There are at least a few companies offering Dynamics connectors for SSIS, and it would be a little challenging to compare all of them. Personally, I used KingswaySoft connector on a few Dynamics data migration projects, and it never failed me. However, it is not the only one available, so you may ask why did I choose that one?
Come to think of it, there was no particular technical reason. However, KingswaySoft has always been doing a very good job marketing their products to the Dynamics community, and that’s, probably, why I ended up using it on my projects.
Still, just or the sake of this exercise, I wanted to see how something else fares against KingswaySoft, and it will be CozyRoc vs KingswaySoft today:
I have already mentioned that KingswaySoft is really good in promoting their product to the Dynamics community. It should not be too surprising, really. After all, Daniel Cai, who is the principal developer there, is also a Dynamics CRM MVP.
That alone gives that product a lot of credibility, at least as far as Dynamics connector is concerned.
But it does not stop there. If you look at the KingswaySoft’s web site, you’ll see it is all nice and clean:
You will find an MVP program there, which seems to be very similar to the Microsoft’s MVP program. Actually, you will find a lot of Microsoft MVP-s on that list.
What it all does, it delivers a message: it’s a stable product, it’s backed by a strong community, and the company cares about its appearance. From my perspective, that translates into their desire and ability to stand behind the product if I ever run into a problem using those components in my data migration projects.
In that sense, CozyRoc is not, really, doing such a god job:
Their web site is ok, but it’s not as polished at all. If you go to the “news” or “community” sections of the site, you will get that feeling that it’s been somewhat neglected.
Long story short, KingswaySoft comes through as a better established and more reliable company from the beginning.
Just keep something in mind, though. We are really talking about the companies developing add-ons for SSIS. That kind of software has limited complexity, so we may not even need a lot of support in using their products. In other words, even if KingswaySoft seems to have much better appearance, it does not mean, yet, that CozyRoc has lost the battle already.
But we need to start looking beyond the appearance, and what’s left, then, is technical capabilities and pricing.
Let’s start with pricing. Again, neither of those companies can afford to charge too much, so, in a way, there is almost nothing to compare. CozyRoc will cost you around $400 per year. KingswaySoft will cost you around $1300 per year. There is a difference, but, in both cases, those licensing fees will likely be well within the project budget, especially if you consider how much hours you will be saving for the developers/consultants.
Still, CozyRoc is a clear winner as far as pricing is concerned. For about one third of the price KingswaySoft will charge you, you will be getting two licenses instead of just one.
It starts to look better for CozyRoc, but let’s see what happens if we compare technical capabilities of both products. To make it simple and visual, I took a screenshot from CozyRoc web site, went to the KingswaySoft web site, and, then, highlighted those connectors which KingswaySoft is mentioning there(since, it seems, there is nothing KingswaySoft is offering that’s not available from CozyRoc):
Now this makes CozyRoc a clear winner on the technical side as well.
So, both pricing and technical parts of this comparison go to CozyRoc, while Kingsway is doing better on the marketing and community support side. I’m almost scared to admit it, but, it seems, I may have to change my preferred tool the next time I’m working on the data migration project. Although, before I do that, I wanted to try some sample data migration scenario and see how both products work in comparison, so let’s put it all to test!