In the competitive market of ETL solutions, platforms like Hevo, Airbyte, and Integrate.io are amongst the top contenders. While they all are ETL/ELT/Reverse ETL platforms, each has its unique set of features to offer. The best ETL tool for your business is the one that best fits in your modern data stack and is aligned with your unique requirements. So how do you decide which tool meets your business needs?

We have performed a detailed comparative analysis of some important parameters shared by these three platforms. Continue reading to see which tool triumphs in the Hevo vs. Airbyte vs. Integrate.io faceoff. 

Overview

What makes Hevo different?

Hevo Data is a low-code data integration platform that provides end-to-end pipelines for pulling data from multiple sources, transforming it to be analysis-ready, and delivering it to target warehouses. Hevo's platform allows users to transform data before as well as after data loading, making it a tool for both ETL and ELT.

Hevo is popular for its completely automated data extraction, transformation, and loading. Hevo supports a user-friendly platform with reliable data pipelining that can scale with growing business requirements. As a result, the time for setting up data analysis and reporting is significantly reduced.

While Hevo is a good option for automating pipelines, if transformations are needed it does require users to know Python and/or SQL to transform the data resulting in this part of the platform not being low-code.

What makes Airbyte different?

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform. It is a cloud-based ELT tool that comes with a long tail of customizable connectors and a growing contributor community that maintains these connectors. Users can also build their own connectors from scratch using Airbyte’s connector development kit (CDK).

The platform supports a modular architecture that allows users to trigger desired particular ELT jobs, e.g., extracting and loading data. Jobs such as orchestration, scheduling, and monitoring are handled automatically by Airbyte.

Airbyte offers custom SQL data transformations at the destination level, i.e., after data ingestion. The open-source version of Airbyte can be self-hosted. Airbyte also provides its own cloud for hosting and management in its enterprise version, with custom pricing.

What makes Integrate.io different?

Integrate.io is a data integration platform that supports ETL low-code and ELT integrations. Integrate.io offers a simple user interface with drag-and-drop features for quickly designing and executing data pipelines in the most secure and flexible manner.

Both ETL novice and advanced users can utilize the Integrate.io platform to perform their data integration needs. It offers a simple user interface and low-code data transformation for new users. Integrate.io is also equipped with advanced API, rich expression language, and customization options for advanced users to leverage as they please.

Integrate.io offers a scalable approach to data integration that grows with your data without impacting the performance of integrations. Users always have fresh customer data at hand to work with.

Hevo vs Airbyte vs. Integrate.io: Main Features

Hevo’s Key Features

Hevo's data integration platform is enriched with the following key features:

  • Automated end-to-end pipelines: Data integration in Hevo is completely automated from the source end to the target end. Hevo's automated data pipelines are quick to set up and require minimal maintenance. 

  • Transformations: Hevo lets its users control the data transformation process with options to filter data preloading and post-loading using Python or SQL.

  • Automated schema management: Hevo maintains synchronization between source and destination with its automated schema management to cater to changes in source data.

  • Incremental Data Loading: Hevo ensures efficient bandwidth utilization through its incremental data loading feature, allowing modified data to be loaded in real-time.

Airbyte’s Key Features

Following are some of the key features provided by Airbyte's ELT platform:

  • Open-source connectors: Airbyte comes with a long line of built-in and user contributed open source connectors. The platform automates adaptation to schema changes and updates.

  • Connector Development Kit (CDK): Airbyte’s CDK allows users to build custom connectors within 2 hours, in any language of their choice.

  • Custom Transformations: Airbyte gives its users complete control of their data transformations. Its custom transformations through SQL or DBT allow users to selectively transform required data in reduced time.

  • Data Privacy: Airbyte’s self-hosted solution minimizes the risk to data privacy. Users can keep their data in their own infrastructure, keeping private data secure without any compliance issues. 

  • Alerts & Notifications: Airbyte comes with a monitoring functionality that is automatically triggered by changes and notifies the users of real-time data changes or issues.

Integrate.io’s Key Features 

Integrate.io sets itself apart with the following key features offered only by Integrate.io's data integration platform:

  • In-pipeline transformations: Integrate.io supports a powerful data engine that can manage in-pipeline data transformations. Data transformation before loading eliminates computing costs for tour data warehouses. This proves to be a very cost-effective feature for ingesting large data volumes.

  • Advanced monitoring: Integrate.io simplifies troubleshooting problems and prevents integration issues with its advanced monitoring and logging features. Integrate.io provides tracking metrics for monitoring your progress live. Moreover, these metrics compute projected time-to-complete for integrations of large volumes of data. Integrate.io's monitoring logs offer a deep dive into your integration problems to prevent any disasters.

  • Customization: Integrate.io offers a range of customization features including X-console, rich expression language, advanced API, and web hooks, for users to customize the platform as they please.

  • Flexibility: From low-code transformations to manual customizable transformations, Integrate.io flexibly caters to new, as well as, advanced users.

  • Single Source of Truth: Integrate.io acts as a single source of truth that allows users to combine data from multiple sources to deliver to a single destination.

Integrate.io is the only platform among the three to offer advanced monitoring and logging. Click here to find out more.

Hevo vs Airbyte vs Integrate.io: Integrations

Hevo’s Integrations

Hevo offers integrations to over 150 data sources, with over 40 free data sources. Data sources supported by Hevo include analytics tools, payment gateways, SaaS applications, and advertising platforms. The platform continues to add new data sources to its repository.

For new data sources, Hevo accepts customer requests for building custom integrations.

Airbyte’s Integrations

Airbyte supports integrations to more than 120 data connectors for a variety of SaaS platforms, data lakes, and warehouses. and data analytics tools. All connectors in Airbyte are open-source and customizable to specific user needs. Airbyte supports a collaborative environment where users can contribute connectors to the platform and help maintain existing connectors. For building connectors from scratch, Airbyte is equipped with a connector development kit.

Popular integrations: AWS Data lake, Snowflake, Redshift, Apache Kafka, and 100+ more

Integrate.io’s Integrations

Integrate.io features 100+ ready-to-use connectors for a variety of data sources and destinations including popular databases and business intelligence tools. In addition to its pre-built connectors, Integrate.io also offers custom integrations to uncommon sources with its native REST API connector. The platform stores these custom connectors in a large database to add to the connectors they offer. If a user is still struggling to build connections, Integrate.io's integration specialists can guide them.

Integrate.io offers unique connectors that you cannot find with Hevo and Airbyte.

Popular integrations: Shopify, Salesforce, GitHub, Azure Synapse, Marketo, and 100+ more

Hevo vs Airbyte vs Integrate.io: Data Transformations

Hevo’s Data Transformations

Hevo offers two modes of data transformation; preload and post-load transformation. In preload transformation, Hevo cleans and formats data in real-time before it gets loaded to the destination. With post load transformation, Hevo synchronizes the workflows with the pipelines for automated data transformation. In this way, data gets prepared for analytics as soon as it is loaded in the destination.

Airbyte’s Data Transformations

Airbyte is an ELT platform that does not offer pre-load transformations. Data Transformations in Airbyte are customizable. Users are in full control of which data gets replicated and in what format using SQL or dbt. This selective data transformation enables users to quickly prepare analytics-ready data according to their unique requirements.

Integrate.io’s Data Transformations

Integrate.io offers low-code ETL and ELT services that perform transformations on data before and after it is loaded, respectively. In addition to two modes of data transformations, Integrate.io is a one-stop integration solution from beginners to technical users of the platform. 

Transformations are more interesting with Integrate.io’s options for both manual and automated transformations. With little to no-code transformations, novice users can get the job done without having to get into the technicalities. As for experts and code lovers, Integrate.io has a rich expression language, APIs, and webhooks to perform custom transformations.  

Hevo vs Airbyte vs Integrate.io: Data Security

Hevo’s Data Security

Hevo ensures data security with its fault-tolerant security architecture. Hevo follows the following security practices to protect user data:

  • Data Encryption: The platform protects its data integrations using HTTPs encryption. 

  • Security Standards: Hevo implements GDPR, SOC II, and HIPAA security standards to ensure enterprise-grade security. 

  • Authentications & Permissions: Moreover, Hevo uses user roles, multiple authentications, and OTP as an additional protective layer to its platform.

Airbyte’s Data Security

Data security in Airbyte’s self-hosted solution depends on its user’s security practices and their infrastructure security. Self-hosting maintains a level of data privacy that is difficult to ensure with replicating data to a cloud provider. Ensuring infrastructure security and compliance to data standards can allow Airbyte users to use the platform in a secure manner.

Integrate.io’s Data Security

Data security is fundamental to Integrate.io’s nature of business. Integrate.io gives the number one priority to protecting data in all forms, i.e. physical and digital.

  • Data Encryption: For data protection, Integrate.io uses a standard SSL/TLS encryption across all its services for ensuring the highest level of data security and standards. Integrate’s encryption algorithms are regularly updated and verified to maintain its industry standard encryption. 

  • Infrastructure Security: Integrate.io’s physical infrastructure is managed and protected by Amazon’s data centers. 

  • Security Compliance: Integrate.io is compliant to a number of security standards including HIPAA, GDPR, SOC II,  and CCPA.

  • User Authentication: In addition to security algorithms, Integrate.io ensures system security through access control and authentication to prevent data breaches.

From the moment you connect with Integrate.io, to using and paying for their services, your personal and business data will always be in safe hands. 

Hevo vs Airbyte vs Integrate.io: Pricing Model

Hevo’s Pricing Model

Hevo charges its customers based on the number of events i.e. data updates or inserts. Hevo's pricing model includes three plans:

  • Free: Includes 1 million free events and 50+ integrations

  • Starter: Starts at $239 for 5 million events and increases as events scale

  • Business: For data teams with large volumes of data. Price quote tailored to business needs

Hevo offers a transparent pricing model with options for monthly and yearly billing. 

Airbyte’s Pricing Model

Airbyte charges its customers based on credits consumed. The platform offers the following pricing plans:

  • Free Plan: The open-source version of Airbyte can be used as a self-service, free-of-cost solution. It comes with access to unlimited connectors, replication, monitoring, and 24/7 global support.

  • Cloud: In addition to open-source, Airbyte also offers cloud hosting of its platform that is charged based on credits. Credit consumption is associated with infrastructure compute time. It comes with cloud data hosting, data management, multiple workspaces, and more. The cloud provider version offers a 14-day free trial and after that bills monthly for $2.50 per credit.

  • Custom Cloud: Another pricing package of Airbyte is for users working with big data having large volume requirements, which is charged based on customer use cases. Failed syncs are not charged by Airbyte

Airbyte offers a transparent pricing model for all its plans, except for the custom plan for high volumes.

Integrate.io’s Pricing Model

Integrate.io came up with a unique pricing model that puts its customer first. Unlike Hevo and Airbyte, Integrate.io does not charge for data volume and or computing costs for post-load transformations. Instead, Integrate.io charges its user based on the number of connectors they use, with a flat monthly rate. 

Integrate.io's flat-rate pricing makes costs manageable and predictable when working with large volumes of data with complex workflows. 

Integrate.io also offers a 14-day free ETL & ELT trial. Try the platform out for yourself! 

Hevo vs Airbyte vs Integrate.io: Documentation & Customer Support

Hevo’s Customer Support

Hevo's customer support efficiently resolves customer issues as quickly as possible. Hevo offers 24/7 live support to tend to customer queries. Its platform comes with an integrated Intercom for online live chat customer support. The live chat option is not available in Hevo's Free Plan.

In addition to chats, an email support option is also available to Hevo customers. Moreover, its documentation support is comprehensive and maintains regular updates.

Airbyte’s Customer Support

The open-source version of Airbyte is supported by a community of users that can interact on Slack and Discourse. 

Customer support in Airbyte’s cloud version is offered as in-app chat support with a response time of 1 hour. 

Airbyte is also comprehensively documented and offers tons of tutorials for its users. Although, training services are not offered by Airbyte.

Integrate.io’s Customer Support

Integrate.io is the only platform, among the three, that offers equal and unlimited support to all its users in the form of phone calls, videos, texts, and email support. Integrate.io's customer service is highly efficient, and responsive and services users of all Integrate tiers. 

Integrate.io's efficient customer support aims to make it a top-shelf ETL platform that anyone can use to effortlessly build integrations and automate transformation workflows.

When you join Integrate.io, you become a part of the platform's family and we value your experience with us. You will have your very own Integrate.io integration specialist to ensure you get the most out of the best ETL solutions provided by Integrate.io.

Hevo vs Airbyte vs Integrate.io: Which is Better?

Hevo, Airbyte, and Integrate.io are all data integration tools popular in data engineering for their automated integration features. While having many operational similarities, all these tools cater to different use cases. Whether you run a small startup or a mature business, choosing the best tool will depend on your business requirements.

For example, Hevo's heavily automated platform is very useful for quickly setting up a large number of data pipelines. Whereas Airbyte is more suited to businesses with ELT and ELT only needs. 

While Hevo and Airbyte find their usage in many business use cases, they cannot keep up with the growing needs of your business as well as Integrate.io can. Integrate.io is the most efficient of the three tools with its ETL/ELT solutions that serve beginner and advanced users alike. Its flat-rate pricing makes it an affordable platform for small to large businesses and even scaling businesses. 

Looking for a scalable ETL/ELT solution for your voluminous data requirements without having to compromise on your data quality? Get in touch with Integrate.io. Schedule a call with our integration specialists today and check out Integrate.io for yourself.