Comparison of Alteryx with other ETL Tools specially SSIS

Mohd-Siddiqui1

Dear Community Members,

I am new to ETL world (though I know little bit of Alteryx, but still learning). I am trying to explore different ETL tools which are available in the market.

I am looking for a detailed difference between SSIS and Alteryx. I have read several community and blog posts regarding the same, but still I am only able to understand that SSIS is very old tool and it can be considered as a very basic ETL tool. It is very complex to understand and time consuming tool. On the other Alteryx is very latest tool, it is faster, user friendly and easy to learn tool.

Could you please help me in understanding that, What is not at all possible in SSIS and only possible in Alteryx.?

Thanks

dana_mcdonough

Hi @Mohd-Siddiqui1 - A few things to note here:
1. SSIS contains options that are only suitable for SQL Server, such as Data Profiling. Alteryx provides data source agnostic tool options for you to scale more easily overtime. Alteryx also provides robust data profiling options.
2. SSIS is typically more "script-heavy" in my opinion, requiring a more complex developer education. Alteryx is easier to use with a low-code/no-code interface.
3. Alteryx is much easier to get started with and has a robust community for learning. SSIS does not.
4. SSIS is less efficient with flat files and Alteryx has many robust configuration options for various file types.
5. SSIS does not provide Advanced Analytics options, whereas Alteryx prides ourselves in our low-code/no-code modeling options as well as OCR/PDF reading, text mining, and machine learning capabilities.
6. Alteryx began as a spatial tool and has a vast toolset for handling spatial data. If possible, it would be much more difficult to work with spatial data in SSIS.

These are a few things off the top of my head, but as someone with experience in both, I think overall Alteryx will help you scale across different providers and connectors overtime. It will allow you options outside of ETL including advanced analytics options. Lastly, it will allow you to process spatial data more effectively as well. These are the big ones outside of ease-of-use and cost.

Hope this helps! I would start with a trial and let your SSIS team see for themselves. I've had some customers pivot recently from SSIS and they loved Designer. They were also able to hold on to features such as event alerts, emailing, and reporting.