Comparing Informatica PowerCenter with Stitch and Weld
Carolina Russ6 min read
What is Informatica PowerCenter
Informatica PowerCenter is a legacy enterprise-grade ETL platform that provides a visual designer, metadata management, scheduling, and monitoring for complex, large-scale ETL workloads. It supports a vast range of sources (mainframes, relational, NoSQL, cloud) and advanced transformations (data quality, profiling, master data management) within the Informatica ecosystem.
Pros
- Extremely powerful and scalable for enterprise ETL with parallel processing and pushdown optimization.
- Comprehensive transformation library, data quality, and metadata management integrated in the platform.
- Robust scheduling and workflow orchestration with detailed logging and recovery capabilities.
- Supports heterogeneous environments: on-prem, cloud, hybrid, and mainframe data sources.
Cons
- High total cost of ownership: expensive licensing, dedicated infrastructure, and specialized admins.
- User interface is dated; development and maintenance require specialized training, increasing time to onboard new users.
- Less agility for rapidly changing data needs vs. modern cloud-native ETL tools; upgrades and patches are time-consuming processes.
Informatica PowerCenter Overview:
What I like about Informatica PowerCenter
PowerCenter’s ability to handle massive ETL workflows with rich transformation libraries and metadata governance is unmatched for large enterprises.
What I dislike about Informatica PowerCenter
Steep learning curve and high licensing costs make it unsuitable for smaller teams. Administration overhead is significant compared to cloud-native ETL.
What is Stitch
Acquired by Talend in 2018, Stitch Data is a cloud open-source and developer-focused ELT platform that offers no-code connectors to bring data into your warehouse. Stitch offers compatibility with a broad range of data sources and destinations. It also enables customers to construct new sources based on Singer's standards, an open-source toolkit designed for scriptwriting.
Pros
- Easy to setup and use
- A cost-friendly pricing model that's easy to understand and based on usage
- Integrates with Talend
- Includes transformations with JSON
- Fully managed no-code ELT data pipelines
Cons
- Require deep technical knowledge to get full value out of the platform
- The quality can vary a lot between different connectors as they are not maintained by Stitch
- Depends on the Singer open source framework which can break without notice
A reviewer on Gartner said::
What I like about Stitch
Stitch is an affordable tool for bringing data "as is" from the various data sources (Google Ads, Salesforce or even MySQL) to a data warehouse (Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, etc.)
What I dislike about Stitch
What is Weld
Weld is a powerful ETL platform that seamlessly integrates ELT, data transformations, reverse ETL, and AI-assisted features into one user-friendly solution. With its intuitive interface, Weld makes it easy for anyone, regardless of technical expertise, to build and manage data workflows. Known for its premium quality connectors, all built in-house, Weld ensures the highest quality and reliability for its users. It is designed to handle large datasets with near real-time data synchronization, making it ideal for modern data teams that require robust and efficient data integration solutions. Weld also leverages AI to automate repetitive tasks, optimize workflows, and enhance data transformation capabilities, ensuring maximum efficiency and productivity. Users can combine data from a wide variety of sources, including marketing platforms, CRMs, e-commerce platforms like Shopify, APIs, databases, Excel, Google Sheets, and more, providing a single source of truth for all their data.
Pros
- Premium quality connectors and reliability
- User-friendly and easy to set up
- AI assistant
- Very competitive and easy-to-understand pricing model
- Reverse ETL option
- Lineage, orchestration, and workflow features
- Advanced transformation and SQL modeling capabilities
- Ability to handle large datasets and near real-time data sync
- Combines data from a wide range of sources for a single source of truth
Cons
- Requires some technical knowledge around data warehousing and SQL
- Limited features for advanced data teams
A reviewer on G2 said:
What I like about Weld
First and foremost, Weld is incredibly user-friendly. The graphical interface is intuitive, which makes it easy to build data workflows quickly and efficiently. Even with little experience in SQL and pipeline management, we found that Weld was straightforward and easy to use. What really impressed me, however, was Weld's flexibility. It was able to handle data from a wide variety of sources, including SQL databases, Google Sheets, and even APIs. The solution also allowed us to customize my data transformations in a way that best suited my needs. Whether I needed to clean data, join tables, or aggregate data, Weld had the necessary tools to accomplish the task. Weld's performance was also exceptional. I was able to run large-scale ETL jobs quickly and efficiently, with minimal downtime via a Snowflake instance and visualization via own-hosted Metabase. The solution's scalability meant that I could process more data without any issues. Another standout feature of Weld was its support. I never felt lost or unsure about how to use a particular feature, as the support team was always quick to respond to any questions or concerns that I had. Overall, I highly recommend Weld as an ETL solution. Its user-friendliness, flexibility, performance, and support make it an excellent choice for anyone looking to streamline their data integration processes. I will definitely be using Weld for all my ETL needs going forward.
What I dislike about Weld
Weld is still limited to a certain number of integrations - although the team is super interested to hear if you need custom integrations.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Ease of Use & Interface
Informatica PowerCenter
PowerCenter’s Designer and Workflow Manager GUIs are comprehensive but dated. Developers need formal training to use transformation and mapping components effectively. The metadata integration assists with governance but adds complexity.
Stitch
Stitch is relatively easy to set up and use, offering no-code connectors and an affordable pricing model, but users may need deep technical knowledge to leverage its full potential.
Pricing & Affordability
Informatica PowerCenter
Pricing is custom enterprise quotes—often $100k+ per year depending on nodes and users. Best for large enterprises that need high SLAs and rich feature sets; impractical for startups or small teams.
Stitch
Stitch's pricing model is cost-friendly and based on usage, making it accessible for many users. However, costs can increase if data volumes grow significantly.
Feature Set
Informatica PowerCenter
Includes: visual mapping designer, advanced transformations (data cleansing, lookups, aggregation), parallel processing, workflow orchestration, metadata manager, data quality, master data management, and extensive connectivity (mainframe to cloud).
Stitch
Stitch offers fully managed no-code ELT data pipelines and integrates with Talend, but relies heavily on the Singer open-source framework, which can be less stable.
Flexibility & Customization
Informatica PowerCenter
Highly customizable via Expression Transformations, Java Transformations, and stored procedure calls. Integration with command tasks allows custom scripts. However, it’s not open-source; you rely on Informatica for feature updates.
Stitch
Stitch is designed for simplicity and ease of use, but customization is limited and dependent on the capabilities of the open-source Singer framework.
Summary of Informatica PowerCenter vs Stitch vs Weld
| Weld | Informatica PowerCenter | Stitch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connectors | 200+ | 200+ | 140+ |
| Price | $79 / No data volume limits | Enterprise licensing (six-figure annual contracts) | $100 / 5M rows |
| Free tier | No | No | Yes |
| Location | EU | Redwood City, CA, USA (Informatica HQ) | US |
| Extract data (ETL) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sync data to HubSpot, Salesforce, Klaviyo, Excel etc. (reverse ETL) | Yes | No | No |
| Transformations | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AI Assistant | Yes | No | No |
| On-Premise | No | Yes | No |
| Orchestration | Yes | Yes | No |
| Lineage | Yes | Yes | No |
| Version control | Yes | Yes | No |
| Load data to and from Excel | Yes | Yes | No |
| Load data to and from Google Sheets | Yes | No | No |
| Two-Way Sync | Yes | No | No |
| dbt Core Integration | Yes | No | Yes |
| dbt Cloud Integration | Yes | No | No |
| OpenAPI / Developer API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| G2 Rating | 4.8 | 4.3 | 4.5 |
Conclusion
You’re comparing Informatica PowerCenter, Stitch, Weld. Each of these tools has its own strengths:
- Informatica PowerCenter: includes: visual mapping designer, advanced transformations (data cleansing, lookups, aggregation), parallel processing, workflow orchestration, metadata manager, data quality, master data management, and extensive connectivity (mainframe to cloud). . pricing is custom enterprise quotes—often $100k+ per year depending on nodes and users. best for large enterprises that need high slas and rich feature sets; impractical for startups or small teams. .
- Stitch: stitch offers fully managed no-code elt data pipelines and integrates with talend, but relies heavily on the singer open-source framework, which can be less stable.. stitch's pricing model is cost-friendly and based on usage, making it accessible for many users. however, costs can increase if data volumes grow significantly..
- Weld: weld integrates elt, data transformations, and reverse etl all within one platform. it also provides advanced features such as data lineage, orchestration, workflow management, and an ai assistant, which helps in automating repetitive tasks and optimizing workflows.. weld offers a straightforward and competitive pricing model, starting at $99 for 2 million active rows, making it more affordable and predictable, especially for small to medium-sized enterprises..
