Alation pricing: Capabilities & top alternatives

Intro

Alation is a data intelligence platform that allows organizations to catalog and govern their data assets. As a result, it simplifies data management operations and allows businesses to make better data-driven decisions. 

In this post, we’ll explore Alation’s pricing and compare it with similar tools so you can choose the right data cataloging tool depending on your business needs and budget.

What is Alation? 

Alation is a modern data catalog that allows organizations to curate and manage their data within a centralized platform. It goes beyond mere cataloging and provides users with powerful data analysis and exploration tools. This way, data analysts can leverage these features to derive insights and make better data-driven decisions in their organizations. 

Besides this, Alation prioritizes data security and implements strong protection measures to safeguard sensitive information. This allows organizations to utilize the platform confidently while adhering to stringent data privacy and governance standards.

Features of Alation

• Data governance: Governs data with relevant policies to facilitate and improve audits

• Data catalog: Centralized context-based results for strong data understanding and accurate analytics

• Cloud data migration: Performs deep impact analysis to identify dependencies and give a smooth and efficient migration process

• Data lineage: Provides proper data lineage analysis with data flows and highlights relationships

• Data quality: Quickly assess data accuracy with detailed profiling statistics

• Metadata management: Access rich and governed data across commonly-used tools like Slack and Excel

• Data compliance: TrustFlags and TrustCheck to ensure data is used in compliance with policies like GDPR and CCPA

• Self-service analytics: Provides users with validated data to promote data literacy and a strong data culture

Alation cost & pricing plans

Based on data from Amazon Marketplace, Alation’s data catalog subscription starts at $60,000 for 12 months. However, it can also have additional taxes and fees. Contact their customer support team to get full pricing information. 

Here’s what you can get in Alation’s pricing:

• A free trial to try its features. 

• Different access control permissions for users.

• Natural language search option for data discovery.

• Basic enterprise data cataloging, discovery, governance, and integration capabilities.

However, you won’t get the following important features in Alation:

• Task scheduling.

• Real-time reporting and monitoring.

• Sensitive data security and coverage.

• Enough data storage for different data environments.

Alation pricing model challenges

Before you choose Alation to manage data intelligence across your organization, evaluate its pricing models and long-term cost implications. We analyzed feedback from the teams who are already using Alation, and found a few concerns regarding their pricing approach:

• On-premise data’s licensing model contains too many add-ons, which can cause users to incur hidden costs

• One user says the pricing model is complex because it limits read-only users and does not encourage the use of additional connectors

• Despite competitive pricing efforts, the cumulative costs, including licensing, implementation, training, support, and hosting, have become too expensive

How does Alation pricing compare? Popular alternatives explained

Not satisfied with Alation’s pricing? Here are some of the best alternatives and some details on their pricing structures and product capabilities: 

1. data.world 

data.world contains all the necessary data cataloging capabilities along with AI and knowledge graph-based features. It can help you find all the data and context you are looking for 10x faster to increase your understanding of data.

The best part is any type of user can reap the benefits of data.world regardless of their technical expertise (no need for external support). 

data.world provides four pricing plans. Here’s an overview of what you will get with each plan:

Essentials

• Basic integrations for essential data sources

• A dedicated private instance for your organization

• Always the latest version, with no need for installations or upgrades

• Inventory, glossary, and metadata management features

• Supports up to 20 datasets and projects, unlimited live tables, and query minutes while in Preview

• Secured access management through SAML

• Comprehensive reporting tools for data usage and governance

Standard

• Broader integration support

• Enhanced support with Service Level Agreements

• Comprehensive logging of data auditing

• Data lineage tracking and data relationships visualization

• Core features for data governance

Enterprise

• On-premise secure metadata collection options

• High availability and secure data connectivity

• Secured connection via AWS PrivateLink

• Option to host data in either the US or the EU region

Enterprise+

• Custom solutions that can include advanced offerings

• Single-tenant installation with AWS account-level isolation

• Better security with customer-managed keys

All plans include Archie Bots, BB Bots, and Hoots, which make data discovery and cataloging quicker and more reliable.

To learn the price of your chosen plan, contact our team.

2. Microsoft Azure 

MS Azure is a fully managed cloud service that registers and discovers enterprise data sources. It has two subscription models:

Free

• Costs $0

• Unlimited users

• 5,000 max number of data catalog objects

Standard

• Costs $1 per user per month

• Unlimited users

• 100,000 max number of catalog objects

3. SAP Datasphere

SAP Datasphere is a complete data management solution that helps businesses unify and manage their data across various environments. It provides data cataloging features, allowing users to efficiently manage and govern their data assets. 

They have one simple pricing package for all the services:

Simple unit 

• Costs $12.96 

• Prices at per capacity unit (CU) per year 

• Has a minimum contract duration of 3 months

• CUs (number of units consumed by the services within SAP Datasphere) have a minimum quantity of 1532

• Include features like compute, storage, data lake, BW bridge, data integration, and data catalog services

• One productive tenant has the flexibility to add multiple tenants for different purposes

Understanding data catalog pricing

When it comes to data catalog pricing, the total cost goes beyond the base licensing fees. Several other components contribute to the overall pricing—-so you should consider them to get a comprehensive understanding of the investment required. 

Here are those extra costs that may be included in data catalog pricing:

• Base licensing costs: The fundamental fee for accessing and using the data catalog software.

• Hosting costs: Expenses related to the storage and server infrastructure required to run the data catalog.

• Implementation costs: Fees for setting up and configuring the data catalog to suit your organization's needs.

• Training costs: Charges for educating staff on how to use and manage the data catalog effectively. 

• Support costs: Ongoing fees for technical assistance and troubleshooting services from the vendor. 

• Maintenance costs: Costs for regular updates, bug fixes, and improvements to keep the data catalog functioning optimally. 

Learn more about the critical role data catalogs play in modern business environments with data.world’s "Decoding Data Catalogs: The Heroes of Data Transformations" webinar.

Leverage a machine learning data catalog with data.world

Data catalogs like Alation can be expensive for smaller organizations. They provide great capabilities but still lack some advanced features that can do the job 10x faster. But compared to Alation, data.world covers everything with its unique AI/ML capabilities and knowledge graph.

When investing in a data catalog, you should consider not only the features but also their budget-friendlyness and whether they can meet your organization's needs. 

So, if you’re looking for a tool to meet your technical and budgetary needs, data.world is the right fit. 

Book a demo today and experience modern data cataloging with data.world.