Supermetrics and Improvado are key players in the data integration space. While both have pre-built connectors for all primary data sources, thereby meeting the needs of any small—to medium-sized business, Improvado has a broader variety of connectors and destinations, making it appropriate for large organizations. Each platform has its merits that you should consider depending on the complexity of your organization and its data needs.
Table of content
- Improvado Overview
- Supermetrics Overview
- Who Are Supermetrics and Improvado For?
- Supermetrics vs Improvado: Data Source Connectors
- Supermetrics vs Improvado: Data Destinations
- Supermetrics vs Improvado: Pricing
- Supermetrics vs Improvado: Rating
- Supermetrics vs Improvado: Security & Reliability
- Supermetrics vs Improvado: Ease of Use
- Supermetrics vs Improvado: Support
- Summary
Improvado Overview
Improvado is a data integration service for large organizations. The base pricing plan, Growth, targets organizations with data volumes of up to 200 million yearly rows. The Advanced plan is for organizations with up to 600 million annual data rows, while the Enterprise plan is for organizations that process over 1 billion data rows. Improvado targets data-intensive organizations.
Improvado prices its services based on your data volume and the yearly ad spend. A typical client at Improvado has an annual advertising expenditure of $10 million. Improvado certainly targets a piece of that advertising budget. Still, the most important takeaway is that the organizations requiring Improvado generate a lot of marketing data if the marketing budgets are anything to go by.
The third important note is that Improvado is not your regular plug-and-play data connector. You must book a demo to learn how Improvado can serve your organization. You will also need a technical team that understands software management and database administration to work with Improvado. Installing some of the connectors by Improvado requires some technical understanding of software applications and databases. Besides, the large organizations Improvado serves are expected to have significantly sized IT and data teams. Talk to sales if your organization does not have a team to manage data and the associated infrastructure and you highly consider Improvado. You also need to speak with sales for actual pricing figures.
Supermetrics Overview
Supermerics gives you access to 138+ data source connectors and sixteen data destinations. The main data destinations include Looker Studio, Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Power BI, and BigQuery. Supermetrics offers you various pricing plans, including Essential, Core, and Sper plans, starting from 29 euros, 159 euros, and 999 euros, respectively. The highest plan is the Enterprise plan, whose pricing is custom. In Supermetrics, the Enterprise plan is the only one that gives access to all data sources, and you have to talk to sales. Overall, the pricing plans on Supermetrics are computed based on the number of data source connectors, accounts, and users.
Supermetrics data connectors are mainly add-ons that you can learn to use by following interactive instructions on Supermetrics Hub. Supermetrics also has a free trial version that you can use to study how it works and determine how well the platform meets your data needs.
Our experience with Supermetrics points to simplicity and ease of use. You begin integrating data sources in the Supermetrics Hub, where you select the data destinations and then select the data sources. A data mapping feature in Supermetrics improves how you extract and load data metrics and dimensions while also building new variables.
We surmise this overview by asserting that Supermetrics is an easy-to-use data connector for small and medium-sized enterprises that do not have data needs that run into hundreds of millions in annual data rows. Supermetrics connectors integrate with nearly all the popular off-the-shelf data applications. Your organization can comfortably use Supermetrics even without technical IT and data teams. Read through the rest of our review and testing to understand why.
Who Are Supermetrics and Improvado For?
Supermetrics and Improvado are designed for marketers. The difference is that Supermetrics is a tool for marketers in small and medium-sized organizations with small teams, small budgets, and a few data rows per year. On the other hand, Improvado is a marketing tool for large, data-driven, data-intensive organizations with large marketing and advertising budgets. Large organizations typically process hundreds of millions of data rows per year.
The large number of data source connectors on both Supermetrics and Improvado may imply that both platforms are also appropriate for marketing agencies. Supermetrics allows multiple accounts per data source and also multiple teams. Such data plan arrangements make Supermetrics appropriate for small to medium-sized marketing agencies.
In the case of Improvado, the platform allows unlimited accounts per data source and two to five workspaces, depending on the data volume. The data volumes imply that Improvado can serve marketing agencies with data-intensive engagements. However, the number of workspaces allowed on each pricing plan could be slightly limiting. However, the two to five workspaces would serve the needs of most marketing agencies. The only other factor that may limit the use of Improvado by marketing agencies is the computation of price based on advertising spending. This means that Improvado targets business organizations other than marketing agencies directly.
Supermetrics vs Improvado: Data Source Connectors
Improvado has 500+ data source connectors, dwarfing Supermetrics’ connectors, which are 138+. The large number of data source connectors is a major reason Improvado is appropriate for large organizations. An evaluation of the connectors shows that all Supermetrics’ connectors are available on Improvado.
Our review of the Improvado connectors shows many connectors with names other than Improvado. For instance, some connectors are labeled Click Service. The Improvado connectors also come with a wide variety of data integration protocols. Some connectors are add-ons and extensions, while others require the installation of drivers. The screen below shows the setting up of Improvado drivers for Power BI:
Improvado has many bespoke connectors built for businesses with highly customized software applications. The main reason why Improvado offers demonstration sessions is that many of the connectors work differently and have varied levels of complexity. Instead of written documentation to explain how to use all the different connectors, Improvado finds it easier to offer live demonstrations. The demonstrations are also an opportunity for Improvado to understand the client’s needs and project the ability to build custom connectors for the client’s needs quickly.
Supermetrics vs Improvado: Data Destinations
Improvado is promoted as the platform that helps export data anywhere because of the many data destinations it connects to. Improvado classifies data destinations into two.
The most popular destinations are data warehouses, data lakes, and storage. Improvado lists 21 data warehouses as destinations. Some destinations include BigQuery, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Amazon S3. The variety of data lakes and warehouses in Improvado is bigger than Supermetrics.
The second category of data destinations encompasses reporting tools. Some reporting tools listed as destinations include Looker Studio, Tableau, Power BI, Google Sheets, and Excel. All reporting tools except Looker Studio, Tableau, and Power BI are available on request. When we sum up the data warehouses and reporting tools, Improvado sends data to more than 42 destinations.
Pricing plans on Improvado offer varied rights to data exports and access to data destinations. All plans enable access to Looker Studio, Tableau, and Power BI. Additionally, the Growth plan offers access to two data warehouses for organizations with up to 200 million data rows. Other plans give access to unlimited data destinations. However, you must talk to the sales team to set up Improvado, including the data sources and destinations.
One important feature that makes Improvado a better data integration platform than Supermetrics is the separation of data destinations into reporting or business intelligence tools and data warehouses. Separating and providing access to both data pipelines in one platform means that users can export data for storage and analytics in one system.
Supermetrics has listed sixteen data destinations, including business intelligence reporting tools and data warehouses. The reporting tools include Looker Studio and Power BI. Supermetrics integrates into Tableau through API. It is important to highlight that Supermetrics sends data to spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. Improvado does not focus on sending data to spreadsheets because it is focused on big data that cannot be contained in spreadsheets. Besides reporting tools and spreadsheets, Supermetrics also sends data to databases like BigQuery, Amazon S3, Snowflake, and Azure. It is important to highlight that PostgreSQL and MySQL are not indicated as destinations on the Supermetrics website.
Overall, the review shows Improvado has a wider variety of destinations than Supermetrics. Also, Improvado majors in sending data to warehouses and data lakes while also enabling visualization and analytics. Some of the data plans on Improvado enable unlimited data destinations but for Supermetrics, the data plans are tied directly to your plan and access is limited.
Supermetrics vs Improvado: Pricing
Improvado does not publish prices on the website. Instead, you are referred to the sales team for advice on pricing depending on data needs. For the purposes of demonstrating the pricing structure, Improvado publishes three plans on its pricing page. The main feature and difference between the pricing plans is the data processing needs of the client. The Growth plan, which is the lowest plan, is for organizations with data needs of up to 200 million rows every year. The second plan, which is the Advanced plan, serves organizations whose data needs are up to 600 million rows per year. The Enterprise plan, which is the highest, is for organizations with 1 billion rows per year. Because Improvado seeks to present customized price quotations, you are required to identify your needs based on the proposed plans and then approach the sales team.
Supermetrics publishes its pricing plans, which are on four levels. Three out of four pricing plans provide access to only four data destinations that are Looker Studio, Google Sheets, Excel, and Power BI. If your data needs to extend beyond the spreadsheets and reporting tools, then you go for the Enterprise plan, where the price quote is custom. A good comparison between Supermetrics and Improvado should be based on the Enterprise plan. Since the Enterprise plan is above the Super plan, whose price per month is 999 euros billed annually, users can expect that the monthly price for the Enterprise plan would be significantly higher.
Our experience with Improvado indicates that pricing can range between $3,000 and $10,000 every month, depending on the volume of your data, among other factors. That shows that the data budget for Improvado users could be several times the highest price on Supermetrics. The only justification for this pricing is that Improvado is designed to handle big data. By the look of data destinations, Improvado has greater data handling capacities than Supermetrics, and so is the price that should be expected.
Supermetrics vs Improvado: Rating
Supermetrics has a 4.4-star rating on G2, while Improvado is rated 4.5 stars. Imporovado is rated slightly higher than Supermetrics. Improvado is a more robust data management platform with extraction, transformation, loading, storage, and analytics capacities in one system. These capabilities make Improvado a better system for managing data-driven decisions in big organizations.
Supermetrics is an equally competitive platform, hence the 4.4-star rating. Its use cases would apply mostly to small and medium-sized enterprises with limited data extraction, loading, and transformation needs. Having a data mapping feature that works before the data extraction is an important feature that could explain the rating for Supermetrics. Having simple interactive user interfaces for the various connectors is also important. The only reason why Supermetrics lags slightly behind Improvado in the ratings is due to the comparable data handling capabilities of the two platforms.
Supermetrics vs Improvado: Security & Reliability
We considered two security features when evaluating the platforms. These include SOC Type 2 Compliance and Single Sign-on/MFA. Both platforms have these features. They even take security considerations further through HIPPA, GDPR, and CCPA compliance. Improvado even goes further to provide geo-restriction for US and European clients on the Advanced and Enterprise plans. On the account of security and reliability, both platforms meet the requirements.
Supermetrics vs Improvado: Ease of Use
Supermetrics ranks higher than Improvado on the ease of use. That is because all the connectors in Supermetrics integrate data by following a few interactive no-code steps. No technical skills are needed to connect data through Supermetrics. The same cannot be said about Improvado.
Improvado is designed for large organizations with big data, and the users are expected to have some technical skills to use the connectors. The complexity of data in organizations is a reason to believe that organizations have data teams whose responsibility is to manage data. Such teams have computing skills, and the reason for the skills is that some connectors require installations and configurations for data warehouses. For such teams, Improvado serves to reduce the need for complex coding in data integration. However, the tools do not eliminate the need for technical competency in data integrations. Improvado recognizes the complexities, and that’s why it provides demonstrations instead of free trials.
Supermetrics vs Improvado: Support
Support on Supermetrics is staggered based on the data plans. The Essential and Core customers get standard support, which means chat, email, and phone. The Super and Enterprise plan customers also get a personalized success plan.
Improvado takes support a notch higher with detailed customer success managers, a customer help center and documentation, a customer service desk, and standard customer support. Standard customer support is guided by SLAs. Further, customers get access to support 10 hours daily for five days a week from Monday to Friday between 8 AM and 6 PM. Premium customer support is also available to customers and it includes 24/7 support from a named customer support engineer. However, premium support is an add-on to the standard support, which is still better than in the case of Supermetrics.
Summary
In summary, Supermetrics and Improvado are two competitive data integration platforms. However, the tools are designed for organizations of different sizes. If your organization is an SME that processes data rows per year, then Supermetrics meets your data needs. Supermetrics is easy to use, and data integration follows interactive steps. The variety of connectors meets the needs of many SMEs.
If your organization processes hundreds of millions of data rows per year, you are better off with Improvado, whose platform can handle even a billion data rows. Improvado exports data to more warehouses than Supermetrics. While on the Improvado system, you can also visualize and report using all the common business intelligence tools, including Looker Studio, Power BI, and Tableau. However, you must talk to support for more information about pricing depending on your data needs. You may also need to consider your organization’s technical capacity to handle Improvado. Use the demo opportunity by Improvado to rate the suitability of the system to your organization.
If your alternatives are not limited to Supermetrics and Improvado, consider Windsor.ai no-code connectors for efficient data integration. Our platform offers a 30-day free trial to help you assess the service against your data needs.
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