Running shoes, representing data ingestion tools.
10 Digital Ingestion Tools That Keep Your Data Consistent
Running shoes, representing data ingestion tools.

10 Digital Ingestion Tools That Keep Your Data Consistent

Is there anything worse than dealing with outdated data? You find a figure that doesn’t seem exactly right, ask someone if you’re seeing things, and they tell you the spreadsheet you’re using is outdated. Then they point you to a completely different spreadsheet, often in a different tool. How are you supposed to keep anything straight? Well, if your organization was using a digital ingestion tool, you probably wouldn’t have to deal with this sort of thing.

Let’s dive into digital ingestion and find out which tool’s best for the job.

What are digital ingestion tools?

Digital ingestion is the process of capturing digital data from multiple sources and transforming it so it can be easily accessed, understood, and used. That way, it’s more accessible for everyone, meaning all teams can make data-driven decisions without bothering the data team.

Digital ingestion tools take data across content formats — such as text, audio, images, documents, social media feeds — and turn them into structured data that is consistent across platforms and systems. The best digital ingestion tools also provide advanced features such as metadata extraction, content moderation, tagging and indexing for improved searchability and easier navigation of digital content.

Why are digital ingestion tools important?

Digital ingestion makes data more accessible, keeps it consistent across platforms, and can help improve data literacy throughout the organization. With this process — and the right tools — everyone can make data-driven decisions and run their projects more effectively.

7 of the best digital ingestion tools on the market

Digital ingestion tools are as varied as the data they ingest. No matter what industry you’re in, you can find a tool that’ll suit your needs. Here are just a few examples.

Contentful

Contentful is a digital ingestion platform dedicated to content management. Billed as a “composable content platform,” it keeps your content discoverable and reusable, giving everyone the ability to do more with your content strategy. With its built-in Studio, users can automate and streamline content creation, meaning you can go from idea to fully-realized content in less time.

You can start using this tool for free, though most of its features are unlocked with paid plans that start at $300 a month.

Amazon Kinesis

Amazon Kinesis is a digital ingestion tool for enterprises that allows them to process and analyze streaming data in real time. Data can be collected from web and mobile applications, sensors, smart home devices, log files, and more without the need for manual intervention. The platform then uses its advanced analytics capabilities to automatically identify patterns, detect anomalies, and generate insights. With Amazon Kinesis, businesses can make quick decisions based on current data trends and ensure that they have access to the latest information available.

You’ll be able to start using Amazon Kinesis for free, but you’ll need to get a quote from Amazon to get full access.

Talend Data Fabric

Talend Data Fabric is a digital ingestion tool that helps organizations easily move, transform and prepare data from multiple sources. It offers a wide range of features to ensure the accuracy, consistency and speed of data ingestion. This includes a powerful set of metadata extraction capabilities, which allow users to accurately capture information from different sources without any manual intervention. Talend Data Fabric is used by companies like Lenovo, Domino’s, and AstraZeneca.

To get a price for this tool, you’ll have to contact the Talend sales team.

Zaloni Arena

Zaloni Arena is a unified data governance platform that helps organizations make better decision by making data more accessible. Its advanced metadata extraction capabilities allow users to capture relevant information from various data sources without manual intervention. It also offers strong analytics, compliance-ready solutions, and more.

Being a solution aimed at enterprise-sized businesses, Zaloni Arena starts at $50,000 a year.

Azure Data Factory

A data ingestion and integration platform, Azure Data Factory is fully managed, serverless, and uses a visual interface that makes it more accessible. This platform has over 90 built-in connectors, making it that much easier to get your data in the right place.

Azure Data Factory can be a little complicated, but you can estimate how much you’ll need to pay through their website.

Hevo

Hevo is a full-fledged data ingestion tool that allows organizations to quickly and accurately ingest data from all sources into a single warehouse, transform it, and send insights to the rest of your tools. It has over 150 integrations for some of the most popular SaaS apps, databases, data warehouses, and more.

Hevo has a free plan that supports up to 1 million data events from 50 connectors, with paid plans starting at $239 a month.

Fivetran

Fivetran is a data ingestion platform that aims to be the single platform for every data operation your organization needs. It has over 300 connectors, about every cybersecurity certification you can think of, workflow automations, and more. With customers that range from Intercom to Morgan Stanley and DocuSign, it’s a heavy player in the data ingestion market.

You can start using Fivetran for free. Its paid plans start at $24 a month and scale up with the number of operations you need.

Found your data ingestion tool?

With the right data ingestion tool, you can keep data available to everyone throughout the organization in a streamlined way, no matter where it’s coming from. That means more teams can use data to drive their initiatives, test the effectiveness of what they’re working on, and get a clear picture of how they’re contributing to overall business goals. No matter which tool you pick, it’ll transform your workflows.