Table of contents
- Why Salesforce Is Not the Same As a Data Warehouse
- How Data Integration from Salesforce to Data Warehouse Can Help
- Common Salesforce Data Integration Challenges
- What are ETL Tools in Salesforce?
- 9 Best ETL Tools for Salesforce in 2024
- Conclusion
Salesforce is a robust cloud-based CRM (customer relationship management) platform that, for 20+ years, has gone way beyond this concept and turned into a unique, self-sufficient ecosystem. It includes products for various purposes, such as sales and marketing automation, app development, and advanced data analysis.
Thanks to its infrastructure and agility, the company remains a #1 CRM provider for the eighth year. And in 2021, Salesforce managed to reach a maximum of 23.8% market share.
But, Salesforce is only a CRM tool, whereas the true lifeblood of your business is your data. And to make it work to your benefit, it should be accurate and consistent across all your systems.
That’s when powerful yet agile ETL Salesforce tools come in handy.
In this blog post, we’ll tell:
- Why you need to integrate data from and to Salesforce,
- What role data warehouse plays in effective data management,
- How ETL tools in Salesforce help you overcome data integration challenges,
- What is the best ETL tool for Salesforce
Why Salesforce Is Not the Same As a Data Warehouse
Your business data must be consolidated and easily retrievable to get a 360-degree view of your customer interactions. Unfortunately, despite all obvious Salesforce strengths, it has data storage and management limitations.
Multi-Tenant Nature
Since Salesforce is a cloud-based technology, many organizations share the same platform resources. And to make this coexistence possible, each company is limited in the data storage capacity within their system. As a result, it is usually not enough for medium and large organizations. In addition, it can cost extra dollars to expand this storage space.
Slow Data Transfer Time
Since the amount of data each company stores varies significantly, response time to specific queries may also vary. Some calls can take hours to pull necessary data and create a comprehensive report.
Per-Transition Limits
Salesforce has query limits that restrict manipulations with extensive data flows within the CRM. So, if you need to import/export many records daily, you can quickly hit these limits.
How Data Integration from Salesforce to Data Warehouse Can Help
The good news is that data warehousing solutions can prevent the abovementioned issues. Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, and Google Big Query are the most famous examples. They are designed to accumulate and analyze large data volumes from databases and other sources.
Thanks to this, you can:
- Get a unified view of the customer information by eliminating unnecessary data layers,
- Increase efficiency and become a true master of your business data,
- Improve data quality thanks to the consolidation of sources.
Since Salesforce wasn’t primarily created as a data repository, you need to build a proper Salesforce warehouse synchronization strategy and Salesforce data integration model to leverage the full power of these two software types. And in this way, you should deal with specific challenges.
Common Salesforce Data Integration Challenges
Over 40% of Salesforce users consider data integration as their primary challenge. Before you launch this process, you should consider the risks you may face, such as:
- No understanding of the data integration scope,
- Lack of clear integration strategy,
- Misselection of the integration solution,
- Poor data quality, data gaps,
- Mismatch of data and field types in systems,
- No data validation rules,
- Lack of understanding of objects’ relationship within solutions,
- Underestimation of systems and processes complexity.
As mentioned earlier, you can mitigate most risks by creating a data quality policy and choosing the best ETL tool for Salesforce.
What are ETL Tools in Salesforce?
The ETL tool in Salesforce is one of the most popular solutions to connect a data warehouse with the Salesforce platform. ETL (extract, transform, load) tools help automate the management of the ETL pipelines and standardize data for further analysis.
Simply put, they extract the data from several sources, integrate it with the database, and store it with/without transformations in a data warehouse. Moreover, ETL tools can test the data pipelines and analyze the reports of the performed runs.
Over 150 ETL tools available on the market can work with Salesforce. Some are designed for beginners with no programming background; others require some coding skills. We’ve carefully analyzed all the software leaders’ pros and cons to present you with their detailed review below.
9 Best ETL Tools for Salesforce in 2024
Skyvia
Skyvia by Devart is a powerful data platform for solving different data-related tasks, including ETL from Salesforce to a data warehouse and vice versa, ELT from Salesforce to a data warehouse, and many other tools. It allows users to quickly copy Salesforce data to a data warehouse as is or configure ETL process with data transformations to fit an existing schema. When needed, the data can be reuploaded back to Salesforce or even published as OData and linked to Salesforce as external objects.
PROS
- Easy no-coding tools to copy cloud data to a database or data warehouse
- Over 180+ connectors
- Advanced transformation capabilities with powerful mapping
- A number of different data-related tools in one platform
- Ability to load data between cloud apps and databases in any direction
- Comprehensive documentation and tutorials
CONS
- No support for NoSQL databases like MongoDB
- No 24/7 support
- No on-premise option
ETLeap
ETLeap is also one of the top Salesforce data extraction tools that helps connect data from various sources to data warehouses like Redshift or Snowflake. It’s designed for users with no development skills. So, any data analyst can easily configure it without heavy coding. Like many other leading big data software on the market, it’s cloud-based. So you don’t have to involve IT recourses to install and support it.
PROS
- Has 70 connectors
- No-code ETL functionality is analyst-friendly
- Offers native integrations for both web-based and on-premise applications
- Allows pre-load transformation via Data Wrangler and SQL
- It has an on-premise option (AWS VCP)
CONS
- It doesn’t offer any data transformation or filtering options
- It may require custom code writing
- Requires heavy learning to master the functionality
Stitchdata
Stitchdata by Talend is a robust, cloud-first ETL service tool for Salesforce users of all business sizes. It enables high-volume data transfers from cloud-based apps and databases to data warehouses. It allows users to leverage transformed and unified data for reporting and better decision-making.
PROS
- It has 130 nearly-native connectors
- It can be integrated with ten popular data warehousing solutions
- Allows adding new data sources via Singer
- Has detailed documentation
CONS
- It doesn’t offer any data transformation or filtering options
- Requires additional developer tools like Stitch Connect API
- Has a lack of transparency in integration configurations
- Particular API (e.g., QuickBooks do hard deletes of objects, and Stitchdata tool replicates it
- It can’t replicate document databases like MongoDB to relational databases
Workato
Workato is a cloud integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) software that helps organizations integrate thousands of apps with Salesforce and consolidate data to turn it into actionable insights. This low-code tool enables fast business workflow automation and massive data aggregation across these apps.
PROS
- Convenient UI/UX and easy implementation
- Maintenance-free functionality
- Reusable connectors and managed file transfers
- Easy and transparent job monitoring
CONS
- Lack of features for ETL or Enterprise Application Integration (EAT)
- Can’t deal with large and complex enterprise integrations
- Fails to cache massive datasets
- Steep learning curve
- Difficult error tracing and remediation
Fivetran
Like other above-reviewed Salesforce ETL tools, Fivetran allows automatic data copying from Salesforce to the data warehouse. In addition, it offers many pre-built connectors to meet the real-world needs of data analysts. This data integration software doesn’t require maintenance from your side and can be easily deployed and adjusted.
PROS
- 150 out-of-the-box connectors
- Allows post-load data transformation via SQL
- Can synchronize with ten typical data warehouses
- Allows adding new data sources via Cloud Functions
CONS
- It doesn’t support on-premise applications
- No sync schedule by a fixed time
- Lack of proper documentation on integration
- Needs improvement in the bulk field adding/deletion controls
- Requires extra programming tools such as REST API for Enterprise accounts
Lyftron
Lyftron is a Salesforce data extraction and load tool for the streamlined processing of large sets of information and the removal of data pipeline roadblocks. It enables data professionals to create and manage data flows within one platform and increase productivity.
PROS
- Has 130 pre-built connectors
- Provides an on-premise integration option
- Offers 19 data destinations
- Allows pre-load and post-load data transformation via SQL
CONS
- Needs extra developer tools such as REST API
- It is limited in data sources
- No ability to add new data sources
- Non-user-friendly UI
Segment
Segment (aka Twilio Segment) ETL solution also helps streamline the processing of data from Salesforce and other data sources with an additional focus on event tracking. This platform allows businesses to accumulate, unify, and map customer data to and from Salesforce.
PROS
- It has an extensive list of out-of-the-box 800 connectors
- Allows adding new data sources via the available sources offered on the Segment platform
- Can integrate into six data warehouses
- It enables data transformation and customization for a particular destination
CONS
- Has no on-premise option
- Requires extra developing tools for custom data collection and integration
- Integration documentation is vague
- Custom integrations are hard to perform
Integrate.io
Integrate.io enables integration of Salesforce with major data warehouses. This no-code data integration software helps create a single source of truth via real-time data replication and a plug-and-play interface. In addition, the Xplenty solution allows data analysts and engineers to deploy custom transformations in a few minutes.
PROS
- Has 144 connectors
- Enables data transformation and filtering
- It doesn’t require coding skills for the tool setup and management
- Easy job progress tracking
- No-code API generation
CONS
- It doesn’t allow adding new data sources
- It doesn’t provide an on-premise option
- Its interface is challenging to use for complicated pipelines
- It can be tough to understand and get started using software
Matillion ETL
Matillion ETL helps overcome data inconsistencies in your systems that may arise and build higher confidence in it. This cloud-based tool enables easy data integration and transformation, which helps reach new levels of efficiency and productivity.
PROS
- It has 114 nearly-native connectors
- Ability to connect on-premise sources via Progress DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline
- Enables pre-load data transformation via SQL
- Allows creation of custom connectors with the API Extract functionality in Matillion ETL
CONS
- Scheduling functionality and error messages need improvement
- No flexible scaling model
Conclusion
Data integration with Salesforce is a complex process both from technical and usability standpoints. And to make it stress-free, you need to use only premium ETL tools to reduce manual work and user interference in this procedure.
Skyvia is a no-code and affordable data platform offering end-to-end Salesforce ETL tools. It’s designed both for small businesses with no budget to large enterprises. To fulfill their unique needs, we offer flexible pricing models with the best features/price balance starting at $0/month. So, you can give a test drive to our ETL tool for free. And if you feel it’s not enough for you, continue leveraging the basic functionality at no charge.
Our versatile data integration solution allows replicating cloud data both to the cloud and on-premises data warehouses. It is helpful if you have a significant security concern and don’t want to share your corporate data with multi-tenant platforms.
Moreover, Skyvia’s plug-and-play functionality allows you to set it up within 5 minutes with little or no tweaks. Sounds convincing enough to you? Schedule a demo of the Skyvia ETL tool right now!
