Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics Logo

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics pros and cons

4.0 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

Buyer's Guide

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

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics significantly reduces processing time, turning hours into mere minutes.
Its drag-and-drop feature is very effective for integration tasks.
Many manual tasks become automated, increasing productivity.
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics allows flexible deployment across different environments, including cloud and on-premises.
It enables the creation of sophisticated data flows without writing extensive custom code.

CONS

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics struggles with handling very large volumes of data and can be intensive on the CPU, taking a lot of memory, especially with big datasets.
Communicating with the vendor is challenging, affecting performance in the setups, and support for the Community Edition is lacking, causing instability.
The absence of data quality or MDM solutions and the need for additional plugins and better integration with programming languages like Python and R are noted limitations.
Performance issues arise with substantial data volumes from cloud systems, with execution times being higher compared to other ETL tools.
Integration with various cloud platforms and databases is limited, and there is a call for more native connectors to services like Azure and AWS.
 

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics Pros review quotes

it_user164838 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO with 51-200 employees
Nov 25, 2014
From my perspective I don't see the difference, we can do almost everything with Pentaho Kettle and if we need a little extra we are tech guys, we solve it.
it_user369171 - PeerSpot reviewer
Brazil IT Coordinator at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 24, 2017
Data transformation within Pentaho is a nice feature that they have and that I value.
it_user375219 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Jan 23, 2016
I would say this is the best ETL tool in the market, considering this is open source and ease to use, very nice GUI.
Learn what your peers think about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user376926 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Developer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Feb 4, 2016
Pentaho Kettle has a very intuitive and easy to use graphical user interface (GUI) and it is possible to understand how to develop an ETL solution even when using it for the first time.
it_user382572 - PeerSpot reviewer
Pentaho Consultant at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Feb 4, 2016
It is a very good open source ETL tool that's capable of connecting to most databases.
it_user384984 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr BI Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 9, 2016
It allows for very quick development due to the intuitive interface.
it_user384993 - PeerSpot reviewer
Datawarehouse Administrator at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Feb 9, 2016
We have been able to expose data services through the use of CDA relying on the same database as the reporting tools, thus avoiding inconsistencies among the data shown by reports and data acquired by external systems.
it_user386202 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Supervisor at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Feb 10, 2016
We are very productive today thanks to that piece of software integration our data and the platform serving the processed data to our users.
it_user392367 - PeerSpot reviewer
Research Assistant at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 21, 2016
If you are looking to integrate unstructured or semi-structured datasets with some parallelization, choose this tool.
it_user391695 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Consultant at Sanmargar Team
Feb 24, 2016
The tool is excellent, and almost everyone can use it.
 

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics Cons review quotes

it_user164838 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO with 51-200 employees
Nov 25, 2014
There some steps that should perform better like the json input, but because of the flexibility we at inflow, override it by using scripting steps.
it_user369171 - PeerSpot reviewer
Brazil IT Coordinator at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 24, 2017
I would like to see more improvements with AS400 DB2.
it_user375219 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Jan 23, 2016
The rule executor step can be improved.
Learn what your peers think about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user376926 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Developer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Feb 4, 2016
They could improve the logging generator. Sometimes the error description is so generic that it is not possible to detect the problem.
it_user382572 - PeerSpot reviewer
Pentaho Consultant at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Feb 4, 2016
In the community version the scheduling tool is not good, and we had to build it ourselves.
it_user384984 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr BI Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 9, 2016
Stability is a bit of an issue. The GUI quite often ‘freezes’ and there is no alternative to killing the session.
it_user384993 - PeerSpot reviewer
Datawarehouse Administrator at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Feb 9, 2016
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.
it_user386202 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Supervisor at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Feb 10, 2016
Upgrading the bi-platform is a little pain, but the rest is easy to use and to set up.
it_user392367 - PeerSpot reviewer
Research Assistant at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 21, 2016
I would like to have more languages/scripts supported in user-defined classes.
it_user391695 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Consultant at Sanmargar Team
Feb 24, 2016
Some old plugins, after a long time, still doesn’t work properly enough.