What is our primary use case?
My main use case for SnapLogic is to automate SFTP pickups and banking integrations, and I also use it for data formatting, changing CSVs into different types of files, filling out data, and completely changing it for all sorts of data work.
A specific example of a workflow I automate with SnapLogic is when we receive a file from a bank about different transactions in US dollars and in Philippine currency as a text file in an old bank style format that needs to be converted into an Excel sheet for one of our other platforms.
In this example, I first transform the file and remove any unnecessary data. Since the file is a text file without proper spreadsheet formatting and no real columns, I must ensure that I am reading and formatting the file correctly into columns and rows so that it displays properly for our other platforms.
In addition to my main use cases with SnapLogic, I also use it in a couple of places to work with our internal APIs as a company, where clients want to provide us data, whether it may be a list of customers or a list of accounts that they work with, and they want to give it to us in a CSV format and do not feel comfortable using an API and calling it.
How has it helped my organization?
The process of transforming that file takes less than sixty seconds with SnapLogic, and before I started using the platform, we would have to do it by hand by copying and pasting content from the text file into Excel, which was a very manual workflow.
SnapLogic has impacted my organization positively by removing a lot of manual work from people who were doing that tedious work, allowing them to focus on tasks that require more skill and are better uses of their time.
While I do not have any cost numbers or time-saved numbers, I believe we went from approximately five or six platforms that we were using for different purposes to being able to use SnapLogic in place of those.
What is most valuable?
Some of the best features SnapLogic offers include the visual coding approach with small blocks that I can write without needing any programming knowledge, whereas a lot of what we were doing, if it was not done manually, would have to be done by writing scripts of some sort.
It has meant that getting new users into using SnapLogic has been incredibly easy, and while there is going to be a learning curve with every platform, SnapLogic has really simplified the process and has meant that people who would not necessarily have been able to do some of this work can be trained to do it because it is quite simple once they get the hang of it.
One feature that deserves a mention is that whenever I need to write an expression for any of my snaps, there is an autofill option that attempts to guess what I am working with, pulling data from any of the snaps to either side of it to try and determine what I am doing.
What needs improvement?
I do think some of the documentation could be improved as it can be a bit hard to parse, and sometimes there are simply not as many examples of things or ways to use some of the snaps as there could be.
The interface recently got an upgrade which was very needed because before it was very dated and a bit clunky, and it definitely looks a lot better now, and the speed has never really been an issue.
I think the documentation issue is what keeps SnapLogic from being perfect for me, along with some instances where snaps for things such as joining tables or filtering things do not work exactly how one might think they do intuitively.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SnapLogic for about two and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
From what we have experienced, I would think SnapLogic is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think SnapLogic's scalability is pretty decent, but we have not had to scale it up massively since I am in quite a small startup, so I do not know if it is hugely applicable.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for SnapLogic has been really good.
I would rate the customer support a nine on a scale of one to ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution before SnapLogic that was very similar.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I believe we also looked at Zapier before choosing SnapLogic, but our other options were mainly continuing what we were doing with manual and scripting work.
What other advice do I have?
I would give SnapLogic a nine on a scale of one to ten.
I think SnapLogic's accuracy and reliability of output is pretty accurate.
In terms of SnapLogic's AI capabilities, I think it is pretty good, but I am not particularly well-versed in that area, so I cannot give a very strong answer on it.
My advice for others looking into using SnapLogic is to think about what you are going to use it for because there are so many things you can do, and make sure you understand what they are before bringing it on board.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.