Intuitive Platform with Vast Capabilities, but Steep Learning Curve
What do you like best about the product?
I find the FME Platform incredibly beneficial due to its visual programming interface, which enhances usability by allowing users to construct more complex scripts with ease. This not only helps in handling data quality issues but also in creating replicable scripts that can be shared. The platform offers a wealth of tools and supports a wide variety of data formats, greatly enhancing its applicability and flexibility for data preparation, analysis, and ETL processes. FME Platform stands out for its user-friendly nature, which is a significant advantage for companies aiming to enable their teams to handle intricate data tasks without excessive learning curves. The transition to FME from Applications Manager was motivated by its superior security features, easier use, and broader format compatibility, which collectively offer a robust solution for our data management needs. Furthermore, the initial setup of FME Platform was very easy, underscoring its commitment to accessibility right from the start.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find FME Flow to be quite complex, which makes it inherently difficult to learn. This complexity can present challenges in navigating and understanding the software.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use FME Platform for ETL, data preparation, and analysis, solving data quality issues and enabling replicable scripts. Its ease of use, wide format support, and robust security enhance efficiency and make complex scripting accessible.
Effortless Data Integration with Outstanding Support
What do you like best about the product?
FME Platform is an accurate tool that makes data integration smooth.
The comprehensiveness of this data integration platform make it a stand out solution.
I like how effective and easy it is to implement FME Platform.
FME Platform has a highly responsive customer support team.
What do you dislike about the product?
I do not have any complaints about FME Platform.
It is easy to use FME Platform.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
FME Platform makes data integration effective.
It is a sensational data visualization tool that meet our needs.
The performance of FME Platform is outstanding.
Powerful and User-Friendly Tool with Excellent Support
What do you like best about the product?
This is a powerful tool that is easy to use, with plenty of tutorials available to help you get started. The customer support is also helpful, making the overall experience even better.
What do you dislike about the product?
The learning curve is quite steep initially, but it becomes easier as you continue using it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Data transformation enables different software systems to communicate with each other. By converting data into compatible formats, it ensures that information can be shared and understood across various platforms.
From university thesis to strategic asset : my use of FME
What do you like best about the product?
Having used FME Workbench for five years, I can confidently say it has become the cornerstone of my professional work in geomatics. My journey with FME began during my final university thesis. I was immediately struck by its unique power to handle seemingly incompatible data formats. What started as a powerful tool for an academic project has since evolved into my primary, daily software now that I have grown into a Subject Matter Expert in GIS and Cartography for my company. FME is no longer just a "converter"; it is the engine driving our entire data workflow.
Its true strength lies in its unparalleled interoperability. It truly is the "Swiss Army knife" of GIS, seamlessly bridging the gap between GIS, IT, and BI systems. FME handles everything we throw at it, whether it's obscure CAD files, complex SGBD databases like PostGIS, web services, or simple flat files. Beyond just moving data, its visual ETL capabilities in the Workbench are profound. We can design, test, and implement highly complex data validation, cleansing, and enrichment routines using its vast library of Transformers. This power extends directly to automation. The ability to create a robust workspace once and then deploy it has eliminated countless hours of repetitive, manual data management.
What do you dislike about the product?
The worst flaw of FME Workbench surely lies in its ability to always attract us even when it is simpler to do the operation manually....
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
For a company like mine, FME Workbench is a strategic asset for streamlining the entire field-to-finish data lifecycle. Its core value begins with integrating raw field data from diverse survey equipment, such as GPR, GNSS, and total stations. FME can automatically consume these various proprietary formats, transform them, and load them into a centralized GIS database. Critically, it automates the essential data quality process. workspaces can be designed to validate network topology, check attribute completeness (like depth or material type), and flag geometric anomalies. This ensures that all data captured during network detection or topographic surveys is standardized, accurate, and reliable before it is used for client deliverables.
Beyond initial processing, FME serves as the crucial bridge between data and its clients specific requirements. It excels at automating the creation of deliverables in any format or data model demanded by clients, or public municipalities, ensuring perfect compliance with standards such as PCRS. This interoperability extends to high-value services like 3D modeling and BIM. FME can "extrude" 2D network polylines into 3D pipe models using their Z value and diameter attributes, and furthermore, it can convert this rich GIS data directly into BIM compatible formats like IFC, integrating "as-built" network data directly into larger digital twin or construction models.
Flexible and Powerful Data Integration Tool
What do you like best about the product?
I really like how versatile FME is. It lets me handle everything from simple data transformations to more complex automation. It supports a wide range of data sources, which makes working with spatial data much easier. Some workflows take a bit of time to get used to, but overall it’s straightforward to implement. The support team is helpful whenever I need it. I use FME frequently because of its many features, and it integrates well with other systems, which makes my work smoother.
What do you dislike about the product?
The licensing cost has increased recently, even though some functionality can now be achieved faster using AI-generated scripts than with FME itself.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
FME solves a wide range of data integration and automation challenges. It allows me to schedule and run workflows automatically, transforming and moving data between systems like PostGIS, ArcGIS and M-Files. This saves a huge amount of manual work. The ability to run daily, weekly, or even more frequent jobs reliably keeps our datasets up to date and supports smooth operations across multiple projects.
Impressive Data Interoperability and No-Code Flexibility
What do you like best about the product?
With support for over 450 data formats, this tool offers impressive data interoperability. Its visual no-code interface makes it accessible, while the powerful spatial and non-spatial transformation features add significant flexibility. The automation capabilities are robust, and everything is backed by an active and supportive community.
What do you dislike about the product?
The recent adjustments to the licensing cost, along with the move to a single edition of FME, have caught my attention.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Developing impactful solutions across a wide range of fields, such as infrastructure, defence, aerospace, public health, renewable energy, utilities, telecommunications (Broadband), and spatial data platforms, has been a significant focus. This breadth of experience demonstrates a commitment to addressing complex challenges in various sectors.
Intuitive Platform with Powerful Options and Supportive Community
What do you like best about the product?
The platform is easy to understand in the basic principles but contains a lot of options you could consider to process your data with. FME Form which is the core product of Safe includes many data formats for reading and writing. Combined with the many transformers available to the user, this is a quite powerful tool for me as a GIS Specialist.
Furthermore there is an active user community which almost always has answers to the questions you have.
Beside that, because of the way the platform is designed it's not that hard to explain models you have built to other people you are cooperating with.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is quite some options and settings available. As a beginner I could imagine that this feels a bit overwhelming.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The FME platform helps me automate data analyses. Tasks that would otherwise require a lot of manual work can now be turned into a model within a few hours and thus be automated. The models are also reusable — if the same questions come up again, I can easily rerun a model and deliver the results. It saves me a lot of time since I don’t have to do any manual work, and on top of that, building the scripts gives me a sense of enjoyment in my work.
My favorite piece of software + platform, ever.
What do you like best about the product?
My biggest joy of using FME is the ability for me to do what I need to do without having to involve a developer - a task that takes time, planning, and money.
I can connect to absolutely anything, do 'anything' to the data, and shoot it out where I need it - a file, database, API, etc. The flexibility allows me to be nimble and agile in how I work. To my company, it makes me look like a genius.
Also worth mentioning is the team at Safe are great - super responsive to support requests, and there's a great community of users as well online.
What do you dislike about the product?
I feel the UI of Form is a big stumbling block to success. For a long time it felt it was geared to the super-technical user, and so getting others on board with it is an overwhelming task.
The costs of using the products have also significantly increased over time. I feel like every year there's a new sales process or account managers, and so I'm starting to get nervous around renewal time - it's not predictable anymore.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It's saving me time and money - something that is hard to come by.
Extensive format support and reliable integration enhance data management while new pricing model requires reassessment
What is our primary use case?
The use cases for FME are mainly integration to the GE Smallworld product. GE Smallworld is a GE product, and we are using it to integrate with other third-party products into GE Smallworld and ADMS systems.
The feature regarding automation capacity for scheduling data processing tasks is mainly used by one of our customers, Vodacom, and they are doing the automated exchange. That is very useful for them. It's only one of my customers that's using it. That's their business requirement to do real-time data exchange.
What is most valuable?
From my reseller perspective, the best features in FME are the ease of operation and the fact that it works. They are developing the necessary plugins to third-party products, so it's easy to use and very well-developed and usable.
The extensive format support, which covers over 400 file formats in the product, is essentially one of the reasons why we are using it.
Regarding the advanced spatial data capabilities, I don't know the technical details directly, as I'm more on the sales side. FME manages large volumes of spatial data in sectors such as GIS and environmental analysis effectively. It performs well and doesn't have issues in managing big loads of data.
What needs improvement?
I haven't had any input or requirements from any customers that are not currently covered, so I don't have any additional needs that were identified or raised to me.
Regarding pricing, with the model changes that they've implemented a while back, it actually made it more expensive to use, especially on the server side. They changed the licensing model, and that made customers think it is overpriced. Some customers were actually looking at alternatives. Pricing with the model changes was perceived negatively.
I work primarily with enterprise customers, Vodacom, Eskom, so it's tier-one customers. For small customers, this solution is a bit too expensive. They don't really use it and just do direct integration on smaller implementations. This is basically used by tier-one customers.
FME is still able to save time and money for clients. It's still a good investment.
Regarding similar products to FME, GE developed a product called Data Fabric. That is a real-time operational integration platform, Data Fabric Network Connect, which is a GE Grid OS product. It is actually more expensive than FME, but the purpose is different as it's operational. The vendor in this case is GE, and it's a company that we bought that used to be called Greenbird. In current use scenarios, FME is still leading compared to Data Fabric. The GE product has a different application.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been reselling FME for more than 10 years. It's a very long time.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I'm not aware of any glitches or stability issues that customers are experiencing, so I would say FME is fairly stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Even though it is on-premises, the solution is for the specific purpose that they are using it, so they don't really scale up or down quite often. In the cases where it's used, it is not an issue. If it were hosted with a different pricing model where you can quickly scale up and down, it might have different requirements. In the case where we use it, it will not necessarily make a huge difference.
How are customer service and support?
I'm happy with the technical support from Safe Software for FME.
Automating geospatial data workflows facilitates seamless cloud transfers
What is our primary use case?
FME is used to transfer GIS data from either on-premise into the cloud or between the primary servers and disaster recovery. We use it in various different ways.
What is most valuable?
FME is spatially aware and understands how to deal with the conversion of spatial objects and their attributes. It is a well-established product for handling geospatial data, transfer, and ETL processes. It helps automate workflows for GIS customers, making it a standard in the industry.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used the solution for years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In my experience, FME handles the largest datasets we work with. I have never heard anyone comment that they had to break it up into pieces, indicating that it is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
I have not directly dealt with Safe Software's customer service or technical support. However, I have heard of no problems with their support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have always used FME. We did not switch from anything.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are looking at the possibility of using Glue instead of FME, using the native AWS product.
What other advice do I have?
The overall rating for FME is eight out of ten, and I prefer the feedback to be anonymous. My job title is Senior Solutions Architect.
