The 9 Best Reverse ETL Tools Compared in 2024

Updated December 21st, 2023
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Reverse ETL tools act as a bridge between your data warehouse and any business intelligence tools of your choice. They help you automatically retrieve real-time data from data repositories and feed them into BI tools. In this blog, we will explore the top nine Reverse ETL tools for you to consider in 2024.

These tools are crucial because 68% of enterprise data remains unleveraged, and only 32% is used, according to a SeaGate report (with research and analysis by IDC). A key reason is that warehouse data doesn’t reach business applications timely.

That’s where reverse ETL tools can help.

  1. Census
  2. Grouparoo
  3. Hevo Activate
  4. Hightouch
  5. Omnata
  6. Polyatomic
  7. Rudderstack
  8. Seekwell
  9. Workato

Census #

Overview #

Census enables operational analytics for sales, marketing, data, product, and customer success teams.

Boris Jabes, Brad Buda, Sean Lynch, and Anton Vaynshtok founded Sutro Labs Inc. — the company behind Census — in 2018. The company’s backed by Silicon Valley investors such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Box Group, and Insight Partners. Tiger Global led the latest funding round to raise $60 million.

Census’ customers include Canva, Crossbeam, Figma, dbt Labs, Loom, MasterClass, Mixpanel, and Notion. Here’s a case study to help you understand what Census does.

Case study: How did Docker use Census to drive product-led growth for over 10M users? #

When Docker sold a portion of its business to focus on products for app developers, they faced two problems:

  1. The data set didn’t represent their current audience
  2. The custom data pipelines didn’t support new use cases

Docker had to build new data integrations but didn’t wish to divert engineering resources from the core business, as the company was a small startup.

Moreover, they still had a large customer base of 10 million, and numerous activities to engage with this base, but tapping into that data was a challenge.

So, Docker used Snowflake to centralize all data and then chose Census to feed that data back to business teams such as ”marketing and developer relations”. As a result, these teams now have access to the data they want, when they want it, which improved personalization in their campaigns and uncovered new sales opportunities.

Check out the full case study here.

Census reverse ETL resources #

Case studies | Product Demo | Documentation | Tutorials | OA Club

Grouparoo #

Overview #

Grouparoo is an open-source reverse ETL tool for sales, marketing, and customer support teams.

Andy Jih, Brian Leonard, and Evan Tahler founded Grouparoo, Inc., in 2019, and in 2022, Airbyte acquired it. Grouparoo’s last seed round in 2020 was backed by investors such as Hack VC, SCM Advisors, Eniac Ventures, and Fuel Capital.

Use case: How does Grouparoo help sync the data infrastructure in healthcare? #

The healthcare industry deals with millions of data points from various first, second, and third-party sources. Grouparoo helps sync patient data from various data sources in real time, without any SQL querying.

It also lets you set up no-code integrations with prominent applications in the marketing-sales stack such as Marketo, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Zendesk, and more.

To understand how Grouparoo works, check out the full use case here.

Grouparoo reverse ETL resources #

Blog | Documentation | GitHub | Airbyte Slack

Hevo Activate #

Overview #

Hevo Activate helps in setting up reverse ETL to move data from the warehouse to marketing, sales, and business applications.

Manish Jethani and Sourabh Agarwal founded Hevo Data, Inc. in 2017. The company’s backed by investors like Qualgro VC, Sequoia Capital India, and Chiratae Ventures. Sequoia Capital India led the latest funding round (Series B) and raised $30 million.

Customers include cure.fit, Deliverr, Docon, Groww, Harmoney, Swiggy, Lore IO, Scratchpay, and Wheely. Here’s a case study to understand the problems Hevo Activate can solve:

Case study: How did DocOn eliminate manual data integration and reporting with Hevo? #

DocOn is an EMR (Electronic Medical Records) platform in India. Initially, when the data volume was low, Docon’s data team used Google Sheets for data aggregation and reporting.

As the volume grew, the company needed a central data repository and an integration tool to automate data pipeline setup and maintenance.

So, DocOn used Redshift as their data warehouse and used Hevo to simplify their engineering requirements and feed warehouse data to the relevant systems, eliminating manual data integration, aggregation, and reporting.

Check out the complete case study here.

Hevo Activate reverse ETL resources #

Hevo Activate | Overview (video) | Blog | Case studies | Documentation

Hightouch #

Overview #

Hightouch is a data platform that helps businesses sync their customer data across sales and marketing tools.

The company behind Hightouch, Carry Technologies Inc., was founded by Josh Curl, Kashish Gupta, and Tejas Manohar in 2018. Its investors include Amplify Partners, Afore Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, ICONIQ Growth, and Y Combinator.

Blend, Calendly, GoSite, Plaid, Nando’s, Lucid, PayFit, Retool, Vendr, Zapier, and Zeplin are some of Hightouch’s customers. Here’s a case study to explore some of the challenges Hightouch solves.

Case study: Imperfect Foods increased reactivations by 53% and decreased CAC by 15% #

Online grocer Imperfect Foods was drowning in data with several thousand customers and rapidly growing data sources. The company needed a way to consolidate all that data and extract useful customer insights for its marketing campaigns to boost signups and product use.

Imperfect Foods adopted:

  1. The Snowflake Data Cloud as its centralized data platform
  2. Fivetran to setup native ELT pipelines that automated data ingestion from various sources into Snowflake
  3. Hightouch to automatically sync customer data in near real-time with its marketing and ad platforms to run targeted campaigns

As a result, Imperfect Foods witnessed a 53% increase in reactivation and a 15% reduction in CAC (customer acquisition cost).

Read the complete case study here.

Hightouch reverse ETL resources #

Demo (video) | Docs | Blog | Customers | GitHub | Changelog

Omnata #

Overview #

Omnata pulls data from data platforms like Snowflake or BigQuery and pushes it to business applications. Omnata’s partners include Salesforce, Zendesk, Snowflake, and dbt.

James Weakley and Chris Chandler set up the Australia-based Omnata Pty Ltd. in 2019. Its current customers include the Government of Western Australia, Vonage, and Honeysuckle Health.

Let’s explore a case study to understand what Omnata does.

Case study: Honeysuckle Health deploys a modern data stack to understand patient risks and deliver tailored healthcare programs #

Honeysuckle Health struggled with pulling data from various sources to help clinicians understand a patient’s health journey. The company used Snowflake to centralize its data — millions of patient records — and dbt to model that data.

Then, the company needed a solution to collect historical data on a patient from Snowflake in real-time and combine it with the data on a patient’s journey in the Salesforce Health Cloud. That’s where Omnata helped, leading to Honeysuckle Health launching its healthcare platform within six weeks.

Here’s the complete case study.

Omnata reverse ETL resources #

Blog | Product Documentation | Omnata Launch Promo (video) | GitHub

Polytomic #

Overview #

Polytomic syncs app, warehouse, or spreadsheet data with business systems, without any coding.

Polytomic Inc. was founded by Ghalib Suleiman and Nathan Yergler in 2019, backed by Alan Blaine, Bow Capital, Caffeinated Capital, and Ralph Gootee. The company is a graduate of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 cohort.

Polytomic’s customers include chowbus, CloudTrucks, Convictional, Lob, ShipBob, sourcegraph, plastiq, and Vanta.

Let’s explore a case study to see the challenge Polytomic solves.

Case study: How does Convictional ensure smooth go-to-market operations and power growth? #

Convictional is a supplier enablement platform built by software developers. Initially, they stored customer data in the app database.

Even after adopting HubSpot, it was challenging to connect both systems, complicating customer data retrieval for business teams.

After adopting Polytomic, Convictional could set up customer data feeds directly into HubSpot without any engineering support. As a result, the Customer Success, Business Development, and Sourcing teams can find the data they need easily and improve their productivity.

To know more, check out the complete case study.

Polytomic reverse ETL resources #

Blog | Demo (video) | Docs | Customers | GitHub | Syncing internal data to business systems (podcast)

Rudderstack #

Overview #

RudderStack syncs data in and out of central data repositories such as data warehouses, lakes, and product and marketing tools.

Soumyadeb Mitra and Shvetank Jain founded RudderStack, Inc. in 2019. The company’s backed by Insight Partners, Kleiner Perkins, and S28 Capital. Recently, the company raised a $56 million Series B round led by Insight Partners.

Rudderstack caters to customers such as 1mg, Grofers, IFTTT, Hinge, Priceline, Pachyderm, Stripe, Tonal, and Proposify.

Let’s explore the Mattermost case study to know more about RudderStack.

Case study: How does Mattermost use RudderStack to enable data-driven product decisions? #

Open-source collaboration platform Mattermost relies on customer event data — website tracking, app, transactions, SaaS — to guide product development.

Despite investing in a customer data platform (CDP), the company was unable to:

  1. Sync all customer data with their warehouse
  2. House data within their warehouse, rather than the CDP

With RudderStack, Mattermost could collect and sync all event data with a central Snowflake warehouse, with no restrictions. As a result, Mattermost could get a 360-degree view of its entire customer journey.

To explore the specifics of the RudderStack implementation, check out the full case study here.

RudderStack reverse ETL resources #

Blog | Overview | Documentation | GitHub | Slack | The Datastack Show (podcast)

Seekwell #

Overview #

Seekwell collects information from SQL databases such as MySQL, Postgres, Redshift, MS SQL Server, and Snowflake. It then sends that data to business applications like Google Sheets, Excel, Slack, and email.

In 2018, Michael Ritchie founded SeekWell, Inc., and in 2021, ThoughtSpot acquired it.

Before the acquisition, Seekwell raised funding through a Convertible Note round in 2020 from Product Trust Investments and Techstars New York City Accelerator.

Seekwell’s customers include Peloton, Opendoor, Spotify, Strava, and Chime.

According to Katie Marshall, the FP&A Manager at Muck Rack, Seekwell:

  1. Simplifies CRM data updates
  2. Helps build externally shareable reports in Google Sheets
  3. Helps sync data across systems, improving the quality of work

Seekwell reverse ETL resources #

Seekwell | Blog | Demo (video) | Acquisition by ThoughtSpot

Workato #

Overview #

Workato is an enterprise platform to integrate the entire data stack and enables workflow automation.

In 2013, Vijay Tella, Gautham Viswanathan, and Harish Shetty founded Workato, Inc. The company’s investors include Insight Partners, Redpoint, Norwest, Salesforce Ventures, and Altimeter Capital. According to Nasdaq, the company is valued at $5.7 billion.

Atlassian, HubSpot, Fanny Mae, Equinix, Grab, Nokia, MGM, HP, WWE, and Scoot are some of its customers.

To understand the challenges Workato solves, let’s check out the HubSpot case study.

Case study: How HubSpot did save 100+ man-hours and centralize processes with low-code/no-code automation? #

HubSpot has 52 people in seven teams spread across 11 global offices to manage new hire onboarding. Each team worked on a multitude of systems — spreadsheets, emails, Slack, note-taking tools, and more.

As the number of tools grew, HubSpot had to spend more time on manual operational tasks to sync all data. There was no centralized management model in place to guide data usage or merge data for better context.

So, HubSpot chose Workato because it offered the features HubSpot wanted, integrated well with its enterprise architecture, and met all the security requirements.

You can watch the complete case study video here.

Workato reverse ETL resources #

Whitepapers | Documentation | Customer stories | GitHub

7 Key Factors for Choosing a Reverse ETL Tool #

There are multiple solutions for managed reverse ETL tools, each with its range of features. To make the best use of your customer data, choose a tool that fits your requirements. Here are some factors you should consider before choosing a Reverse ETL tool:

  1. Connectors

The reverse ETL tool should offer integrations with the business applications in your daily workflows.

  1. Reliable synchronization

The main task of Reverse ETL tools is syncing warehouse data with business applications. So, the tool must offer automatic, robust, and reliable data synchronization for your tech stack.

  1. Monitoring and error handling

Reverse ETL tools should integrate with monitoring tools for raising error or modification alerts with detailed logs. Moreover, you should be able to roll back failed syncs.

  1. Security

Reverse ETL tools should offer data encryption features for advanced security.

  1. Ease of use

As these tools solve business use cases, they should be easy to handle without extensive technical expertise.

  1. Pricing packages

Reverse ETL tools offer different pricing packages based on either connector count, consumption, or the number of fields to sync at once. So, choose a tool that meets your business needs while fitting into your budget.

  1. Customer support

Reverse ETL tools must offer a point of contact for users to connect with the tool. So, check the availability and scope of its in-app support.

Reverse ETL: What’s next? #

Businesses have rapidly evolved in capturing, integrating, and processing large volumes of data quickly. However, the focus should be on generating value from data.

As the number of business applications grows, feeding the highly processed and organized data back into these applications is becoming increasingly painful via DIY pipelines.

With reverse ETL tools, businesses can speed up the process of extracting business insights from data without needing any extensive engineering fixes.

To get a deeper understanding of reverse ETL tools and other technologies to future-proof the modern data stack, check out this article on the future of the modern data stack in 2024.

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