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Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services that collects data from anywhere on the internet. In today's data-driven world, businesses rely heavily on seamless data integration and transformation processes to unlock the full potential of their vast data resources. But what happens if you want to move data from Amazon S3 to a data warehouse for analysis?

This is where ETL tools come to the rescue, simplifying the entire process, empowering organizations to efficiently collect, process, and integrate their data. Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) tools transfer Amazon S3 data to a supported warehouse through big data pipelines, letting you generate insights about your organization through business intelligence tools. This post features the five best ETL tools for this use case based on features, capabilities, user review scores, and prices. 

Here are our 5 key takeaways about Amazon S3 ETL Tools:

  • ETL tools offer benefits such as eliminating complex data pipelines and reducing the need for expensive data engineers when moving Amazon S3 data to a warehouse.
  • Best practices for using ETL tools include planning ETL workloads, testing ETL pipelines before deployment, and considering integration capabilities with other data sources beyond Amazon S3.
  • Integrate.io, Talend, Stitch, AWS Glue, and Fivetran are all notable Amazon S3 ETL tools with varying features, capabilities, and pricing structures.
  • Integrate.io offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, 300+ pre-built data connectors, excellent customer support, and scalability while Talend provides a vast range of connectors but is known for its complexity. 
  • On the other hand, Stitch focuses on transformation in the target system. AWS Glue integrates well with other AWS services but has a learning curve, and Fivetran excels in quickly moving data to a warehouse but requires SQL knowledge and performs transformations in the target destination.

In this article, we will further explore these five Amazon S3 ETL tools based on features, capabilities, user review scores, and prices. These tools have offerings such as intuitive interfaces, robust features, and seamless integration capabilities, helping businesses overcome complex data challenges while maximizing the potential of their Amazon S3 storage infrastructure.

What are the benefits of using ETL tools? 

ETL tools prevent the need for complex data pipelines when moving Amazon S3 data to a warehouse, so you don't have to hire an expensive data engineer. 

Does Amazon have an ETL tool?

Amazon Glue is an ETL tool that helps you move Amazon S3 data to multiple destinations. 

Tips and Best Practices for Using ETL Tools

Before you learn the best five best Amazon S3 ETL tools, here are some tips and best practices for using these platforms:

Plan your ETL workloads

Even though tools automate much of the ETL process, you'll still need to plan your ETL workloads by determining rules for data integration. Understanding how Amazon S3 integrates with different destination systems, including data warehouses like BigQuery, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, and Apache Hive, will result in more successful outcomes.

Test ETL pipelines

Before moving data from Amazon S3 to a warehouse for real, test your ETL pipelines to ensure they work correctly. You'll identify any bottlenecks that might prevent the smooth flow of data from Amazon's storage system to your target destination. 

Think about other data integration tasks

It's unlikely Amazon S3 is the only data source in your organization. When choosing ETL tools, find out whether they move data from other popular systems such as Salesforce, HubSpot, or your specific customer relationship management (CRM) system. That will improve data integration across your organization. Integrate.io, for example, has pre-built connectors for more than 200 data sources, including CRMs, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, transactional databases, relational databases, data stores, SaaS tools, and more.

Now learn about the five best Amazon S3 ETL tools:

1. Integrate.io 

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Price: From $15,000/year. Why not try Integrate.io yourself with a 14-day free trial? Or schedule an ETL trial set-up meeting and talk to an Integrate.io specialist.

Tool type: Cloud-based

Customer rating: 4.3/5 (G2)

Key features: 

  • Use S3 as a data source and destination
  • 200+ pre-built data connectors
  • Drag-and-drop interface
  • Field-level encryption security
  • Excellent customer support
  • Scales to your business needs 
  • REST API code automation

Integrate.io connects Amazon S3 data to a supported data warehouse, generating a single source of truth for that data. All of that happens in minutes with the platform's pre-built native Amazon S3 connector. You can then run data through business intelligence tools like Looker, Tableau, and Microsoft Power BI.

Integrate.io is the No.1 tool for Amazon S3 Extract, Transform, Load because it comes with simple drag-and-drop functionality, meaning users of any skill level can benefit from this platform. You can also set up custom alerts and receive notifications when problems occur during your S3 pipelines, allowing you to take quick action. Other benefits include world-class security, data governance, and the ability to scale your ETL workloads as your cloud data needs grow. 

Users love Integrate.io’s data integration platform because it's "user-friendly," "intuitive," and provides "excellent support," according to verified reviewers on G2. The platform is also one of G2's Top 50 Infrastructure Products for 2023. 

2. Talend 

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Price: Unknown

Tool type: Cloud-based/on-premises

Customer rating: 4.4/5

Key features:

  • 1,000+ data connectors
  • Batch loading and real-time loading
  • API creation

Talend has more overall data connectors than Integrate.io, but this platform is notoriously difficult to use. That means it might not be a good fit for those who want to move Amazon S3 data to a warehouse with limited data integration experience. In fact, you might need to hire a data engineer with Talend certification to create the pipelines required for S3 integration. It's also difficult to compare Data Fabric with Integrate.io because the former doesn't publish its prices online. 

That said, this on-prem and cloud-based ETL tool is more than capable of extracting datasets from S3, transforming them, and loading them into a supported destination in a quick timeframe. Other benefits include scheduled alerts that warn you when S3 integration jobs experience issues and full data governance management, helping you comply with frameworks in your region and industry when moving data between locations. 

3. Stitch

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Price: From $100/month, but you'll need to upgrade to a paid-for plan (from $1,250/month) for S3 ETL workloads

Tool type: Open-source, cloud-based

Customer rating: 4.5/5

Features:

  • 130 data connectors
  • Real-time alerts
  • Good customer service
  • Advanced monitoring for high volumes of data

Like Integrate.io, you can use Amazon S3 as both a source and a destination with Stitch's data transformation connector. However, Stitch reverses the "transform" and "load" parts of the ETL process. Transformations take place in the target system, whether that's S3 or a data warehouse. That can make it tricky to comply with data governance frameworks because you'd have moved data to a new system before removing inaccuracies. Stitch also has fewer data connectors (around 130) than Amazon S3 ETL tools like Integrate.io and Talend. 

Stitch is an open-source platform at its heart, but you'll need to upgrade to a paid-for plan to properly execute S3 pipelines. With plans starting from $1,250 per month, they are the same cost as Integrate.io (from $15,000 per year). 

4. AWS Glue

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Price: Glue has a complicated pricing structure where you pay an hourly rate based on your data requirements

Tool type: Cloud-based

Customer rating: 4.2/5

Features:

  • Integrates well with other AWS systems
  • Serverless
  • Scales well

AWS Glue is an ETL tool that moves S3 workloads to different destinations in the AWS services ecosystem, including Redshift. You might think Glue is more capable of executing S3 jobs because it belongs to the same company, but that's not the case. This platform can be difficult to navigate if users don't have experience with AWS products. Also, Glue only really integrates with other AWS systems and apps. That means you won't find connectors for Salesforce, HubSpot, or other sources and destinations like you would with Integrate.io. 

Glue transfers S3 data to the destination of your choice seamlessly, making ETL less of a chore. It also has features like job scheduling, providing more control over your data integration projects. Glue’s cloud platform is serverless, meaning you don't have to manually dedicate a server to execute it. That removes the need to scale or manage the infrastructure required for S3 ETL. 

5. Fivetran

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Price: Unknown (contact a rep for prices)

Tool type: Cloud-based

Customer rating: 4.2/5

Features:

  • 100+ data connectors
  • Data security and privacy
  • Logging and reporting

Fivetran makes this list of Amazon S3 ETL tools because of its ability to quickly move S3 buckets to a warehouse of your choice, helping you generate insights from your data. It also offers enhanced security and logging and reporting features. However, like Stitch, Fivetran reverses the "T" and "L" in ETL and performs transformations in the target destination, potentially resulting in data governance issues. 

Fivetran also has a user interface with a steep learning curve. You'll need to know SQL to create data pipelines for a data source like S3, making this platform unusable for some businesses. Integrate.io, on the other hand, lets you extract data and move it between locations without code. 

How Integrate.io Can Help With Amazon S3 ETL

All the tools above move ETL data from Amazon S3 to a target destination. However, Integrate.io is the No.1 platform for this process because of its drag-and-drop capabilities, ease of use, custom alerts, security, and scalability. 

Moving real-time data from Amazon S3 to a data warehouse through ETL jobs is simple. Integrate.io's connector extracts data from S3 and places it inside a staging area before it transforms data into the most appropriate format for analysis. This ETL solution will also remove inaccuracies and ensure compliance with data governance regulations before loading it into a warehouse like Amazon Redshift or Snowflake. You can even use S3 as a data destination and move data from Salesforce and other systems into the platform. 

With Integrate.io's Amazon S3 ETL tools, you can:

  • Perform ReverseETL, ELT (extract, load, transform), and CDC (change data capture/data replication). Unifying data every 60 seconds in a single source of truth, Integrate.io is the industry's fastest ELT platform. Set up an ELT trial. 
  • Create secure and self-hosted REST APIs for data products with Integrate.io's API management.
  • Improve data management, data quality, data migration, data warehousing, data analytics, data catalogs, and make your business a more data-driven one.

Integrate.io is the no-code data pipeline platform that ETLs data from Amazon S3 to a central repository. Sign up for a 14-day free trial or schedule an intro call with an expert to identify pain points in your data integration projects and get instant solutions one-on-one.