Metaphor vs Secoda : Full Product Comparison
Compare Metaphor vs Secoda to choose the best Data Catalog for your business. Learn about their unique features in our full product comparison.
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We all know how difficult it can be for modern companies to organize their data all in one place. Whether you are just embarking on your documentation and governance journey, or you are well into the process (and possibly experiencing some hiccups along the way), you’re in the right place.
Metaphor and Secoda are two popular data catalogs in the market, so you may be wondering, “How is Metaphor compared to Secoda? Which one is better?”. In this Metaphor vs Secoda article, we’ll give a detailed comparison of the two platforms by looking at six key categories:
Whether you're on the data team or you’re a business user, you'll gain a comprehensive understanding of how Metaphor compares to Secoda, enabling you to make an informed decision on which one is best for your organization.
We have reviewed third-party websites like G2.com to make the process as unbiased as possible.
Metaphor vs Secoda - which one is better?
Let’s dive in.
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Metaphor was established in 2020 by the team that created Datahub at LinkedIn. DataHub is an open-source metadata management platform developed by LinkedIn to manage its vast and complex data ecosystem. It was designed to provide a centralized and scalable solution for discovering, understanding, and using data assets across the organization. After seeing the effects of data democratization firsthand at LinkedIn, the founders realized an opportunity to offer metadata management at a larger scale, and they founded Metaphor Data in November 2020. It is important to note that while the company was founded in 2020, the Metaphor Metadata Platform was not released until January 2022, making it relatively new to the market.
Metaphor is a cloud-native, enterprise-ready platform for data discovery and literacy. As a company's data stack tends to grow with time, Metaphor offers a “future-proof” solution that will meet the needs of growing companies. They offer 3 main types of metadata:
- Technical Metadata - this includes all data originating from data systems, including schemas, description, lineage, data quality, data profile, etc.
- Business Metadata - this is the connection between data and business use cases
- Behavioral/Social Metadata - this connects data assets to users and includes usage behaviors
The combination of these three data types allows for both technical and business users to easily find what they need. Metaphor integrates into your daily workflow, with a built-in Slack app that allows you to easily communicate, share data, and respond to questions.
Secoda was founded in 2021 by Andrew McEwen and Etai Mizrahi. It enables organizations to centralize and manage their data assets, making it easier for users to discover, understand, and access the data they need.
The platform uses machine learning algorithms to automatically index and categorize data assets, allowing users to search for and find relevant data. It also offers data governance capabilities, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and company policies.
Data teams can benefit from using it to enhance domain knowledge, streamline documentation, and optimize their technology stack by integrating various tools.
For everyone else, it offers increased accessibility to data by simplifying the process of searching for all company data.
Users of Secoda appreciate its user-friendly interface, collaborative features, natural language search capabilities, and ease of use for all team members.
The goal of Secoda is to be the sole place to search for any company data, add context to that data, and track the relationships between people in the organization and the data they are responsible for.
Metaphor vs. Secoda Comparison
Now that you know the background, let's dive into our evaluation of Secoda vs Metaphor along six key dimensions:
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Target Audience
Like all data catalogs, Metaphor and Secoda cater primarily to the data team in an organization. In addition, both solutions offer features for non-technical users to benefit from.
Metaphor was primarily built for Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Subject Matter Experts, and Data Stewards. However, their basic and advanced search options, Slack integration, and social hashtags allow for non-technical use as well. Non-technical users may include Business Analysts, Business Intelligence users, and Product Teams.
Secoda’s target audience is also the data team, including everyone from the Head of Data to Data Analysts. It also broadens its reach to include data consumers and anyone who can leverage the data resources in an organization. It was built due to the creator's previous frustration in sharing information between technical and non-technical teams, and the inefficiencies that this created. Therefore, their platform is built as a way for all teams within a company to collaborate and democratize data.
Both companies are targeting both technical and non-technical users, so we will give them an equal score in this category.
Technology Integration
Both Metaphor and Secoda have a wide range of integrations – from data warehouses and business intelligence to data quality and communication. Here are their current integrations, but please note that as these technologies are developing, more connections are frequently becoming available. For the most up-to-date resources, check out the live pages for Metaphor Integrations and Secoda integrations.
Metaphor Integrations:
- Data Sources: Redshift, Azure Synapse, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Microsoft SQL Server
- Data Visualization/Business Intelligence Tools: Looker, Metabase, PowerBI, Tableau, ThoughtSpot
- Auto-Ingestion/Data Movement: AWS Glue, Hive, Unity Catalog, Airflow, dbt
- Authentication: ADFS, Google, OIDC, Okta, SAML
- Cloud: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure
- Communication: Microsoft Teams, Slack
- Data Quality: Great Expectations, Lightup, Monte Carlo, Soda.io
Secoda Integrations:
- Data Sources: Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Postgres, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle
- Data Visualization/Business Intelligence Tools: Tableau, Looker, Mode, Sigma, Redash, Power BI, Metabase, Google Data Studio,
- Auto-Ingestion/Data Movement: dbt, Airflow, AWS Glue
- SSO: Azure ADSAML, Google OAuth, G Suite SAML, Okta SAML
Secoda offers a wider breadth of business intelligence and data visualization tools, though Metaphor is not far behind!
It is essential to keep in mind that the quality of a product is not determined solely by the number of integrations it offers. Choosing the data catalog that aligns with your business requirements is ultimately your decision.
Pricing
Metaphor does not include any pricing information on their website. They do offer a free trial and a demo, which you can sign up for online.
Secoda offers three plans - a free plan, a Business plan, and an Enterprise plan.
- The free plan includes 1 admin, 1 integration, unlimited tables, and access to features like the data lineage tool, data dictionary, and Live Queries in Docs.
- The Business plan is $800 per month or $9,600 per year. It includes 10 admins, unlimited viewers, 3 integrations, exporting/importing, Slack integration, and API access.
- The Enterprise plan does not list pricing online, as it is custom. It includes a self-hosted environment, a dedicated Slack channel, unlimited integrations, unlimited viewers, Git integration, and a dedicated Account Manager.
You can compare all of the features of each plan, and get the pricing for their Enterprise plan on their website.
Ease of Use
As mentioned in the ‘Target Audience’ section above, both tools are targeting both technical and non-technical users. Because of this, Ease of Use is a key selling point for both Metaphor and Secoda.
Metaphor offers an easy-to-use web application, as well as access embedded directly into the tools that teams use on a daily basis, such as Looker, Slack, and Notebooks. Their goal is to make data part of your everyday workflow.
Due to how new Metaphor is to the market, G2.com does not have any reviews or ratings on Ease of Use.
Secoda touts a clean and simple-to-use interface as well. However, their onboarding process can be a bit challenging, and the consistency of the site is unstable according to user reviews. In addition, they are missing some key functionality that affects the user experience, such as Auto Doc and Column Describers.
G2.com rates Secoda as 8.0/10 for Ease of Use.
“I love how easy to use their platform is. In a single afternoon we were able to get set up and get our company onboarded. Now the entire company doesn't need to rely on our data team which was struggling to keep up. Before Secoda we had no process in place to track and collobrate as a team. We now have a process in place for fielding data requests, have increased data team capacity, and have better data discovery for the business users across the company.”
- Adi P., Data Ops, Small-Business(50 or fewer employees)
There is no clear winner here, due to the lack of reliable information about Metaphor’s Ease of Use for technical and non-technical users.
Review and Ratings
In writing this article, we consulted both Metaphor and Secoda reviews on G2.com. You can review the Secoda reviews here. Because Metaphor is so new to the market, G2 does not yet have enough information to provide rankings for key categories like Ease of Use, Ease of Setup, and Quality of Support.
G2 highlights Ease of Use as the top factor that impacts user satisfaction for Machine Learning Data Catalog products. It rates Secoda as 8.0/10 in this category. The industry average in this category is 8.6/10.
Here are some helpful Secoda reviews:
“Secoda has become an essential daily tool for our team. At its core, it's very helpful for sharing domain knowledge, whether for colleagues switching domains or onboarding new team members. It's also become our company's single source of truth for metric definitions and a place to store documentation on team best practices. Secoda is an excellent tool as it has many different features which allow for each company to utilize the product how best suits them.”
- Kate C., Data Analyst, Mid-Market(51-1000 employees)
“Besides having a world-class support team + environment, Secoda is a powerful-and-getting-powerfuller-by-the-day tool to standardize and galvanize data documentation across your data teams + broader company. It's easy to connect a multitude of sources and spin up data docs and guides.”
- Morgan W., Data Analyst, Mid-Market(51-1000 employees)
It is worth noting that Metaphor was recently recognized as a Data Governance & Catalog leader in the 2023 MAD landscape.
We will monitor sites like G2 and Capterra for more reviews, which will likely be available in the near future for both products. The scores below reflect the information that is currently available.
Service and Support
Metaphor does not specifically outline its service and support options on its website, other than to say that they offer 24/7 support. If you are looking for help with Metaphor, their website lists an email address to contact - support@meatphor.io, where you will receive a response within 24 hours.
For Secoda, you need to be on the 2nd tier plan - the $800/month Business Plan, for live chat support. The Enterprise Plan also includes a dedicated Slack channel and a dedicated Account Manager. While G2.com did not yet have enough information to rank Secoda in Quality of Support, the company does have many positive reviews related to customer support:
“Secoda provides tools for documenting database schemas that help us to streamline communication between engineering and data science teams. The Secoda team is iterating quickly to add features and has frequently already been building features we requested. The Secoda team is a joy to work with and is driven to support their customers.”
- Gabe T., Director of Engineering
Service and Support is obviously a huge consideration when choosing a data catalog, and Secoda has a leg up in this category purely due to having more information and reviews online.
The Best Data Catalog for Your Business
Metaphor vs Secoda - do we have a winner? Secoda wins by a narrow margin, due to more information and ratings being available on G2.com. This may change in the near future, as more verified reviews come in about both solutions.
At this point, we’d like to offer another popular and highly-rated suggestion for you if you are in search of a data catalog to discover and organize your data.
CastorDoc rates very highly on G2.com, with an overall rating of 4.8/5. It also won the ‘Winter 2023 G2 Leader’ award in the Machine Learning Data Catalog category. Users love the sleek and easy-to-use interface, its ability to be used by an entire organization and not just technical users, and its highly-rated customer support.
While Secoda beat out Metaphor in today’s comparison, check out our CastorDoc vs Secoda page, where we do a deep dive into these two data catalogs, or view all comparisons.
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“[I like] The easy to use interface and the speed of finding the relevant assets that you're looking for in your database. I also really enjoy the score given to each table, [which] lets you prioritize the results of your queries by how often certain data is used.” - Michal P., Head of Data
