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JumpMind SymmetricDS vs Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

JumpMind SymmetricDS
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Replication (13th)
Pentaho Data Integration an...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

JumpMind SymmetricDS and Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. JumpMind SymmetricDS is designed for Data Replication and holds a mindshare of 1.8%, down 1.9% compared to last year.
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 1.6% mindshare, up 0.6% since last year.
Data Replication
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

it_user186621 - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent change data capture utility for distributed multi site environment
Customer Service: We have a support contract with Jumpmind. The support resources are readily available and provide expert support to any questions. Technical Support: Jumpmind created and open sourced this solution. All the key players are still actively involved with the technology and provide answers to all our open questions. The consistency we receive from their support is second to none.
Ryan Ferdon - PeerSpot reviewer
Low-code makes development faster than with Python, but there were caching issues
If you're working with a larger data set, I'm not so sure it would be the best solution. The larger things got the slower it was. It was kind of buggy sometimes. And when we ran the flow, it didn't go from a perceived start to end, node by node. Everything kicked off at once. That meant there were times when it would get ahead of itself and a job would fail. That was not because the job was wrong, but because Pentaho decided to go at everything at once, and something would process before it was supposed to. There were nodes you could add to make sure that, before this node kicks off, all these others have processed, but it was a bit tedious. There were also caching issues, and we had to write code to clear the cache every time we opened the program, because the cache would fill up and it wouldn't run. I don't know how hard that would be for them to fix, or if it was fixed in version 10. Also, the UI is a bit outdated, but I'm more of a fan of function over how something looks. One other thing that would have helped with Pentaho was documentation and support on the internet: how to do things, how to set up. I think there are some sites on how to install it, and Pentaho does have a help repository, but it wasn't always the most useful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is fully featured. It has allowed me to do everything I wanted to do."
"It is easy to use, install, and start working with."
"We can schedule job execution in the BA Server, which is the front-end product we're using right now. That scheduling interface is nice."
"The solution has a free to use community version."
"I absolutely love Hitachi. I'm one of the forefront supporters of Hitachi for my firm. It's so easy to integrate within our environments. In terms of being able to quickly build ETL jobs, transform, and then automate them, it's really easy to integrate throughout for data analytics."
"We also haven't had to create any custom Java code. Almost everywhere it's SQL, so it's done in the pipeline and the configuration. That means you can offload the work to people who, while they are not less experienced, are less technical when it comes to logic."
"Data transformation within Pentaho is a nice feature that they have and that I value."
"The fact that it enables us to leverage metadata to automate data pipeline templates and reuse them is definitely one of the features that we like the best. The metadata injection is helpful because it reduces the need to create and maintain additional ETLs. If we didn't have that feature, we would have lots of duplicated ETLs that we would have to create and maintain. The data pipeline templates have definitely been helpful when looking at productivity and costs."
"The abstraction is quite good."
 

Cons

"The user interface could improve. We are looking at some cloud-based databases, and I don't think they support that."
"It's not very stable, at least not in the case of the community edition. I'm working with the community edition right now and I think perhaps it is because of that it is not very stable, it causes the system to sometimes hang. I'm not sure if this is the case for pair tiers."
"Communicating with the vendor is challenging, and this hinders its performance in free tool setups."
"The testing and quality could really improve. Every time that there is a major release, we are very nervous about what is going to get broken. We have had a lot of experience with that, as even the latest one was broken. Some basic things get broken. That doesn't look good for Hitachi at all. If there is one place I would advise them to spend some money and do some effort, it is with the quality. It is not that hard to start putting in some unit tests so basic things don't get broken when they do a new release. That just looks horrible, especially for an organization like Hitachi."
"I was not happy with the Pentaho Report Designer because of the way it was set up. There was a zone and, under it, another zone, and under that another one, and under that another one. There were a lot of levels and places inside the report, and it was a little bit complicated. You have to search all these different places using a mouse, clicking everywhere... each report is coded in a binary file... You cannot search with a text search tool..."
"As far as I remember, not all connectors worked very well. They can add more connectors and more drivers to the process to integrate with more flows."
"It could be better integrated with programming languages, like Python and R. Right now, if I want to run a Python code on one of my ETLs, it is a bit difficult to do. It would be great if we have some modules where we could code directly in a Python language. We don't really have a way to run Python code natively."
"Should provide additional control for the data warehouse"
"If you're working with a larger data set, I'm not so sure it would be the best solution. The larger things got the slower it was."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"You don't need the Enterprise Edition, you can go with the Community Edition. That way you can use it for free and, for free, it's a pretty good tool to use."
"I mostly used the open-source version. I didn't work with a license."
"There is a good open source option (Community Edition)​."
"If a company is looking for an ETL solution and wants to integrate it with their tech stack but doesn't want to spend a bunch of money, Pentaho is a good solution"
"Sometimes we provide the licenses or the customer can procure their own licenses. Previously, we had an enterprise license. Currently, we are on a community license as this is adequate for our needs."
"The solution reduced our ETL development time by a lot because a whole project used to take about a month to get done previously. After having Lumada, it took just a week. For a big company in Brazil, it saves a team at least $10,000 a month."
"You need to go through the paid version to have Hitachi Lumada specialized support. However, if you are using the free version, then you will have only the community support. You will depend on the releases from Hitachi to solve some problem or questions that you have, such as bug fixes. You will need to wait for the newest versions or releases to solve these types of problems."
"We did a two or three-year deal the last time we did it. As compared to other solutions, at least so far in our experience, it has been very affordable. The licensing is by component. So, you need to make sure you only license the components that you really intend to use. I am not sure if we have relicensed after the Hitachi acquisition, but previously, multi-year renewals resulted in a good discount. I'm not sure if this is still the case. We've had the full suite for a lot of years, and there is just the initial cost. I am not aware of any additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Does JumpMind SymmetricDS support a large array of databases?
Yes, it does. This data replication software works with many popular databases, allowing users to benefit from its services. What's more, it also works with many data warehouses, as well as streami...
Is JumpMind SymmetricDS easy to use for beginners?
I didn't start with JumpMind SymmetricDS, I actually started using it at a job when I was a little more introduced to data replication. That made me able to see the good features this software has....
Does JumpMind SymmetricDS provide frequent file synchronization?
How often do you need for your data to be synchronized? I'm asking this because different companies use data replication for different purposes. Some use it as simply updating backup, others to giv...
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...
What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?
In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...
What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?
My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...
 

Also Known As

SymmetricDS
Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SmartMD, Cancer Research UK
66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about JumpMind SymmetricDS vs. Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.