Hightouch and Census are both Reverse ETL platforms syncing data from warehouses to business tools. Hightouch excels with marketing-specific features like AI personalization and broad tool integration but faces reliability and pricing transparency issues. Census offers better reliability, real-time syncs, and clearer pricing tiers, making it strong for operational consistency across marketing, sales, and service teams.
At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side
software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your
business goals.
This comparison was created by analysing 698 reviews and 60
websites, saving 4 hours, 22 minutes of reading.
Hightouch is a platform that helps marketing teams use their company data more effectively. It works by connecting to your existing data warehouse and letting you send customized groups of customer data to over 200 other marketing tools, like email and advertising platforms. This helps marketers create more targeted campaigns, personalize messages, and ultimately get better results. Hightouch emphasizes ease of use, so marketers can access and utilize data without needing to code.
Census is a data activation platform that helps businesses synchronize their data warehouse with various business tools. It uses a technology called Reverse ETL to achieve this without complicated coding. This means your marketing, sales, and customer success teams get a complete view of customer data from your data warehouse in the apps they use daily. Census integrates with popular data warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift, and tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Braze. This allows for consistent data across your organization, improving decision-making and operational efficiency.
Summary
Main difference
The main difference lies in their specific feature sets and reliability: Hightouch offers more marketing-centric features like AI Decisioning and broad destination support but struggles with reliability, while Census emphasizes real-time syncs, dbt integration, and better platform stability. Census provides clearer pricing tiers, including a free plan, whereas Hightouch's pricing is less transparent.
Relative strengths of Hightouch (compared to Census)
Broader Marketing Tool Integration: Hightouch explicitly supports over 200 destinations, potentially offering wider connectivity for diverse marketing stacks compared to Census's focus on popular tools.
Advanced Marketing Features: Hightouch provides unique marketing-focused capabilities like AI Decisioning for 1:1 personalization and Match Booster for improving ad effectiveness, which Census lacks explicit counterparts for.
Stronger Growth & Momentum: Hightouch shows significantly positive website traffic and employee growth, suggesting market momentum and potentially faster innovation compared to Census's flat/negative growth metrics.
Relative weaknesses of Hightouch (compared to Census)
Lower Reliability: User feedback indicates Hightouch suffers more from slow syncs and bugs (rated 'highly negative' for reliability) compared to Census (rated 'rather positive'), impacting operational dependability for businesses reliant on timely data.
Lack of Real-Time Syncs: Census offers 'Live Syncs' for real-time data activation, while Hightouch lacks an equivalent explicit feature, potentially leading to data latency for time-sensitive use cases like immediate customer service responses.
Less Pricing Transparency: Hightouch's pricing model is frequently cited as complex and difficult to understand (rated 'highly negative' for value/pricing), making it harder for value-conscious businesses to budget compared to Census's defined tiers (Free, Professional, Enterprise).
Hightouch helps marketing teams put their data warehouse information to work. We see it's great for connecting customer data to tools like email and ad platforms, making campaigns more personal and effective. Users often mention the easy setup and wide range of connections. It seems particularly helpful for marketers who want data access without needing deep technical skills, though some find the syncs can be slow at times.
Census seems ideal for data-savvy companies wanting to activate their data warehouse across different teams like sales and marketing. In our experience, it's particularly useful for getting customer data into everyday tools using Reverse ETL without heavy coding. While users praise its ease of setup and user-friendly interface, some find the pricing a bit high for the features offered. It shines when you need to sync data consistently from sources like Snowflake or BigQuery to apps like Salesforce or HubSpot.
In our experience, Hightouch works best for medium-sized businesses and especially larger enterprises looking to leverage their data warehouses.
We find Hightouch particularly shines in the Software, IT, Telecommunications, and Marketing/Advertising sectors where data activation is key.
We find Census works best for medium (101-1000 employees) and especially large enterprise companies (1001+ employees) with established data teams.
While Census serves businesses across various sectors, we've observed it's particularly strong within the Software, IT, and Telecommunications industries.
Hightouch and Census features
Supported
Partially supported
Not supported
Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need
Reverse ETL
10
sources
Supported
Hightouch supports syncing warehouse data to SaaS applications using SQL.
Supported
Census supports Reverse ETL and syncing data with SaaS applications using SQL.
Composable Customer Data Platform
10
sources
Supported
Hightouch is a composable CDP, offering marketers self-service access to unified customer data in a data warehouse, without coding.
Supported
Census acts as a composable CDP by allowing marketers to access and use customer data in their warehouse without coding.
Customer Studio
10
sources
Supported
Hightouch offers Customer Studio, a dedicated interface for building, managing, segmenting, and customizing target audiences.
Supported
Census offers an Audience Hub for building and managing target audiences, enabling segmentation.
CRM integration
10
sources
Supported
Hightouch integrates with Salesforce to manage customer data and workflows.
Supported
Census integrates with CRM systems like Salesforce.
Data Source Integration
10
sources
Supported
Hightouch integrates with data warehouses and other platforms.
Supported
Census integrates with various data warehouses like Postgres, MongoDB, Redshift, and Snowflake.
ETL Process Support
10
sources
Partially supported
Hightouch is designed for Reverse ETL, not traditional ETL, but integrates with ETL tools.
Not supported
Census excels in reverse ETL, not traditional ETL.
Census offers a free plan and paid plans - Professional and Enterprise. The Professional plan has a fixed monthly price, while the Enterprise plan has custom pricing. Free and Professional plans have a limit of 8 million records per month.
Plans
0Free
Sync up to 1 Billable Destination, 2 Active Syncs, 5 User Seats, 1 Workspace, Unlimited free destinations: Slack, Google Sheets, and more.
350/monthProfessional
Sync up to 2 Billable Destinations, 5 Active Syncs per Billable Destination, 5 User Seats, 2 Workspaces, 2 Additional Billable Destinations ($200/month for additional destinations)
CustomEnterprise
Unlimited Workspaces, Unlimited User Seats, Enterprise Connectors: Oracle, Anaplan, NetSuite, Shopify, Workday, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Includes Audience Hub for Marketers, Includes Real-time Live Syncs, Add on: AWS PrivateLink, Custom legal terms, Includes Census Embedded
Intuitive interface praised for ease of use and setup.
Seamless integration with data warehouses like Snowflake.
Wide range of destinations supported, expanding data activation options.
Excellent and responsive customer support via Slack and other channels.
Easy setup and configuration, allowing quick integration with data warehouses and business tools.
User-friendly interface for non-technical users to manage data syncs.
SQL-based models provide flexibility for data transformation before syncing.
Automated syncs and email notifications for failures improve efficiency.
Responsive and helpful customer support via Slack.
Users dislike
Syncs can be slow, impacting workflows.
Occasional bugs and unexpected errors require attention.
Complex pricing model can be difficult to understand and estimate.
Limited transformation capabilities within the tool itself.
High pricing, especially considering the limited number of destination fields.
Occasional sync failures and cryptic error messages can be difficult to troubleshoot.
Limited transformation capabilities within the tool.
Constant UI changes and feature renaming create confusion and outdated documentation.
Inability to re-run multiple syncs simultaneously after fixing errors.
Hightouch and Census Ratings
G2
4.6/5
(360)
Glassdoor
4.7/5
(64)
G2
4.5/5
(338)
Glassdoor
4.9/5
(15)
Company health
Employee growth
37% increase in the last year
2% decrease in the last year
Web traffic
27% increase in the last quarter
No change in the last quarter
Financing
No data
August 2021 - $80M
How do Hightouch's AI-powered features compare to Census's SQL-based transformations?
Hightouch focuses its AI capabilities primarily on 'AI Decisioning', which aims to automate and optimize personalized customer experiences on a one-to-one basis without manual segmentation rules. In contrast, Census emphasizes SQL-based transformations, allowing users, particularly those familiar with SQL and tools like dbt, to define and manipulate the data directly within their workflow before syncing it to destination tools, offering granular control over data logic. While Census also offers 'AI Columns' for data enrichment, its core strength in data preparation lies in its SQL integration, whereas Hightouch's AI is geared more towards automating downstream marketing decisions and personalization strategies.
Which platform offers more reliable sync performance, Hightouch or Census?
Based on the provided information, Census appears to offer more reliable sync performance. Census receives a "rather positive" rating for Reliability and Performance, although some users mention occasional sync failures. In contrast, Hightouch receives a "highly negative" rating for Reliability and Performance, with users specifically citing slow syncs impacting workflows and occasional bugs.
What are the advantages of Hightouch?
Hightouch provides advantages primarily through its strong focus on marketing use cases and potentially wider integration support, connecting to over 200 marketing tools. It offers specific features tailored for marketers, such as AI Decisioning for 1:1 optimized experiences, Real-time Personalization for web and apps, and Match Booster to increase ad match rates. Users often highlight its intuitive interface and ease of use, enabling marketers to leverage warehouse data directly without extensive coding, aligning with its Composable Customer Data Platform positioning.
What are the disadvantages of Hightouch?
Based on user feedback and analysis, Hightouch has several disadvantages. Users report that data synchronizations can be slow, potentially impacting workflows. The platform also experiences occasional bugs and unexpected errors. Its pricing model is often cited as complex and difficult to understand or estimate, leading to negative sentiment regarding value and transparency. Additionally, Hightouch offers limited data transformation capabilities within the tool itself, and there are concerns regarding overall reliability and performance.
Alternatives to Hightouch and Census
Keboola
Connect, prepare, and analyze data without coding.
Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT
management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs
of any business and find solutions to its problems.
TT
Tymon Terlikiewicz
CTO at Gralio
Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech
department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX,
HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.
How are we doing?
Is this information helpful to you? Is there anything we are missing?
Did this help you select your product?
Yes No
Other issues? Vote & Let us know
NEW: Introducing Gralio Screen Buddy
An AI tool that observes your work, finds inefficiencies, and suggests smarter ways to do things. Maybe
you can use your tools better, automate tasks, or switch software.