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Alation Data Catalog vs Segment comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alation Data Catalog
Ranking in Data Governance
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (2nd)
Segment
Ranking in Data Governance
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Web Analytics (6th), Customer Data Platforms (CDP) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 5.9%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Segment is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Brahma Lam - PeerSpot reviewer
Has metadata cataloging features but needs changes in domain model
The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature.  The tool's domain model needs to be changed.  Alation Data Catalog is stable.  The solution is scalable.  Alation Data Catalog's deployment is easy. I rate it a nine out of ten. Deployment takes only two to three hours to complete.…
VikasAgarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplify data management and analysis and offers built-in integrations for many data sources and destinations, reducing effort required for custom integrations
The main challenge is that the SDKs are pretty similar across programming languages, and they're not super flexible. They might not support certain use cases. It has a set of functions that work well if they fit your needs, but if you need something custom, you can't rely on the SDKs and have to use recipes. And using those recipes extensively isn't ideal. For example, we were getting leads from the D2C application, sending them to Segment, and then from Segment to HubSpot. If Segment could mimic HubSpot's API, we could leverage HubSpot's SDK capabilities even through Segment. But Segment's API is generic, so it doesn't do anything tailored to HubSpot. As a product designer, I know that would be hard to accomplish anyway. It's not a criticism, because I would probably design it the same way. But as a consumer, I don't care how it's designed; I care if it fits my use case. If not, how much effort will it take to make it work? That was the challenging part. It took a lot of time to integrate Segment and make it communicate with HubSpot in a certain way. So, the challenge is the lack of flexibility in the SDKs, given the capabilities of the destinations. From my experience, it's mostly fine. It could benefit from more customization capabilities. The product itself is good, but it would be awesome if it allowed you to write your own extensions to augment the CDP's capabilities. And another suggestion. It's not about a missing feature, but rather something Segment is doing that I personally don't think a CDP should do. It's like a mobile phone you use for watching videos, listening to music, and making calls. But to be a good mobile phone, you need to be the best at making and receiving calls, and texting. Everything else is a distraction. Instead of optimizing for those distractions, you should solidify the basics. To illustrate this, Segment has many capabilities that overlap with things like CRMs, campaign management systems, tracking systems, and so on. These capabilities can give a small startup a real kick-start, but as you scale, the capabilities other than the core CDP features don't scale as well. For example, it does campaign management, but it's not really a full-fledged campaign management system. When you're starting out, it's fine, it's great, it fits almost all your use cases. But as you grow from a two-person organization to a 300-person organization, you'll have to deal with more complexity. You'll likely need to look for a dedicated campaign management system and integrate it with Segment. Now, if you've been using Segment's campaign management for a long time, moving that part to a different system will be a roadblock.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alation Data Catalog provides a nice interface for connecting to the database, querying the data, and working on it."
"The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"The most valuable feature is cloud integration."
"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."
"Given the relatively low level of maturity, Alation's most relevant feature at the moment is a user interface that's easy to navigate, which helps us find and understand the data. So while Alation has a lot more functionality, our pain point right now is being able to easily find, understand, and trust the information to use it."
"We had some of our data science engineers, who had built out some cloud-based data and data products for users. They were spending a lot of their time, up to 30 to 35% of their time, answering questions about the data and helping people understand how to use it. Once they were able to document that information within Alation, they were only focusing on around 5% of the high-value questions that really couldn't be solved through the catalog itself. It freed them up to be more productive, it made their end-users more productive, and it made the adoption rate of their data products rise more quickly because people were able to get to using them."
"I like the straightforward way of connecting with various data sources and destinations. That's the most valuable feature. It has built-in integrations for a lot of them, so the overall effort required for integrations is relatively low."
 

Cons

"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."
"Alation Data Catalog needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution."
"Alation Data Catalog doesn't support end-to-end lineage. By that, I mean the ability to trace the movement of data from when it first comes into our organization to where it's consumed."
"I know that this has been on their roadmap and they're working on it, but as a whole, there's an untapped reservoir of capabilities within their article features that could be used and built upon."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"The tool's domain model needs to be changed."
"The product's data governance features need improvement."
"Although the solution performs far better in terms of data cataloging, its data governance capabilities need improvement."
"The challenge is the lack of flexibility in the SDKs, given the capabilities of the destinations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a little expensive."
"I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected."
"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"A three-year agreement is better than a one-year rolling 12-month agreement from a price point of view. I'd recommend looking at a three-year deal because you can't stand up a catalog and produce value in 12 months."
"The pricing was on the higher side but it wasn't excessively high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Retailer
8%
Media Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alation Data Catalog?
The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alation Data Catalog?
I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solut...
What needs improvement with Alation Data Catalog?
When issues arise, two key concerns arise. First, how can we perform root cause analysis faster? Second, how can we optimize resource allocation, considering the associated costs? Every customer is...
What do you like most about Segment?
I like the straightforward way of connecting with various data sources and destinations. That's the most valuable feature. It has built-in integrations for a lot of them, so the overall effort requ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Segment?
The pricing was on the higher side but it wasn't excessively high. It's definitely not tailored for the smallest businesses, but it's well-suited for setups that anticipate significant growth.
What needs improvement with Segment?
The main challenge is that the SDKs are pretty similar across programming languages, and they're not super flexible. They might not support certain use cases. It has a set of functions that work we...
 

Also Known As

Alation
Segment.io
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Nokia, rdio, Bonobos, LiveNation, Atlassian
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Segment and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.