No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs SharePlex comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Pentaho Data Integration an...
Ranking in Data Integration
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SharePlex
Ranking in Data Integration
48th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.7%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SharePlex is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics1.7%
SharePlex1.1%
Other97.2%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Michelle Lawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines complex data workflows and has supported automated customer payment notifications
I haven't used Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics in a couple of years, so I don't know how it can be improved. I was pretty pleased with it and was self-taught on it, working a lot with their team at various times, but they were surprised that I was able to learn it all by myself. The documentation is not bad, and documentation is the main thing that any product can do to make themselves better because the easier it is to find examples of what you're trying to do improves the learning curve. I think it took me the longest to learn how to do the asynchronous processing and have things wait for other things to finish processing before continuing on in the workflow. I choose 8 out of 10 because the one reason that it's been rejected at T-Mobile is that everything has to go through a provisioning process and has to get approved, meaning the actual code base has to be investigated by T-Mobile before they'll allow us to use tools of that nature. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to get that approval; I don't know if it's on Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' side or if it's on our side. The more you can make it easier for companies to feel comfortable that your product is secure, robustly tested and bug-free, and free of any other kind of negative hacks, the more quickly it will get accepted.
AA
Sr. Oracle DBA at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real-time replication means our data is available almost instantaneously if an issue occurs in one of our data centers
I would like the solution to have some kind of machine learning and AI capabilities. Often, if we want to improve the performance of posting, we have to bump up a parameter. That means we need to stop the process, come up with a figure that we want to bump the parameter up to, and then start SharePlex. Machine learning and AI capabilities for these kinds of improvement would tremendously help boost productivity for us. We have discussed this and they have said it is in their future pipeline, but not with a definite date at which we will see this type of feature.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Previously, I had three people to collect all the data and integrate all Excel spreadsheets, and it took them a day or two, but now I can do this work in about 15 minutes."
"As a result of one of the projects that we did in the Middle East, we achieved the main goal of fully digitalizing their population census."
"I would fully recommend Pentaho."
"Sometimes, it took a whole team about two weeks to get all the data to prepare and present it. After the optimization of the data, it took about one to two hours to do the whole process. Therefore, it has helped a lot when you talk about money, because it doesn't take a whole team to do it, just one person to do one project at a time and run it when you want to run it. So, it has helped a lot on that side."
"I find the drag and drop feature in Pentaho Data Integration very useful for integration."
"Pentaho Data Integration is quite simple to learn, and there is a lot of information available online."
"If you are looking to integrate unstructured or semi-structured datasets with some parallelization, choose this tool."
"The product is user-friendly and intuitive"
"The synchronization, data backup, and data transfer are all valuable features of the solution."
"I like SharePlex's Compare and Repair tool."
"Because of the volume of the transactions, we heavily use a feature that allows SharePlex to replicate thousands of transactions. It's called PEP, Post Enhancement Performance, and that has helped us scale tremendously."
"SharePlex has been a good fit for us because it was not as expensive compared to GoldenGate, it was stable compared to AWS DMS, and it was a good product for what we were looking for and within our budget too."
"There are some capabilities within SharePlex where you can see how the data is migrating and if it still maintains good data integrity. For example, if there are some tables that get out of sync, there are ways to find them and fix the problem on the spot. Since these are very common issues, we can easily fix these types of problems using utilities, like compare and repair. So, if you find something is out of sync, then you can just repair that table. It basically syncs that table from source to target to see if there are any differences. It will then replicate those differences to the target."
"Try it out in your production and you won't be disappointed."
"It works 100 percent of the time, with little downtime or problems."
"The core replication and its performance. Performance is crucial, and SharePlex is by far the fastest. The way it handles replication to multiple targets along with basic filtering, as well as from multiple sources to a single target, is very efficient."
 

Cons

"The User Console, aka workspace, and the development of dashboards work but they require some programmer skills, which means continuous application management on behalf of the IT department."
"They could improve the logging generator. Sometimes the error description is so generic that it is not possible to detect the problem."
"Although it is a low-code solution with a graphical interface, often the error messages that you get are of the type that a developer would be happy with. You get a big stack of red text and Java errors displayed on the screen, and less technical people can get intimidated by that. It can be a bit intimidating to get a wall of red error messages displayed. Other graphical tools that are focused at the power user level provide a much more user-friendly experience in dealing with your exceptions and guiding the user into where they've made the mistake."
"Its UI is probably a bit too confusing for that level of user, so it doesn't allow us to get the tool as widely distributed across the organization to non-technical users as much as we would like."
"Since Hitachi took over, I don't feel that the documentation is as good within the solution. It used to have very good help built right in."
"The initial version we were on was v3.2 and we had multiple issues, but currently don't find any issues as a blocker."
"Some of the scheduling features about Lumada drive me buggy."
"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."
"The reporting features need improvement. It would be very good for users to have a clear understanding of the status of replication."
"I would like more ability to automate installation and configuration in line with some of the DevOps processes that are more mature in the market. That would be a considerable improvement."
"I would like the solution to have some kind of machine learning and AI capabilities. Often, if we want to improve the performance of posting, we have to bump up a parameter. That means we need to stop the process, come up with a figure that we want to bump the parameter up to, and then start SharePlex. Machine learning and AI capabilities for these kinds of improvement would tremendously help boost productivity for us."
"The reporting features need improvement."
"I don't know how easy it would be to change the architecture in an already implemented replication."
"I don't know how easy it would be to change the architecture in an already implemented replication. For example, if we have a certain way of architecting for a particular database migration and want to change that during a period of time, is that an easy or difficult change? There was a need for us to change the architecture in-between the migration, but we didn't do it. We thought, "This is possibly complicated. Let's not change it in the middle because we were approaching our cutover date." That was one thing that we should have checked with support about for training."
"I would like the solution to have some kind of machine learning and AI capabilities."
"For its function in relation to replication (i.e. filtering), I'd give it a six or seven out of 10. GoldenGate has much more functionality by comparison."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of these types of solutions are expensive. So, we really appreciate what we get for our money. Though, we don't think of the solution as a top-of-the-line solution or anything like that."
"There was a cost analysis done and Pentaho did favorably in terms of cost."
"It does seem a bit expensive compared to the serverless product offering. Tools, such as Server Integration Services, are "almost" free with a database engine. It is comparable to products like Alteryx, which is also very expensive."
"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."
"I primarily work on the Community Version, which is available to use free of charge."
"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."
"When we first started with it, it was much cheaper. It has gone up drastically, especially since Hitachi bought out Pentaho."
"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."
"It's really good value for the money. There are some things they could improve on, but in terms of the pricing, features, and support, as a holistic package, we are not thinking of anything else at this point in time."
"It is not as expensive as Oracle GoldenGate and has worked really well within our budgets."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
9%
Educational Organization
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise32
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
Dell SharePlex, SharePlex
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Bodybuilding.com, Priceline.com, Ameco Beijing, Viasat, SK Broadband
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SharePlex and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.