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Alation Data Catalog vs Ping Identity Platform 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.7
Alation Data Catalog boosts efficiency by reducing search time, cutting costs, and enhancing user independence in data management.
Sentiment score
4.2
Ping Identity Platform simplifies identity management, lowers IT overhead, enhances security, improves efficiency, boosts satisfaction, and offers scalability.
We have seen a return on investment, having saved close to 10.5% of our costs, with expected ROI growing yearly by about 17%.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Instead of going into Google or consulting a colleague, I can just go to Alation Data Catalog, search there, and understand everything by myself.
Data Engineer at Yum! Brands
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
Alation's support is generally positive, with fast ticket processing but some issues with time zones and complex problem-solving.
Sentiment score
6.3
Ping Identity Platform's customer service is generally good, but response times and portal clarity need improvement for urgent issues.
Some of them have dragged on for six months, which is much longer than we would ever want some support issues to go on.
Senior Data Engineer & Data Platform Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
we have defined several SLAs that have resolved critical issues and incidents with excellent support.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
we have been able to contact them, and they have been able to help us whenever we have had issues
Senior Data Analyst at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have reached out to technical support for troubleshooting SAML certificate mismatches and federated errors between Ping and enterprise apps.
Senior ServiceNow Developer at Wells Fargo
I would rate the technical support for Ping Identity Platform seven out of ten because of their limited support and late availability.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Alation Data Catalog excels in scalability for expanding user bases and data size, with some API limitations on free versions.
Sentiment score
7.3
Ping Identity Platform excels in scalability, supporting varied user bases with adaptable performance, though configuration enhancements are needed.
As data sizes grow, we can also scale categorizations, calibrations, and the types of data we ingest and catalog through this tool.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Alation Data Catalog's scalability is really good since everything is cloud and everything gets pulled into the system via Snowflake and DBT automatically.
Senior Data Analyst at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Alation Data Catalog's scalability has met our needs as our data and user base has grown.
Senior Data Engineer & Data Platform Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Alation Data Catalog is praised for stability, reliable performance, excellent maintenance, with minor on-premises outages and DBT load concerns.
Sentiment score
7.8
Ping Identity Platform is highly stable, with manageable issues, supported by proper maintenance, configuration, and monitoring tools.
It has never gone down when we wanted to access it.
Senior Data Engineer & Data Platform Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Alation Data Catalog has been stable for me, as I haven't seen much downtime.
Senior ORM Analyst Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
From my experience, Alation Data Catalog is stable.
Senior Data Analyst at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of stability for Ping Identity Platform, we haven't faced any issues till now.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Room For Improvement

Alation Data Catalog needs improved lineage, user interface, automation, security, and integration with Power BI and external APIs.
Ping Identity Platform struggles with complex setup, high costs, unintuitive interface, limited integration, and challenging troubleshooting.
The platform needs improvement in integrating with BI tools, reducing manual efforts, and facilitating a smooth connection.
Senior Data Governance at a university with 51-200 employees
Additionally, bringing in AI capabilities to automate tracking and labeling can optimize how we handle data information levels.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Alation Data Catalog can be improved by enhancing their lineage capabilities to make it easier for us as users to search the lineage without having to use the Alation Data Catalog user interface.
Senior Data and Analytics Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I would like to enable ServiceNow Generative AI for auto-diagnosing PingFederate SSO failures and suggest remediation steps.
Senior ServiceNow Developer at Wells Fargo
Ping Identity Platform has multiple products for access management, identity management, a solution for API security, a solution for authorization, and a product for identity verification.
VP Engineering at Inspirit Vision
There is a very limited number of legacy support, which can pose potential difficulties in integrating with certain older or legacy systems.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Setup Cost

Alation Data Catalog pricing is high, but discounts and long-term agreements offer better value compared to competitors.
Ping Identity Platform is cost-effective, competitively priced, favorable for large enterprises, with strong security and scalability.
Collibra is a little bit expensive than Alation, but I presented the benefits of having that platform, so that little bit of money was not a big deal.
Senior Data Governance at a university with 51-200 employees
Discussions with the vendor partners provided a detailed breakdown of costs and how they can be reduced over time.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Regarding pricing for Ping Identity Platform, I would rate it eight out of ten.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Valuable Features

Alation Data Catalog boosts productivity with intuitive features, seamless data management, and enhances collaboration through advanced governance and cloud integration.
Ping Identity Platform offers multi-factor authentication, SSO, and robust security with a user-friendly interface and flexible integrations.
It was the only data catalog tool where I could save and even create SQL queries.
Senior Data Governance at a university with 51-200 employees
Importantly, we establish a single source of truth, centralizing metadata and standardizing definitions, which minimizes confusion and helps with consistent data use across the organization.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
My stakeholders can find relevant data assets quickly using a Google search without needing technical jargon, reducing the time spent searching for data.
Data Engineer at Yum! Brands
The platform enhances security measures by analyzing multi-factor authentication attempts, highlighting suspicious patterns, and generating compliance reports.
Senior ServiceNow Developer at Wells Fargo
It's a converged platform which can do both identity management, access management, and recently they are bringing privilege management capability as well.
VP Engineering at Inspirit Vision
It is a completely comprehensive hybrid capable Identity and Access Management feature which provides features such as multi-factor authentication, Single Sign-On, then Identity Orchestration, centralized authorizations such as ABAC.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Categories and Ranking

Alation Data Catalog
Ranking in Data Governance
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (3rd)
Ping Identity Platform
Ranking in Data Governance
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (6th), Authentication Systems (7th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (5th), Access Management (6th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (3rd), Directory Servers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 3.6%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Ping Identity Platform is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alation Data Catalog3.6%
Ping Identity Platform0.8%
Other95.6%
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2776527 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data and Analytics Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Increases data discoverability and boosts self-service analytics through enriched metadata and intuitive search
The best features that Alation Data Catalog offers are its search capabilities and the fact that it works with many different data platforms; it is essentially platform agnostic. The other piece that I really think is important is how easy it is to use as well as to manage. What makes the search capabilities of Alation Data Catalog stand out for me is the fact that every item within the catalog is indexed and searchable, as well as the filtering features that allow you to narrow down to just the types of assets that you need. Wildcard searches are also very helpful. It is a very intuitive tool, as long as you are using the filters. Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization by allowing users to answer questions that they had without trying to track down an expert. This has saved them quite a bit of time and frustration. It has allowed them to solve problems they probably would not have been able to solve had they not had the catalog. We have been measuring the curation of content within the catalog that has gone up over time, and we have also seen the number of users in the catalog increase, as well as the amount of activity within the catalog increase. We were seeing about an average of about 20% increase month over month for the last few months.
AmitRathod - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
Single sign-on has simplified access while adaptive authentication protects complex user journeys
Regarding areas for improvement in Ping Identity Platform, there is not much. In terms of licensing and implementation costs, it has premium pricing, and it has a very complex implementation. It provides greater feasibility, but it takes a very long time in terms of complete building. There is a very limited number of legacy support, which can pose potential difficulties in integrating with certain older or legacy systems. Additionally, issue troubleshooting can be difficult at times. Sometimes issues can be difficult to diagnose and require extensive technical expertise. There is also a very steep learning curve for administrative purposes and potential difficulties with offline authentication scenarios.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alation Data Catalog?
I haven't had any experience with pricing, setup costs, or licensing, as I have been strictly an end user and haven't had any administrative or management responsibilities.
What needs improvement with Alation Data Catalog?
Some of the downsides about the lineage is that some of the code is quite difficult to read as the formatting is a bit ugly sometimes. Alation Data Catalog can be improved with the lineage formatti...
What is your primary use case for Alation Data Catalog?
I have been using Alation Data Catalog for the past year now. My main use case for Alation Data Catalog is updating data descriptions and making sure analysts have what they need to do their job. W...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingFederate?
The product is affordable and starts at 20,000 dollars/year, depending upon the license and maintenance requirement. It makes our work easier and saves a lot of time.
What do you like most about PingAccess?
PingFederate is very flexible. We can do many customizations, and it also provides an SDK to tailor it to our specific requirements. There are also numerous plugins available. I've worked with tool...
What needs improvement with PingAccess?
From the improvement perspective, they could bring IGA capability, which right now they only have in their SaaS offering. Other than that, Ping Identity Platform has multiple products for access ma...
 

Also Known As

Alation
Ping Identity (ID), PingFederate, PingAccess, PingOne, PingDataGovernance, PingDirectory, OpenDJ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Equinix, Land O'Lakes, CDPHP, Box, International SOS, Opower, VSP, Chevron, Truist, Academy of Art University, Northern Air Cargo, Repsol
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Ping Identity Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.