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Informatica PowerCenter pros and cons

Vendor: Informatica

4.0 out of 5

83 reviews
91% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Informatica PowerCenter is a strong ETL tool known for data integration and quality projects. It offers scalability and rich transformation features, reducing legacy coding. It supports various databases, providing reliability. However, its pricing is high with noted stability and performance issues. It lacks real-time processing, modern tool integration, and effective cloud application support. Documentation and user support need improvement, challenging initial setup and ongoing use.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Informatica PowerCenter is praised for its powerful and straightforward ETL capabilities, being able to handle data integration efficiently.

It offers robust performance enhancements through partitioning and optimization, significantly improving development and execution speed.

The tool provides excellent technical support, with a highly rated support system that offers efficient problem resolution.

Informatica PowerCenter is recognized for its comprehensive integration and transformation features across diverse technological platforms.

Users appreciate its ability to manage complex data transformations efficiently, minimizing the need for coding and simplifying data processing tasks.

CONS

The pricing model of Informatica PowerCenter is considered expensive and inflexible compared to alternatives.

Informatica PowerCenter lacks comprehensive support for modern data formats, leading to challenges with unstructured data and newer data processing requirements.

Scalability and performance issues are recurring problems, particularly with large data volumes, impacting efficiency.

There are difficulties associated with integrating Informatica PowerCenter into cloud environments, including high costs and configuration challenges.

Documentation and support for Informatica PowerCenter need significant improvement, creating obstacles for new users and troubleshooting.

Informatica PowerCenter Pros review quotes

DW Admin at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 4, 2017

Once you figure it out, it is a powerful and simple ETL tool. Its stability has been very satisfactory.

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Technology Architect at Broadridge Financial Solutions

Jun 15, 2017

The ability to scale through partitions helped us to improve the performance.

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Integration developer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 26, 2017

Good product if you are trying implement data quality, data integration, and data management projects.

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Informatica PowerCenter

Free Report: Informatica PowerCenter Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Informatica PowerCenter. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Works at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 25, 2018

Reusable definition of data sources and the out-of-the-box availability of a large number maplets for common transformation functions.

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MM

Student at Ontario Ministry of Labour

Mar 5, 2018

Informatica PowerCenter has been implementing mapping design, data flow, and workflow execution for years.

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VS

Lead Application Developer and Informatica Administrator at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

May 23, 2018

It reduces a lot of legacy coding.

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ETL Reporting Analytics Consultant at Accenture

May 2, 2019

The most valuable features are the dynamic reading of the file metadata profile, and the ability to define business rules that are used to verify and validate the uploaded files.

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Director of Innovation & Development Department at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 18, 2019

Technical support is great. It's one of the reasons we really like them. When you compare support from IBM and support from Informatica, Informatica is much better.

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AE

Data Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Dec 30, 2019

The partitioning and optimization to help enhance our development is a very valuable aspect of Informatica PowerCenter.

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Project Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 29, 2019

The performance and design of Informatica have been very valuable. I find the performance faster than, say, Oracle Data Integrator or DataStage.

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Informatica PowerCenter Cons review quotes

DW Admin at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 4, 2017

The UI is outdated and old-fashioned, at least in our current version. Also, we have experienced some stability issues with the Workflow Monitor application.

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Technology Architect at Broadridge Financial Solutions

Jun 15, 2017

We had to take on a large volume of data from the legacy Sybase system. This was taking a very long time, i.e., more than a day. We were trying to improve it with partitions to gpload, but we were told that we can't go more than four partitions.

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Integration developer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 26, 2017

There can be scalability issues. Huge amounts of data ingestion will impact performance.

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Informatica PowerCenter

Free Report: Informatica PowerCenter Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Informatica PowerCenter. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Works at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 25, 2018

While Informatica is great for data-integration, it does not have any analytics features. Thus, organizations have to always look for another product for their BI needs.

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MM

Student at Ontario Ministry of Labour

Mar 5, 2018

Integrated Reporting service should be more smoothly transitioned from view to function to be in sync with the main design.

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VS

Lead Application Developer and Informatica Administrator at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

May 23, 2018

The initial setup is not straightforward. You need expertise to do it.

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ETL Reporting Analytics Consultant at Accenture

May 2, 2019

The developer tool documentation can be enhanced with a more clear explanation of each utility, accompanied by relevant examples, so that developers are able to create programs with ease.

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Director of Innovation & Development Department at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 18, 2019

Now they are migrating to a new version, and they have something that is called Informatica Developer. Previously, they just had PowerCenter. Now, when they move everything to Informatica Developer it's not as good or stable like it was when it was PowerCenter, though it has some nice features. This Developer tool could be better.

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AE

Data Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Dec 30, 2019

The multiple interfaces in Informatica PowerCenter are not great for the user experience. Because of this, I think it can cause confusion for any beginner developer.

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Project Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 29, 2019

As a connector to big data, it is not well developed. We've had problems connecting Informatica with Hadoop. The functionality to connect Informatica with Hadoop, for me it's not good.

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Data Integration

Data Visualization

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Informatica PowerCenter

Tableau Enterprise vs Informatica PowerCenter

Azure Data Factory vs Informatica PowerCenter

SSIS vs Informatica PowerCenter

Teradata vs Informatica PowerCenter

Palantir Foundry vs Informatica PowerCenter

Qlik Talend Cloud vs Informatica PowerCenter

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs Informatica PowerCenter

Domo vs Informatica PowerCenter

Qlik Sense vs Informatica PowerCenter

IBM InfoSphere DataStage vs Informatica PowerCenter

Oracle GoldenGate vs Informatica PowerCenter

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See all alternatives

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