Struggling to manage your data pipelines?
Your raw data is piling up, but turning it into actionable insights feels like a constant battle between different tools and systems.
The real issue is that without a streamlined process, your team wastes time on manual work and you risk missing critical business opportunities.
The Business Research Company notes that growing data complexity is fueling a 16.7% CAGR growth in this market. This shows just how many businesses are hitting the same wall.
Speaking of specialized business software, my review of best crypto compliance software can help you navigate complex regulations.
But the right ETL tool can solve this by automating your entire data workflow, from ingestion to transformation and analysis.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through my top picks for the best ETL software in 2025 to help you preserve raw data and unlock insights.
You’ll find options that scale with your needs, integrate with your existing cloud stack, and reduce manual intervention from your team.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Informatica → | Large growing SaaS companies | |
| 2 | Fivetran → | Enterprises with large datasets | |
| 3 | Matillion → | IT Directors at data-heavy firms | |
| 4 | Talend → | IT Directors at mid-large enterprises | |
| 5 | Integrate.io → | IT Directors needing low-code tools |
1. Informatica
Is your data ready for AI?
Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) helps you manage the entire data lifecycle. This means you can easily simplify data access.
The IDMC also ensures AI-readiness, enterprise-level scalability, security, and compliance. You can truly stop guessing whose data is right and start delivering trusted data.
Here’s how to elevate your data.
Informatica’s IDMC, powered by CLAIRE AI, automates labor-intensive tasks and streamlines your data pipelines. This approach means you can achieve measurable return on data investments faster.
Furthermore, with over 50,000 metadata-aware connections, you get multi-cloud and hybrid capabilities for global scale. Plus, the platform integrates services like Data Catalog, Data Integration, and Data Quality & Observability, ensuring your data is trusted for analytics and AI.
The result is putting the right data at everyone’s fingertips, allowing your team to focus on what truly matters and move quicker, all while maintaining technical flexibility.
While we’re discussing data protection, my article on best data security software provides more insights.
Key features:
- Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC): An AI-powered platform for managing your entire data lifecycle, ensuring data health, trust, and AI-readiness for your enterprise.
- CLAIRE AI Engine: Automates labor-intensive data tasks, simplifies data access, and provides intelligent insights to boost efficiency and ensure compliance.
- Comprehensive Data Services: Includes Data Integration & Engineering, Data Quality & Observability, and Governance, Access & Privacy to unify, govern, and share data.
Informatica features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: For IT Directors at growing SaaS companies seeking the best ETL software, Informatica offers robust data management. Its Intelligent Data Management Cloud, leveraging CLAIRE AI and over 50,000 connections, ensures data trust, scalability, and compliance, making it ideal for large-scale data ingestion and analysis.
2. Fivetran
Struggling with complex data pipelines and insights?
Fivetran offers a single platform for all your data movement needs, automating ingestion and transformation. This means you can accelerate insights for your business.
This platform empowers you to centralize your organization’s data, making it ready for AI and driving innovation effortlessly.
Here’s how to simplify your data operations.
Fivetran’s automated, high-performance pipelines reliably move critical business data from over 700 sources, including SaaS applications, databases, and ERPs, to your data warehouses and lakes. You can also build custom connectors for niche sources. Additionally, its robust security, including SOC 1 & 2, GDPR, and HIPAA BAA compliance, provides peace of mind. Plus, with capabilities like Hybrid Deployment, you can move data within your own environment, meeting specific security needs without compromising performance.
This ensures governed data access and seamless integration with other tools.
Key features:
- Automated Data Movement: Effortlessly moves data from over 700 sources to data warehouses and lakes, automating critical ingestion and replication processes.
- Robust Security and Governance: Provides built-in security protocols like SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA BAA, alongside features for governed data access and control.
- Flexible Transformations and Extensibility: Accelerates insights with automated transformations and offers extensibility to integrate with other tools and build custom connectors.
Fivetran features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Fivetran positions itself as a strong contender for the best ETL software by offering a comprehensive platform that handles large-scale data ingestion and transformation. It enables real-time analytics, powers AI readiness, and helps companies like National Australia Bank cut costs by 50%.
3. Matillion
Are you overwhelmed by data engineering bottlenecks?
Matillion’s Data Productivity Cloud, complete with Virtual Data Engineers, can significantly cut your backlog. This means your team gains powerful tools to accelerate data delivery and boost overall productivity.
You can streamline your processes and empower your existing data team to accomplish more with less effort. Here’s how it works.
Eliminate manual data integration tasks.
Matillion solves your data engineering challenges by providing a unified platform to build and manage data pipelines. You can leverage the intuitive visual Designer to quickly assemble even complex data pipelines.
This accelerates pipeline creation with low-code options, or you can write code in SQL, Python, and dbt. Additionally, the platform’s universal connectivity ingests structured and unstructured data from any source. Plus, you can seamlessly flow data to your preferred cloud data platform while ensuring security with features like SSO and MFA.
The result? You achieve greater data productivity and can confidently scale operations.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best data visualization tools helpful for uncovering insights.
Key features:
- Virtual Data Engineers (Maia): Use plain language prompts to deploy AI-powered virtual data engineers to handle repetitive and complex data tasks, amplifying your human team’s impact.
- Flexible Data Transformation: Cleanse, aggregate, and transform data using either no-code visual tools or high-code options like SQL, Python, and dbt, allowing for efficient data preparation.
- Universal Data Connectivity: Connect to any data source with a vast library of pre-built connectors (e.g., Salesforce, SAP, Amazon S3) or easily create custom connectors for tailored integrations.
Matillion features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If you’re an IT Director seeking a comprehensive and scalable solution to manage vast data, Matillion is the best ETL software. It offers robust data transformation, AI-powered automation, and universal connectivity, leading to a reported ROI of up to 271% for users like the London Stock Exchange Group.
4. Talend
Struggling with complex data pipelines and retention needs?
Talend Data Fabric helps you build a trusted data foundation for AI, ML, and analytics solutions.
This unified, low-code platform combines data integration, data quality and governance, addressing your need for efficient data transformation and compliance.
Your data challenges are about to simplify.
Talend provides an end-to-end platform for modern data management, working with virtually any data source and architecture. This means you can handle large-scale data ingestion and preserve raw datasets for future analysis.
It also supports flexible deployment options, including on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid-cloud, ensuring adaptability to your existing infrastructure. This complete solution supports your entire organization, from data integration through delivery, while minimizing processing latency and safeguarding security and compliance.
Additionally, Talend partners deeply with technology providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Snowflake, allowing you to maximize value from your current data ecosystem. This helps streamline your data pipelines and reduce manual intervention.
Key features:
- Unified Data Platform: Combines data integration, quality, and governance in a single, low-code solution, simplifying complex data management.
- Flexible Deployment Options: Supports on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid-cloud deployments, ensuring compatibility with your existing infrastructure.
- Trusted Data Foundation: Drives clear, predictable value while supporting crucial security and compliance requirements across your data environment.
Talend features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Talend is an excellent choice for best ETL software for IT Directors, offering a complete, flexible, and trusted platform. It helps turn diverse data sources into valuable business outcomes, as seen with customers achieving 11% revenue growth and unifying 85,000 data sources.
5. Integrate.io
Struggling with complex data pipelines for operational insights?
Integrate.io offers true low-code ETL, enabling you to build and manage data pipelines without extensive coding expertise. This means you can accelerate your path to analytics-ready data and simplify your data operations. The result is streamlined processes and confident decision-making, transforming raw data chaos into clean, actionable insights.
This means you can easily automate manual workflows.
Integrate.io empowers you to transform and load enriched data into Salesforce, build low-code pipelines from any source, and effortlessly replicate data to your data warehouse with sub-60-second latency. You can also automate file-based workflows from SFTP and Excel, transforming chaotic inputs into clean, usable outputs. Additionally, Integrate.io’s AI capabilities allow you to prepare data, apply models at scale, and create pipelines with simple prompts. Plus, with a dedicated Solution Engineer and 24/7 support, you’re never alone in your data journey, ensuring seamless integration and ongoing success.
It’s about operational efficiency from day one.
Key features:
- True Low-Code Platform: Empowers both technical and non-technical users to build and manage data pipelines with ease, eliminating the need for SQL or scripting.
- Database Replication: Offers industry-leading 60-second CDC (Change Data Capture) database replication to power real-time dashboards and AI/ML initiatives.
- White Glove Experience & Support: Provides dedicated Solution Engineers, white-glove onboarding, scheduled checkpoints, and 24/7 customer support for continuous success.
Integrate.io features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Integrate.io truly stands out as a strong contender for the best ETL software, particularly for IT directors seeking to preserve raw datasets while enhancing transformation efficiency. Its low-code platform, 220+ transformations, and rapid database replication capabilities address critical pain points, streamlining data pipelines and enabling real-time insights for your business.
6. Hevo Data
Struggling with complex data pipelines and slow insights?
Hevo Data offers a fully managed, high-throughput platform for data movement and transformation. This means your IT team can centralize SaaS data for better insights and replicate databases efficiently.
When you’re dealing with vast amounts of raw data, Hevo Data ensures data integrity and helps you unlock faster time-to-insight.
Here’s how Hevo Data solves your data challenges.
Hevo Data combines extraction, loading, and dbt-based modeling into one platform, offering complete operational visibility. This approach simplifies a typically complex process, allowing your team to configure sources and data warehouses with just a few clicks, without writing a single line of code.
The platform comes with over 150 pre-built, battle-tested connectors, ensuring you can effortlessly move data from hundreds of sources. Plus, if your specific data source isn’t available, Hevo Data commits to building it for you. This proactive support, combined with automated schema drift handling and intelligent record failure recovery, drastically reduces manual intervention. Additionally, you get proactive alerts on changes, guaranteeing zero maintenance for your data pipelines and enhancing data accuracy.
The result is analytics-ready data at your fingertips.
Key features:
- Fully managed platform: Hevo Data is engineered to handle updates, patches, and scaling, ensuring consistent uptime and performance for your data pipelines.
- Built-in transformations: Use Python scripting, dbt models, and a low-code GUI to craft precise transformations, ensuring your data is always query-ready.
- Automated data pipeline management: Configure sources and data warehouses in just a few clicks, without writing code, and get proactive alerts on data changes.
Hevo Data features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: For IT directors at growing SaaS companies seeking streamlined data pipelines, Hevo Data stands out as a best ETL software option. Its robust automation, 1PB+ data processed monthly, and proven 50% reduction in TCO make it an ideal choice for reliable, hands-free data management.
7. Amazon Web Services
Struggling with complex data pipelines and retention needs?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers extensive cloud capabilities, simplifying data ingestion and transformation. This means you can streamline your data pipelines and reduce manual intervention.
AWS solutions address challenges like balancing raw data retention with transformation efficiency, providing the widest variety of compute instances, storage, and analytics.
Here’s how to simplify your data operations.
AWS solves your biggest data challenges with its comprehensive suite of services. This includes dedicated solutions for analytics, data lakes, and predictive analytics with machine learning.
You can run code, manage data, and integrate applications without managing servers, ensuring efficient data processing. Additionally, AWS provides purpose-built databases like Amazon DynamoDB and storage options like Amazon S3, built to retrieve any amount of data from anywhere, preserving your critical datasets for future analysis. Plus, you can deploy AI services like Amazon SageMaker to build, train, and deploy machine learning models at scale for advanced insights.
The result is agile, cost-effective data management.
If you’re particularly focused on sales data, my guide on best ecommerce analytics tools can help illuminate your growth metrics.
Key features:
- Broadest cloud capabilities: Offers the widest variety of compute instances, storage classes, databases, and analytics to meet your specific data processing needs efficiently.
- Secure cloud environment: Architected to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available, supporting over 143 security standards and compliance certifications for sensitive data.
- Operational expertise and scale: Unmatched experience, reliability, security, and performance with more than 3x the data centers compared to the next largest cloud provider.
Amazon Web Services features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Amazon Web Services stands out as the best ETL software solution, leveraging its comprehensive cloud capabilities and extensive operational expertise. Its solutions for analytics, data lakes, and AI/ML, combined with robust security and global infrastructure, directly address IT directors’ needs for scalable data ingestion and efficient transformation.
8. Microsoft Azure
Are you struggling with data transformation inefficiencies?
Microsoft Azure offers advanced data analytics solutions and intelligent cloud databases to help you address large-scale data ingestion and transformation. This means you can handle complex data pipelines and build AI-ready applications.
This capability is key for IT directors facing pressure to evaluate ETL tools while balancing raw data retention with transformation efficiency. Azure supports modernizing your data estate for AI innovation.
Here’s how Azure solves your data challenges.
Microsoft Azure provides data analytics for AI, allowing you to generate near real-time insights from your data. You can build intelligent cloud databases and leverage fully managed, flexible databases for cloud-native or modernized applications.
This means you can achieve high performance for compute-intensive AI workloads like deep learning. Azure also offers integration services to connect applications and services on-premises and in the cloud. Plus, with services like Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Databricks, you can gain deeper insights and streamline your data processes.
The result is streamlined data pipelines.
Key features:
- Data Analytics for AI: Generate near real-time insights from your data with advanced cloud-scale analytics solutions to optimize your decision-making.
- Managed Databases: Build and modernize scalable, high-performance applications with fully managed, flexible cloud databases like Azure Cosmos DB.
- Integration Services: Connect applications and services across on-premises and cloud environments, creating seamless, integrated data solutions.
Microsoft Azure features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: For IT Directors managing complex data landscapes, Microsoft Azure stands out as a best etl software choice by offering robust data analytics for AI, managed databases, and seamless integration services. Its capacity to handle large-scale data ingestion and foster real-time insights positions it as a strong contender.
Conclusion
Still battling complex data pipeline issues?
I know choosing the right ETL tool is tough. You’re balancing scalability, compliance, and the need to preserve raw data for future insights.
According to The Business Research Company, AI automation is driving a 17.1% annual growth in efficiency. That’s a massive competitive advantage you can gain simply by picking the right platform.
Here’s the tool I’d choose.
From my extensive review, Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud is the clear winner. It’s specifically built to handle enterprise-level scale and AI-readiness.
What I find most impressive is its CLAIRE AI engine, which automates labor-intensive data tasks. Choosing the best etl software like this one ensures your data is trusted and secure.
When selecting any business software, effective vendor management is key. For more on this, check out my guide on best vendors management software.
I strongly suggest you request a personal demo of Informatica to see how it streamlines your entire data workflow from end to end.
You will finally achieve true data clarity.
