Fivetran Acquires Census: What It Means for Reverse ETL and Why CData Sync Already Delivers

Fivetran’s recent acquisition of Census, one of the early leaders in reverse ETL, is a strategic move that signals a significant shift in the data integration market.

The modern data stack is no longer just about loading data into the warehouse; it’s about activating it, operationalizing it, and getting it into the hands of business users where they already work.

This acquisition validates what many data teams have known for a long while: reverse ETL is no longer optional. But it also raises questions about pricing, complexity, and whether integrating yet another tool is the right next step. Fortunately, for CData Sync users, the answer is simple: reverse ETL is already built in.

Reverse ETL is no longer a ‘nice to have’

The promise of reverse ETL is straightforward: pull clean, enriched data from your warehouse and push it into tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Dynamics 365. This allows sales, marketing, and support teams to drive decisions in the systems they already know, without logging into BI dashboards or asking data teams for connections or exports.

It’s about making data useful, not just reportable.

Fivetran’s acquisition of Census elevates reverse ETL into the mainstream, validating the fact that operational analytics is becoming just as important as reporting. But while the news signals a promising future for reverse ETL, it also comes with potential cost and architectural tradeoffs for existing and future users.

Expect volume-based pricing, just like with HVR

If history is any indicator, Fivetran will likely fold Census into its usage-based pricing model. That’s exactly what happened after it acquired HVR in 2021. It took a few years, but eventually, customers who previously had fixed-cost replication in HVR suddenly faced metered costs based on volume and row count.

Reverse ETL, when done right, involves high-frequency syncs and wide tables. If Census becomes another volume-based service within Fivetran, teams could be forced to consider tough tradeoffs—throttle data to control costs or pay unpredictable premiums to keep downstream systems up to date.

CData Sync: One platform, one price, both directions

CData Sync It’s a single, self-contained platform that handles both ETL/ELT and reverse ETL with no usage-based pricing and no need to cobble together multiple tools with no usage-based pricing and no need to cobble together multiple tools.

With Sync, you can:

• Load data from 350+ sources into your cloud data warehouse or lake
• Push enriched data back out to SaaS apps like Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM, and more
• Apply in-flight transformations or plug into dbt, all from the same job interface
• Deploy where you want—on-premises, in your cloud, or fully managed by CData’s private cloud

And you get all of this in a predictable, connection-based pricing model. You’re not charged more for syncing more rows, more frequently.

Built-in reverse ETL, without the wait

Where Fivetran customers now wait to see how Census is integrated, packaged, and priced, CData Sync users are already running reverse ETL in production. There’s no new vendor to evaluate. No extra tools or pipelines to manage. No unexpected pricing mechanics to navigate.

Reverse ETL in Sync works just like any other data job. You build it in the same interface, with the same scheduler and transformation tools you use for ingestion. That translates to:

• Fewer tools to monitor and maintain
• Unified logging and pipeline visibility
• Consistent testing and transformation logic

This reduces not only cost, but also complexity for the team.

This is about more than pricing

Fivetran’s acquisition of Census signals just how critical reverse ETL has become to operational analytics. But it also raises the question: Do you want to manage multiple tools with overlapping capabilities, or streamline your data movement in a single platform?

CData Sync gives you full control in both directions—moving data from source to warehouse, and from warehouse to operational systems—all in one place. Test it out with a free 30-day trial.