.
• Powerful error handling capabilities.

Disadvantages:

• A lack of detailed onboarding leads to some of the features being practically unused by most users.
• Somewhat rigid pricing model, especially for more complex infrastructures and environments.
• Setting up complex integrations can be practically impossible without the heavy use of a multitude of variables and a substantial amount of coding effort.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• Jitterbit’s pricing is completely quote-based, with three pricing plans: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise.
• The pricing plans differ in terms of the number of connections, number of environments, support response times, etc.

Summary of reviews about Jitterbit:

Jitterbit is a cloud-based integration solution that uses its Harmony platform to establish and streamline connections between Salesforce and a large selection of enterprise applications. It is often regarded as a perfect middle-ground option in the current market, striking a delicate balance between usability and functionality without an expensive price tag to worry about. It is rather intuitive in most cases, but the support response times often vary significantly, making it difficult to resolve issues and receive assistance from time to time.

Adeptia Connect

Adeptia Connect is a user-friendly data integration platform capable of simplifying Salesforce integration using a self-service approach. It can offer a selection of pre-configured templates and a web-based interface that helps create and manage integration workflows. The solution’s significant emphasis on the Customer Self-Service Portal makes it possible for external partners to create their own connections and integrations with practically no IT involvement.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.2/5 based on 19 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 9.8/10 based on 9 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Quick and easy integration setup process.
• Helpful customer support team.
• Extensive automation capabilities.

Disadvantages:

• Challenging error troubleshooting process.
• Relatively high skill requirements in order to be able to use the software to its fullest.
• Gaining access to help guides can be surprisingly difficult.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• The starting price for the Standard edition is about $500 per month.
• The Business edition is double the price of the previous one, starting from $1,000 per month.
• The number of connections and partners decides the total price tag.
• Enterprise edition is completely quote-based.

Summary of reviews about Adeptia Connect:

Adeptia Connect is an integration platform focused on business users that provides a self-service approach to Salesforce integrations. It is an invaluable tool for managing multiple partner connections at once due to its B2B integration capabilities. Even though the solution has its own range of use cases and client companies, it does suffer from a number of significant disadvantages, such as lackluster error-handling capability.

Salesforce ELT software examples

Now that we are done with presenting ETL software, it is time to switch over to ELT solutions, represented by the following:

• Adeptia Connect
• Fivetran
• Matillion
• Panoply
• Skyvia

Workato

Workato is an enterprise automation platform with deep Salesforce connectivity that can offer several other features aside from data integration. It uses AI-powered automation recipes that act as templates to be customized upon, offering a respectable degree of customization without the necessity to have a high skill level. Creating and managing complex condition-based workflows with rollback capabilities and error handling is one of Workato’s strongest advantages.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.7/5 based on 479 customer reviews.
• Capterra – the aggregated score of 4.7/5 based on 56 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 8.7/10 based on 64 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Extensive customization capabilities that allow for complex integrations to be created without the necessity to delve into coding.
• A substantial number of educational materials, such as videos and documentation.
• Support for a large selection of data storage environments for integration, including Slack, Jira, etc.

Disadvantages:

• A steep learning curve for most new users, in which most of the basic capabilities are simple, but creating complex integrations would take time to learn.
• Creating a recipe from scratch can be challenging and confusing.
• Inconsistent support team response times.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• There is no public pricing information about Workato available on the official website.
• The pricing model itself is based on transaction volumes, connections, and recipes.

Summary of reviews about Workato:

Workato is an enterprise automation platform for workflows and integrations that supports Salesforce and many other environments. It has proven itself extremely effective for rapid deployment with sophisticated integrations due to its own recipe-based approach. Unfortunately, the pricing structure of Workato tends to get somewhat complicated in more sophisticated use cases, and the total price of the solution also tends to rise dramatically in many such cases.

Fivetran

Fivetran can provide automated data integration capabilities to Salesforce and many other potential data sources using its zero-maintenance pipelines as the baseline. Fivetran’s primary field of specialization is data standardization and cleansing, with its library of pre-built connectors and near real-time synchronization speed. One of its more unconventional features is the schema management tool, which manages to significantly reduce the maintenance overhead by adapting to source changes when necessary.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.2/5 based on 388 customer reviews.
• Capterra – the aggregated score of 4.7/5 based on 22 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 8.2/10 based on 51 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Straightforward setup process in most cases.
• One of the best value-for-money offerings on the market.
• Easy and convenient integration process with many data storage targets, not just Salesforce.

Disadvantages:

• Dealing with large data synchronization volumes tends to significantly increase the solution’s cost.
• The lack of bidirectional data synchronization.
• Relying on custom Python code seems to be the only way to add support for a data source that Fivetran does not support already.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• There is no public information about Fivetran’s pricing on its official website.
• Consumption-based pricing is used for all pricing tiers, calculated on monthly active rows.
• Larger implementations are subject to volume discounts.
• All pricing seems to be quote-based.

Summary of reviews about Fivetran:

Fivetran is an automated data integration software with maintenance-free data pipelines. It supports Salesforce and many other data sources, automating most of the data synchronization and schema management efforts. While standardization is a significant advantageous trait for Fivetran, it does also lead to the fact that the platform’s customization capabilities are significantly limited.

Matillion

Matillion offers cloud-native data integration capabilities that help connect all kinds of data warehouse solutions to Salesforce. It can offer two different approaches to building data transformation pipelines – SQL-based and visual-based – which makes it easy for the software to create both simple and complex integration scenarios on demand. Additionally, Matillion can also offer a unique job-sharing capability that makes it possible to reuse various integration components in future projects, simplifying integration workflow establishment as time goes on.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.4/5 based on 78 customer reviews.
• Capterra – the aggregated score of 4.3/5 based on 111 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 6.1/10 based on 212 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Responsive and helpful customer support team.
• Great way to visualize complex integrations for users who are not knowledgeable enough with SQL.
• Impressive stability of the platform under high-volume loads.

Disadvantages:

• Confusing and rigid scheduling capability.
• Some of the less popular tools have many errors, and they do not have any idea when they are going to be fixed.
• All workflow modifications are saved and updated automatically, which makes it difficult to retract accidental changes.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• The pricing model is based on credits, with pay-as-you-go options available.
• A single credit costs about $2.
• Enterprise tier solution is only distributed via quote-based pricing.

Summary of reviews about  Matillion:

Matillion provides a cloud-native data integration feature set for connecting Salesforce with a multitude of other environments and cloud data warehouse solutions. Its SQL-based transformation approach makes it a great option for complex workflows with a high degree of customization, but it does also suffer from a substantial learning curve since many advanced features and customization options are only available to users who have a certain level of knowledge in SQL.

Panoply

Panoply is an automated data warehouse and integration platform that supports Salesforce and many other potential data sources. It uses a code-free data integration structure that greatly simplifies schema mapping and improves data integration workflows. Its architecture is also self-optimizing, which allows it to adjust the performance of each integration based on data volumes and query patterns.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.5/5 based on 82 customer reviews.
• Capterra – the aggregated score of 4.0/5 based on 21 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 8.5/10 based on 12 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Incredible performance with low deployment times.
• User-friendly interface with most features being easily accessible.
• Automatic view materialization is very convenient in some situations.

Disadvantages:

• Rigid and convoluted licensing model.
• Challenging folder navigation in the software.
• The price tag is generally high in many cases.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• The pricing starts from approximately $1,558 per month for the Lite version, $2,498 per month for the Standard version, and $3,798 per month for the Premium version.
• Data volume and computing resources are the most important factors for total price calculations.
• Choosing annual payments instead of monthly ones offers additional discounts.
• The highest pricing tier (Enterprise) is quote-based only.

Summary of reviews about Panoply:

Panoply is a data integration solution with support for data warehouses that can completely automate both the connection and analysis of Salesforce data in certain situations. It is based on a self-optimizing architecture that adjusts its performance depending on the current workload of each integration, yet it also has a potentially significant disadvantage in the form of incremental update requirements since they might limit the customization range for bigger data sets.

Hybrid Salesforce software (ETL/ELT)

It should be noted that ETL and ELT are not mutually exclusive methods. We have alluded to that before, but this kind of list should be a far better confirmation. In fact, some of our examples can offer both ETL and ELT capabilities at the same time:

Integrate.io

Integrate.io is a cloud-based data integration solution with a specialization in ETL processes. It can be integrated into Salesforce with ease, providing a no-code approach to creating complex data pipelines without a high skill level as an entry barrier. It can also offer a unique Elastic Integration that scales processing power depending on the workload demands, providing additional flexibility.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.3/5 based on 199 customer reviews.
• Capterra – the aggregated score of 4.6/5 based on 17 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 7.5/10 based on 10 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Outstanding customer support experience noted by many users.
• Convenient user interface with easy access to most features.
• Great solution for most simple integrations that can be established using a drag-and-drop interface.

Disadvantages:

• Less than informative error logs and error messages.
• Can be extremely expensive if there is a necessity to perform data synchronization more often (such as on an hourly basis).
• The aforementioned drag-and-drop interface quickly becomes a hindrance when it is necessary to set up complex integrations.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• The pricing model of Integrate.io for ETL integrations uses credits to evaluate the total cost of the services. 
• Credits are consumed based on cluster usage, with four credits per hour being the average consumption rate.
• The Starter plan costs $1,495 for 500 credits ($2.99 per credit).
• The Professional plan costs $2,976 for 4,800 credits ($0.62 per credit).
• The Expert plan costs $4,980 for 6,000 credits ($0.83 per credit).
• The Business Critical plan is quote-based.

Summary of reviews about Integrate.io:

Integrate.io is a cloud-based platform for ETL integrations that streamlines data connections between Salesforce and many data sources. It is a combination of previously known solutions in the field – Xplenty, FlyData, Dreamfactory, and Intermix.io – that provides an intuitive user interface and relatively simple data pipeline-building capabilities. It is a great option for most standard integration scenarios, but it is highly likely that the solution is going to struggle with complex data transformation needs.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration

Informatica Cloud Data Integration is one of several software options provided by the software developer company. This one offers enterprise-grade integration with Salesforce using its own basis as a cloud-native platform. It can provide advanced data transformation options and a number of pre-built mappings to cover the most common integration targets. It uses an AI-powered engine called CLAIRE to offer intelligent automation and actionable recommendations in the fields of data transformation, data mapping, etc.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.3/5 based on 104 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 7.5/10 based on 22 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Real-time data synchronization capabilities.
• Knowledgeable and helpful customer support team.
• Large selection of supported connectors and integrations.

Disadvantages:

• A surprisingly large number of bugs in the interface that have not been fixed for a long time.
• Confusing error messaging.
• Short time frame before a mandatory log out due to inactivity.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• Cloud Data Integration’s pricing is entirely quote-based; there is no public pricing data available.
• The total cost of the software depends on the data volume, number of connections, and total runtime hours.

Summary of reviews about Informatica:

Informatica Cloud Data Integration is a comprehensive solution with extensive connectivity options available for Salesforce and many other enterprise environments. It uses its AI-powered CLAIRE engine to provide meaningful automation capabilities, simplifying large-scale integrations in the fields of transformation and data mapping. With that being said, it can be a very expensive solution in some cases, and the confusing licensing model of the software makes it even more difficult to understand all of the potential pitfalls in this software’s licensing.

Skyvia

Skyvia manages to provide cloud-based data integration capabilities with straightforward connectivity with Salesforce, along with backups, data management, and a host of other features. It supports no-code integration tools for scheduled and real-time synchronization, and there is even support for bidirectional synchronization without losing the referential integrity between systems.

Client score:

• G2 – the aggregated score of 4.8/5 based on 236 customer reviews.
• Capterra – the aggregated score of 4.8/5 based on 81 customer reviews.
• TrustRadius – the aggregated score of 9.8/10 based on 25 customer reviews.

Benefits:

• Large selection of supported connectors and integrations.
• Convenient and intuitive user interface.
• A high degree of efficiency with most simple integration jobs.

Disadvantages:

• The existing onboarding process is not capable of showcasing all the main capabilities of the solution.
• Some of the more advanced data integration capabilities are simply absent from the software.
• Inconsistent customer support experience resulted in a lot of displeased customer reviews over the years.

Pricing information (at the time of writing):

• Free tier with a basic feature set.
• Basic plan starts from $99 per month.
• Standard plan starts from $199 per month.
• Professional plan starts from $249 per month.
• Enterprise plan does not have a public pricing point attached to it and is completely quote-based.
• The pricing is based on the number of integrations available and includes more features at higher-priced tiers.

Summary of reviews about Skyvia:

Skyvia is a cloud-based integration solution. It is a cost-effective solution that works best for small or medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and its bidirectional synchronization works wonders in supporting information exchange between certain solutions. With that being said, this solution is not particularly customizable or flexible when it comes to advanced data transformation capabilities, which makes it less than useful for most enterprise clients.

GRAX as a data replication solution

Additionally, the nature of ELT and ETL tools is close to that of other types of software that deal with data integration. The software in question is called a data replication solution, with the biggest distinguishable trait being the fact that this software does not transform the information in some way before transferring it from one place to another. GRAX would be a good example of such a solution to go over.

GRAX is a specialized data management platform that offers backup, archival, and data replication capabilities in Salesforce environments. The ability to continuously capture complete Salesforce data history without losing any of the referential integrity and relationships between objects is one of the strongest advantages of GRAX’s software. It allows organizations to have complete control over their SaaS data with all the compliance and security benefits that a modern Salesforce business can provide.

GRAX manages to provide a convenient package of features that complement Salesforce’s existing feature set in terms of not only backup and recovery but also data replication and archiving. It can take some time to learn all of its capabilities, but the end result and the abundance of advantages it can offer are very much worth the effort.

Best practices for choosing the right data integration tool for Salesforce

The choice between ETL and ELT tools for data integration can be challenging, and picking a single solution in each of these fields is often just as difficult. While it would be challenging for us to provide a detailed plan for picking the data integration software for each company, we can offer a number of general recommendations that should simplify this process to a certain degree.

Data complexity evaluation

One of the first recommendations one should follow when evaluating data integration software is to understand what kind of limitations they have to work with. Existing system limits and processing location impact on the overall environment would play a substantial part in this decision, and the same could be said for whether there is a need for real-time processing.

There’s also the matter of processing capabilities, storage constraints, and Salesforce API limitations to consider. The main choice between ETL and ELT software is also determined here, in most cases, choosing whether it would be better for the company to handle data processing inside or outside of the Salesforce environment.

Team skill set consideration

While it is true that skill growth should be a strong recommendation for all employees, a lot of the software integrations would have to be purchased with the current employees’ capabilities in mind, as well as general expectations for future data integration processes. For example, no-code solutions are ideal for business users without major technical background and come in both ETL and ELT solutions. Alternatively, low-code environments are mostly ETL tools and can offer a slightly more complex set of capabilities than no-code software.

The existence of Salesforce development expertise is crucial for the proper implementation of many ELT tools and external development skills are practically mandatory for performing custom changes to ETL software’s capabilities due to the necessity to interact with multiple APIs.

Budget and scaling considerations

The financial capabilities of the company also play a major part in the final decision in regards to purchasing a certain software. This includes not only the cost of initial investment but also the maintenance cost of the software in the long run, as well as the way these costs would change due to scaling. The necessity to train employees should also be included in this calculation since it can be considered the cost of onboarding to begin with.

Most of the previously mentioned criteria for ETL and ELT software should also work great here. The choice of the software depending on its data processing location is a good example of that – processing location choice can be enforced by data security requirements or calculated depending on the performance needs of the company. Data governance requirements and resource availability also contribute significantly to the choice between ETL and ELT software.

At the end of the day, it is not uncommon for businesses to choose hybrid solutions that combine ETL and ELT environments in order to acquire their strengths. Data processing software also remains an option here, capable of working separately or in tandem with other solutions, depending on the circumstances.

Conclusion

The landscape of ETL and ELT software for Salesforce continues to change over the years, offering more and more data integration features than ever before. The total market for this software is massive, offering both enterprise-grade solutions such as MuleSoft and Informatica alongside smaller-scale options such as Jitterbit or Workato to choose from. Additionally, solutions such as GRAX would be a great alternative to ETL/ELT software for companies that rarely perform data transformation or enrichment processes, offering real-time data availability, lower processing requirements, faster recovery, and other advantages.

The key to choosing the most competent solution for your company is not about finding the software that offers the widest feature set but figuring out what software is the best at meeting your company’s challenges and demands. Of course, the software also has to meet your technical and financial capabilities, but the capability to be useful in your specific environment comes first anyway.

Effective data integration is never just about the simple act of moving data from one place to another since these data movements are supposed to create the foundation for digital transformation with better decision-making and improved business continuity. The importance of reliable and scalable ETL/ELT solutions such as GRAX is guaranteed to increase as companies continue to generate and store more information within the same period of time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the primary advantages of data replication when compared with ETL/ELT processes?

There are four primary advantages that data replication has over ETL/ELT processes:

• Real-time data availability with rapid data synchronization between systems.
• Simplified environment maintenance due to the lack of complex transformation logic involved in the replication processes.
• The ability to maintain complete data consistency across multiple systems, reducing the risk of data mismatch or other issues.
• The absence of transformation algorithms in the workflow also greatly simplifies data recovery in case of system failures or any other incidents due to the lack of data transformation necessary before it can be restored.

Is there a single best ETL tool for a small Salesforce business?

It is very difficult to claim that a single tool can satisfy the needs of any small business in Salesforce, but we can say that Workato is highly regarded in this field, capable of serving both smaller and large-scale customers, and has a large assortment of glowing user reviews.

What software supports real-time data integration with Salesforce?

Fivetran and MuleSoft are just a few examples of ETL software with support for either real-time or near-real-time integration, with extremely low time frames for data changes.

Is it possible to integrate Salesforce with other business tools using ETL solutions?

The capabilities of tools such as Jitterbit, MuleSoft, and Workato offer extensive app integration that opens up synchronization opportunities for Salesforce with CRMs, ERPs, marketing platforms, and so on.