Xplenty: SecurETL Platform Overview and Review

Big data processing, transformation, and integration can complicate businesses. Factors like scale, complex file formats, connectivity, and API access can add difficulty. Often, it requires coding and an entire IT team to deploy.

But a SecurETL or data integration platform can help you tackle these challenges head-on. The key is well-designed data flows that can process both structured and unstructured data. You also need your platform to have the ability to integrate with a variety of sources. One of the best of these platforms is Xplenty.

About Big Data Processing, Integration, and ETL Software

Data integration software reduces data complexity for businesses. It achieves this by extracting data from a range of sources, transforming it into a consistent, useable format, and loading it into a destination, usually a data warehouse. This process is called ETL, and SecurETL platforms ensure this is done in the most secure and safest way possible. The end goal is to have the most business data possible in one place so it can be operationalized to move the business forward.

The problem is that processing big data is no easy task. Data integration can fail when it comes to:

• Quick and accurate understanding of data sources. For example, application programming interfaces and user interfaces can interpret data differently.
• Handling changes in data over time. The more complex the data integration and the more sources of data, the trickier this can be.
• Data mapping. You need to understand the relationships between data sets and sources.

This is where a data integration and SecurETL (extract, transform, load) platform can help. ETL software takes data from one system, transforms it, and then imports it into the receiving system, regardless of the source or destination system.

The right ETL platform can read and process data from many sources, including storage file sources. Businesses that do their own data integration have to code data pipelines manually, which is time-consuming and costly for IT teams or data managers. 

Xplenty connects to an ever-expanding number of integrations without additional coding or manual data flow creation. This helps you quickly and easily integrate your business data for use by analytics suites or business intelligence tools. Xplenty’s SecurETL platform is also cost-effective and saves crucial business hours.

Our overview of Xplenty helps you understand the platform before you make your final vendor decision, ensuring you choose a platform that works for you and your business. Whatever ETL solution you choose, needs to integrate with all your data sources; otherwise, you risk paying for software or a platform that won’t do what you need.

Why Xplenty

Xplenty is an ETL platform that requires no coding or deployment. It has a point-and-click interface that enables simple data integration, processing, and preparation. It also connects with a large variety of data sources and has all the capabilities you need to perform data analytics.

Xplenty hit the data integration scene in 2012. Since that time, Xplenty has helped thousands of users organize their data and prepare it for business-critical insights. In 2018, the company launched its newest platform. This included many updates such as advanced search options, new data flows, and more. Today, Xplenty bills itself as the “most advanced SecurETL platform,” with plenty of evidence to back up that claim.

Xplenty’s solution is valuable for businesses of all sizes, data managers and engineers, and IT departments. In short, anyone that needs a single platform for data integration can utilize the features and benefits of Xplenty. Taking the tedium out of creating data flows frees you up to focus on what matters when it comes to your data: analytics, insights, and business value.

There are many benefits to using data integration and ETL platform, like Xplenty. But, as with all platforms and applications, it also comes with a few limitations depending upon your specific requirements.

Pros:

• Rich Connectivity Library: Xplenty connects with a variety of data sources. Including structured query language (SQL) data stores, NoSQL databases, and cloud storage services.
• Out-of-the-Box Data Integrations: Without coding anything, Xplenty offers over a hundred out-of-the-box data integrations. These help you integrate data from many sources, including CRMs like Salesforce, cloud-based organizational platforms like Asana, databases, and more into one single destination.
• Third-Party Integrations: Xplenty integrates with a variety of tools, especially for logging, visualization, and data analytics.
• Scheduling: Run your data processes when you want with the ability to schedule.

Cons:

• Considerable Complexity: Depending on the volume of data and number of sources, some ETL platforms can struggle with scaling up as business data becomes more complex. However, Xplenty focuses on elasticity and scalability.
• Data Source Selection: Not all ETL platforms are the same. Some don’t offer integration with all systems.
• Learning Curve: For absolute beginners to data management, the whole ETL process can seem overwhelming. Xplenty deals with this by offering a range of support options suitable for all users.

Features & Benefits of Xplenty

Xplenty helps businesses design and execute complex data pipelines in a few clicks. To do this, the platform comes with a variety of tools and services:

Data Integration

Xplenty’s SecurETL data integration platform comes with a complete toolkit. Made to help design and install data integration processes. You can do everything from simple replication to complex data preparation. The point-and-click interface makes transformation tasks easy, saving you time and effort.

The platform also allows you to:

• Schedule jobs
• Track job progress and status
• Sample data outputs
• Execute both UI or API

You can integrate data from more than 100 data stores and SaaS applications. Some of the most popular being:

• Amazon Aurora
• Google BigQuery
• Oracle
• Secure File Transfer Protocol
• Asana
• Basecamp
• SalesForce

Applications, databases, files, data warehouses, Xplenty works with them all and is always increasing the number of available integrations in line with digital developments.

There’s also the ability to customize and extend the Xplenty platform. You can use the REST API component to connect to any RESTful service. This provides elasticity, scalability, and flexibility.

Marketing Analytics Solution

Xplenty also offers a marketing analytics solution, helping you to build comprehensive marketing campaigns, effective reports, or even business projections. The solution works by integrating all your business-critical data sources into one platform.

The idea is to make sure your marketing data is up-to-date, transparent, and accurate. No matter if your data comes from social media, your CRM, or somewhere else, you get the big marketing picture to help you enhance and drill down marketing campaigns.

Xplenty can use data from a variety of sources including a number of social media platforms. 

The goal: to help increase conversions and improve your marketing strategies.

It works in four ways:

• Data Enrichment: Integrate your data enrichment tools. This way so customer information and marketing automation are always up-to-date.
• Targeted Communication: transfers data to your customer relationship management technology. This way you can send targeted communication.
• Personalization: By connecting your marketing data, you can better personalize your user experience.
• Scalability: Automating your marketing maintains consistent and effective communication. No matter the task or project.

Common marketing integrations include:

• Salesforce
• Hubspot
• Facebook Ads
• Google Adwords
• MailChimp
• Mention

Sales Analytics Solution

Xplenty helps you better understand your client’s needs. This helps businesses produce more effective and transparent sales efforts. The idea is to bring all your sales data into one location so you know all there is to know. This includes understanding the product or service your customer is looking for. It also provides insight into your customer lifecycle stage and their relationship with you.

By centralizing your sales metrics and tools, you avoid duplicate and out-of-date information. You also gain a better understanding of your target customers, prospects, and leads.

Common sales integrations include:

• Stripe
• Mixpanel
• Hubspot
• Salesforce
• Google Adwords

Customer Support Analytics Solution

Make your customer support efforts more effective with Xplenty. The platform helps you integrate your customer support data with outside data. This includes data from social media and your CRM.

The goal: to provide you with comprehensive customer insight.

Xplenty helps you integrate your customer support data with outside data so you can prevent data silos and ensure that your data is always cleaned, aggregated, and filtered. This saves you from sending customers information that’s irrelevant or unproductive. Instead, you can hit on your customer’s pain points and interests.

The solution includes the ability to personalize and segment communications, and cross sell. Common sales integrations include:

• Salesforce
• Zendesk
• Freshdesk
• Intercom

Other Features

Other features that make Xplenty attractive for businesses and developers include:

• An easy-to-use Xplenty API that works with over 100 applications.
• Excellent customer support via live chat, documentation, and a range of useful resources including a regularly updated blog, webinars, and videos.
• Helpful resources including webinars, blogs, books, and guides.

These service offerings make working with Xplenty simple and straightforward.

What Xplenty Customers Have to Say

When choosing the right SecurETL platform for your data integration needs, it’s a great idea to take a look at what other users have to say. Customer reviews give you a glimpse of what the product is like to use on a day-to-day basis and what the end results might look like for businesses similar to your own. 

G2.com is a respected review site for software reviews. Xplenty currently enjoys an overall rating on the site of 4.4 stars out of 5 with 98 verified user reviews. Read what customers are currently saying about Xplenty. Are you still on the fence about whether Xplenty is right for you? Don’t take our word for it. See why 75 IT professionals and happy customers have given them 4.4 stars.

Guillermo G. raves on his G2crowd review that Xplenty is an “excellent ETL tool for the right project.” He goes on to say,

“As long as you don't need crazy and custom transformations, this is a great tool. Love all the options for the different sources and destinations already available.”

For Steve L., Xplenty is great for his business. According to his recent G2Crowd review, “This is a solid product that you can learn on your own,” and “Xplenty will guide you through creating connections. And most connections these days are [well documented].”

And Karan S. notes in her G2Crowd review that, “the UI is very user-friendly. It takes no time for a new user to get the functioning on Xplenty." She continues, “With Xplenty, everything is seamless and flexible. You should give it a try. The UI and predefined flow never disappoint you plus the support you get are outstanding.”

James C, a mid-market CEO, stated:

“Xplenty was the only team that could get across all our data sources and centralize our data in one place, then visualize it through Google Data Studio. We're a fund that looks across multiple companies —so being able to finally compare like for like across companies puts us on better rails for decision making. While there were other solutions out there promising speed and simplicity, Xplenty was the only team the held our hands as we did the transformations needed to actually be able to realize data aggregation in a human sensical way.”

Aaron K, a small-business owner, had this to say: 

“With Xplenty, we have created hundreds of pipelines that automatically process and send data to our cloud data warehouse so it can be visualized and analyzed. This has not only given us a full 24 hours of productivity each week but also allowed us to create much more meaningful visuals for analysis.”

Throughout reviews, points that users loved about Xplenty’s SecurETL platform include:

• The intuitive platform.
• Excellent support team.
• REST API connectivity.
• Ease of use.
• Ease of setup.
• Large number of connections and integrations.

Points that users highlighted for potential improvement included:

• Debugging can be tricky, as sometimes the error logs aren’t specific enough.
• Some of the date and time formatting isn’t intuitive.
• Some features aren’t activated by default, and users must request these from the vendor.

In nearly all reviews, users stated that Xplenty's support guided them through any difficulties, including “hand-holding” through the creation of difficult or unusual data flows or other requests.

Other ETL and Data Integration Vendor Options

Remember, Xplenty isn’t the only data integration vendor available. To help you make the best choice, here are a few other vendors who offer similar solutions.

Panoply

Panoply is a smart cloud data warehouse that helps you collect, manage, and analyze data. It works with both structured and unstructured data from a variety of sources.

You can automate the collection, modeling, and scaling of any data source. You can also connect to any business intelligence. Or visualization tool for data insights.

It saves you time and resources by offering:

• No coding or engineering help required
• Automation of data modeling, schema, and re-indexing
• Data warehouse maintenance

Snowflake

Snowflake is a cloud-based data storage and analytics service. It helps you store and analyze data in the cloud.

Using an SQL data warehouse, Snowflake helps you handle all aspects of data and analytics. It supports all business data including those from sources such as JSON, Avro, or XML. It natively loads and optimizes both structured and semi-structured data.

The platform works quickly and on any scale. You can integrate Snowflake with many tools and applications. Snowflake doesn’t provide an ETL service, so Snowflake users must invest in a reliable ETL solution or similar platform.

Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse-as-a-service from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Redshift delivers fast performance and real-time querying by using machine learning, parallel query execution, and columnar storage. This means you can set up and deploy a new data warehouse in minutes.

It’s built using Amazon S3 technology, which means it’s scalable, secure, and affordable. You can start small for less than one-tenth the cost of other solutions. Amazon Redshift is a powerful data warehouse solution but less effective as a data integration tool than dedicated SecurETL offerings.

Conclusion

Managing complex data isn’t easy. It’s particularly difficult when that data comes from a variety of sources.

An integration and ETL platform can reduce data complexity. This means that you have one simplified and connected environment for all your data. Xplenty helps you connect and integrate a wide set of data repositories and applications. This means you can remain focused on the data insights and analytics that matter most.

If you want to learn more about Xplenty and why it’s a leading SecurETL platform for data integration and beyond, schedule a conversation with their team so you can figure out if Xplenty is a good fit for your business.

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About the author:

Mabh Savage is a full-time freelance writer and author. She specializes in exploring the right digital stack options for forward-thinking businesses, and the latest developments in cloud-based apps and services.