Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Azure Data Factory pros and cons

Vendor: Microsoft

4.0 out of 5

90 reviews
92% willing to recommend

1,346 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Azure Data Factory enhances data offerings through predictive analytics and API data sharing, praised for scalability and large dataset handling with comprehensive ETL functionality. Its strong integration with Azure components adds flexibility, though integration with services like Azure Machine Learning needs improvement. Pricing complexity and performance under heavy loads are concerns. Connectivity with third-party systems, particularly SAP, and scaling capabilities require enhancement for seamless operations.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Azure Data Factory supports data transformation with ease through its drag-and-drop interface and flexible data mapping capabilities.

It offers a high level of stability and consistency, handling large volumes of data well and supporting seamless data migration tasks.

Azure Data Factory excels in its capability to integrate with a wide range of Azure components and other cloud solutions like AWS and Snowflake, increasing data scalability and flexibility.

Data Factory's built-in security and straightforward deployment enhance its suitability for organizations needing robust data pipeline solutions.

Its comprehensive connectivity options, including over 100 built-in connectors, ease the integration of diverse data sources for ETL workflows and other tasks.

CONS

Azure Data Factory needs more seamless integration with Azure Machine Learning and other non-Microsoft services like Oracle BI and SAP.

The documentation for Azure Data Factory is often considered too complex and lacking in certain use cases.

Users find Azure Data Factory's pricing scheme to be complex and difficult to understand, making it less accessible for smaller businesses.

Azure Data Factory lacks built-in capabilities for streaming data processing and real-time data replication.

Integration with third-party solutions is problematic, particularly with connectors and support for other data systems like SAP and Google Analytics.

Azure Data Factory Pros review quotes

GM

Data Architect at World Vision

Dec 13, 2022

The trigger scheduling options are decently robust.

Read full review

Engineering Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 11, 2022

Azure Data Factory became more user-friendly when data-flows were introduced.

Read full review

AS

CTO at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 22, 2022

The data factory agent is quite good and programming or defining the value of jobs, processes, and activities is easy.

Read full review

Azure Data Factory

Free Report: Azure Data Factory Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Azure Data Factory. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.

838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Management Consultant at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Dec 1, 2022

The feature I found most helpful in Azure Data Factory is the pipeline feature, including being able to connect to different sources. Azure Data Factory also has built-in security, which is another valuable feature.

Read full review

KR

Keerthivas Raja

Data Governance/Data Engineering Manager at National Bank of Fujairah PJSC

Mar 6, 2024

I like its integration with SQL pools, its ability to work with Databricks, its pipelines, and the serverless architecture are the most effective features.

Read full review

RD

Richard Domikis

Chief Technology Officer at cornerstone defense

Aug 11, 2021

It is very modular. It works well. We've used Data Factory and then made calls to libraries outside of Data Factory to do things that it wasn't optimized to do, and it worked really well. It is obviously proprietary in regards to Microsoft created it, but it is pretty easy and direct to bring in outside capabilities into Data Factory.

Read full review

reviewer2378058

Senior Devops Consultant (CPE India Delivery Lead) at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Mar 13, 2024

The scalability of the product is impressive.

Read full review

Chief Analytics Officer at Idiro Analytics

Jul 28, 2022

It's cloud-based, allowing multiple users to easily access the solution from the office or remote locations. I like that we can set up the security protocols for IP addresses, like allow lists. It's a pretty user-friendly product as well. The interface and build environment where you create pipelines are easy to use. It's straightforward to manage the digital transformation pipelines we build.

Read full review

Chief Strategist & CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Jun 3, 2022

The most valuable feature of Azure Data Factory is that it has a good combination of flexibility, fine-tuning, automation, and good monitoring.

Read full review

Thulani David Mngadi

Data architect at Old Mutual

Mar 18, 2024

The workflow automation features in GitLab, particularly its low code/no code approach, are highly beneficial for accelerating development speed. This feature allows for quick creation of pipelines and offers customization options for integration needs, making it versatile for various use cases. GitLab supports a wide range of connectors, catering to a majority of integration needs. Azure Data Factory's virtual enterprise and monitoring capabilities, the visual interface of GitLab makes it user-friendly and easy to teach, facilitating adoption within teams. While the monitoring capabilities are sufficient out of the box, they may not be as comprehensive as dedicated enterprise monitoring tools. GitLab's monitoring features are manageable for production use, with the option to integrate log analytics or create custom dashboards if needed. The data flow feature in Azure Data Factory within GitLab is valuable for data transformation tasks, especially for those who may not have expertise in writing complex code. It simplifies the process of data manipulation and is particularly useful for individuals unfamiliar with Spark coding. While there could be improvements for more flexibility, overall, the data flow feature effectively accomplishes its purpose within GitLab's ecosystem.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 89)

Azure Data Factory Cons review quotes

GM

Data Architect at World Vision

Dec 13, 2022

There is no built-in pipeline exit activity when encountering an error.

Read full review

Engineering Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 11, 2022

Azure Data Factory uses many resources and has issues with parallel workflows.

Read full review

AS

CTO at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 22, 2022

The pricing model should be more transparent and available online.

Read full review

Azure Data Factory

Free Report: Azure Data Factory Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Azure Data Factory. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.

838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Management Consultant at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Dec 1, 2022

Areas for improvement in Azure Data Factory include connectivity and integration. When you use integration runtime, whenever there's a failure, the backup process in Azure Data Factory takes time, so this is another area for improvement.

Read full review

KR

Keerthivas Raja

Data Governance/Data Engineering Manager at National Bank of Fujairah PJSC

Mar 6, 2024

There is room for improvement primarily in its streaming capabilities. For structured streaming and machine learning model implementation within an ETL process, it lags behind tools like Informatica.

Read full review

RD

Richard Domikis

Chief Technology Officer at cornerstone defense

Aug 11, 2021

There is always room to improve. There should be good examples of use that, of course, customers aren't always willing to share. It is Catch-22. It would help the user base if everybody had really good examples of deployments that worked, but when you ask people to put out their good deployments, which also includes me, you usually got, "No, I'm not going to do that." They don't have enough good examples. Microsoft probably just needs to pay one of their partners to build 20 or 30 examples of functional Data Factories and then share them as a user base.

Read full review

reviewer2378058

Senior Devops Consultant (CPE India Delivery Lead) at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Mar 13, 2024

The product's technical support has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required.

Read full review

Chief Analytics Officer at Idiro Analytics

Jul 28, 2022

Data Factory has so many features that it can be a little difficult or confusing to find some settings and configurations. I'm sure there's a way to make it a little easier to navigate.

Read full review

Chief Strategist & CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Jun 3, 2022

They require more detailed error reporting, data normalization tools, easier connectivity to other services, more data services, and greater compatibility with other commonly used schemas.

Read full review

Thulani David Mngadi

Data architect at Old Mutual

Mar 18, 2024

Azure Data Factory could benefit from improvements in its monitoring capabilities to provide a more robust feature set. Enhancing the ease of deployment to higher environments within Azure DevOps would be beneficial, as the current process often requires extensive scripting and pipeline development. It is also known for the flexibility of the data flow feature, particularly in supporting more dynamic data-driven architectures. These enhancements would contribute to a more seamless and efficient workflow within GitLab.

Read full review

Show 10 more reviews (out of 89)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Data Integration

Cloud Data Warehouse

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Azure Data Factory

Informatica PowerCenter vs Azure Data Factory

SSIS vs Azure Data Factory

Teradata vs Azure Data Factory

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs Azure Data Factory

Talend Open Studio vs Azure Data Factory

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs Azure Data Factory

Oracle GoldenGate vs Azure Data Factory

Palantir Foundry vs Azure Data Factory

SAP Data Services vs Azure Data Factory

Qlik Replicate vs Azure Data Factory

Denodo vs Azure Data Factory

Alteryx Designer vs Azure Data Factory

Fivetran vs Azure Data Factory

SnapLogic vs Azure Data Factory

See all alternatives

Product Categories

Product Categories

Data Integration

Cloud Data Warehouse

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Azure Data Factory

Informatica PowerCenter vs Azure Data Factory

SSIS vs Azure Data Factory

Teradata vs Azure Data Factory

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs Azure Data Factory

Talend Open Studio vs Azure Data Factory

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs Azure Data Factory

Oracle GoldenGate vs Azure Data Factory

Palantir Foundry vs Azure Data Factory

SAP Data Services vs Azure Data Factory

Qlik Replicate vs Azure Data Factory

Denodo vs Azure Data Factory

Alteryx Designer vs Azure Data Factory

Fivetran vs Azure Data Factory

SnapLogic vs Azure Data Factory

See all alternatives

Related questions

228

Which solution do you prefer: KNIME, Azure Synapse Analytics, or Azure Data Factory?

38

How do Alteryx, Denod, and Azure Data Factory overlap (or complement) each other?

11

Do you think Azure Data Factory’s price is fair?

63

What kind of organizations use Azure Data Factory?

14

Is Azure Data Factory a secure solution?

72

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?

62

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?

91

Which is better for Snowflake integration, Matillion ETL or Azure Data Factory (ADF) when hosted on Azure?

51

What is the best suitable replacement for ODI on Azure?

11

Which product do you prefer: Teradata Vantage or Azure Data Factory?