ELT / Data Ingestion

Fivetran

When setup speed and managed reliability matter more than cost control, Fivetran gets pipelines running in hours, not weeks.

What It Is

Fivetran is a fully managed ELT platform with 700+ connectors. It handles schema evolution automatically, retries failures, and maintains connector code as sources change their APIs. You pay per monthly active row (MAR) synced, with a Free tier and paid Standard / Enterprise / Business Critical plans.

Why We Chose It

Fivetran's managed reliability is its main selling point. For companies that want pipelines that simply work without a data engineer babysitting connector updates, Fivetran is hard to beat. The connector quality for major SaaS tools (Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Shopify) is best-in-class.

One thing to watch: Fivetran and dbt Labs announced a merger in October 2025 (pending regulatory close), so choosing Fivetran increasingly means committing to the same vendor across ingestion and transformation. That's convenient for some teams and a lock-in concern for others. Worth a conscious decision either way.

How We Use It

Evaluate whether Fivetran or Airbyte is the right fit based on data volume, team capacity, and connector needs

Provision and configure Fivetran connectors for CRM, marketing, finance, and product analytics sources

Optimize Fivetran sync frequency and filtering to control MAR costs

Integrate Fivetran-normalized schemas with downstream dbt or Dataform transformation layers

Set up dbt source freshness tests to detect Fivetran sync failures before they affect dashboards

Configure webhook and email alerts so sync failures surface in Slack or PagerDuty before they affect dashboards

Fivetran or Airbyte?

Choose Fivetran when:

  • You need the most polished managed ELT available, zero maintenance
  • Your sources are mainstream SaaS (Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Shopify)
  • You value zero-maintenance pipelines over cost optimization

Choose Airbyte when:

  • Overall cost matters more than maximum polish. Airbyte is cheaper at most scales
  • You need custom connectors for internal APIs or unusual sources
  • You want vendor independence across ingestion and transformation (post Fivetran + dbt merger)

Choose direct API integration when:

  • You only need one or two simple sources, no schema evolution needed
  • You want full control over the integration logic
  • Ongoing cost matters more than upfront engineering work

No data platform yet?

Build end-to-end from scratch — ingestion, transformations, dashboards. Audit first, then a fixed-price build.

See Implementation

Platform exists but not working?

Audit what you have, then build the improvements. Two phases — audit first, then a fixed-price build.

See Optimization

Need help with Fivetran?

Focused help on one or two layers — Dataform, Looker, BigQuery costs. Fixed-price, 2–6 weeks.

See Expert Services