How Harmonic Saved $80,000 by Switching from Fivetran to PeerDB

Customer story

How Harmonic Saved $80,000 by Switching from Fivetran to PeerDB

Harmonic utilizes data and AI to map the startup landscape, providing the most comprehensive startup database available. From newly incorporated startups to scaleups hiring go-public CFOs, Harmonic offers real-time access to rich firmographic, team, and time-series data.

Through Harmonic, hundreds of venture teams have adopted a data-driven approach, enhancing their investment strategies. Leading firms like Accel, NEA, Brex, Notion, and Google Ventures rely on Harmonic to connect startups with the capital and resources necessary for growth.

Harmonic were spending upwards of $100K on Fivetran for their Data Replication Needs

Their tech stack includes a multi-TB Postgres database, where they track all data related to startups on the public web from various sources in real-time. They were using Fivetran to transfer this data to their Data Warehouse (Google BigQuery), to enrich it further and provide intelligent insights to their customers.

After leveraging Fivetran for a few months, Harmonic noticed the usage and cost for Fivetran were spiraling out of control. They were spending upwards of $100k per year on data replication needs which included the cost of Fivetran + Fivetran's impact on Data Warehousing (BigQuery). This trend became a significant concern for Harmonic.

Our concerns about the per-row charging model of Fivetran and its potential to significantly inflate costs made us cautious about moving our data. Additionally, the lack of satisfactory support from their customer service when reaching out was a major drawback for us.

Harmonic AI replaced Fivetran with PeerDB to save 5x in costs

Harmonic came across PeerDB, which precisely addressed their needs: a cost-effective alternative to Fivetran tailored for Postgres.

PeerDB provides a fast and cost-effective way to replicate data from Postgres to Data Warehouses such as BigQuery, Snowflake, and ClickHouse. We firmly believe that data movement should not be cost-prohibitive; it's a principle that motivates us at PeerDB. This aligned well with Harmonic's needs. Here's how we were able to deliver value to Harmonic:

Saved 5x on Licensing Costs - With laser focus on Postgres to Data Warehouse replication, PeerDB implements multiple data-store native and infra optimizations to make data replication cost-effective. Through this, we are able to offer a significantly more affordable pricing to our customers. As a result, Harmonic was able to save 5x on technology costs by replacing Fivetran with PeerDB.
Reduce BigQuery costs by half - PeerDB implements multiple data-modeling optimizations such as automatic clustering and partitioning on BigQuery to save costs.This resulted in a 2x reduction in BigQuery costs generated by data replication.
Predictable Pricing Model - PeerDB charges based on the compute usage rather than the amount of data transferred. Harmonic resonated with this pricing model as it was predictable and transparent compared to Fivetran.
Feature Parity with Fivetran - As a part of the selection process, Harmonic tested various features that Fivetran offered such as Schema Changes, Observability, Alerting, Adding Tables and so on and found that PeerDB met the criteria.

Our decision to choose PeerDB was reaffirmed by their comprehensive online resources, which instilled confidence in their expertise. Not only did they help us cut costs effectively, but their unparalleled customer service provided immediate and insightful assistance, making us feel supported and empowered in managing our PostgreSQL database.

Harmonic AI migrated to PeerDB just within 2 weeks

PeerDB simplifies the migration process for customers who use Fivetran for their Postgres replication to Data Warehouses. As mentioned earlier, it offers most of the features supported by Fivetran. Moreover, PeerDB ensures compatibility with the same data types supported by Fivetran and incorporates additional metadata columns (_PEERDB_IS_DELETED, _PEERDB_SYNCED_AT), similar to those added by Fivetran. This enabled Harmonic AI to transition to production with PeerDB within 2 weeks!

Technology Stack and Architecture

Once data is moved from Postgres to BigQuery using PeerDB, they use DBT to derive insights from their data to give value to their customers. Below is the final technical architecture on Harmonic uses PeerDB: