Comparison Guide

Select Star vs. Secoda:
What are the differences?

Your evaluation guide to navigating
the top data catalogs

Trusted by data teams worldwide.

Evaluation Criteria

Data teams are well-acquainted with the complexities of managing data in modern stacks, where diverse sources make it challenging to maintain accurate records. Thankfully, a modern data catalog with embedded AI capabilities can help solve these issues.

Secoda is an automated and centralized repository for your data knowledge. As an all-in-one data discovery, lineage, documentation, and governance platform, data teams are able to work more efficiently and power self-serve analytics across their organizations.

We’ll compare Secoda to Select Star against six key criteria that modern data teams should be considering during their data catalog evaluation process:

  1. Automation
  2. Ease of Use
  3. Data Governance & Security
  4. System Maintenance & Innovation
  5. Customizability
  6. Price

1. Automation

Efficiency in data discovery and documentation is paramount when it comes to a data catalog. With Secoda, you can leverage the built-in AI assistant seamlessly integrated into your workflow. By automatically ingesting metadata from all your data sources, Secoda empowers you to automate 90% of documentation tasks. This includes generating SQL, table and column descriptions, user guides, and more.

Secoda goes further by offering automatic visualization of lineage across all data sources in your stack. You can also easily add manual lineage nodes using a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. Secoda's comprehensive lineage feature covers both column and table levels and even sends Slack notifications for downstream owner changes.

Select Star lacks an integrated AI assistant to automate documentation and query generation and is unable to provide contextual search results from natural language queries. Secoda lets users engage with a ChatGPT-like interface where anyone, regardless of technical ability can answer their own data questions without sending a request to the data team. 

1. Automation
Secoda
Modern
Select Star
Modern
Automatically ingest metadata
Yes
Yes
Automatically ingest table and column level lineage
Yes
Yes
Dedicated data request management workflow
Yes
No
Ability to automatically generate documentation from metadata
Yes
No
Ability to run live queries in documents
Yes
No
Automated impact analysis
Yes
Yes

2. Ease of Use

Secoda serves as a user-friendly entry point for anyone, regardless of technical expertise, to search for data knowledge. With the simplicity of ChatGPT, team members can easily ask questions and receive relevant, contextual answers.

To truly provide value, data catalogs should cater to both technical and non-technical users. Secoda achieves this by offering a powerful and user-friendly search function, powered by LLM. This function enhances the accuracy and speed of information retrieval by considering the context of search terms.

Secoda is designed to empower everyone in the organization, not just data practitioners, to access the data they need. It offers personalized user journeys and views based on specific roles, such as data analysts or heads of sales.

Secoda ensures a delightful user experience by supporting multiple collaborators simultaneously, similar to Google Docs or Miro Boards. It also facilitates document hierarchies and relationships through nested folder structures.

Getting started with Secoda is quick and easy. Once an account is created, data teams can go-live in minutes. Whether you choose to implement it independently or with assistance from our customer success team, you'll be up and running by the end of the day.

2. Ease of Use
Secoda
Modern
Select Star
Modern
LLM powered search functionality
Yes
No
Semantic search
Yes
No
Search by customizable tags
Yes
No
Dedicated business user portal
Yes
No
Slack integration
Yes
Yes
Multiplayer editing
Yes
No
Dedicated data dictionary component
Yes
No
Modern UI
Yes
Yes
Ability to create nested documents and establish folder hierarchy
Yes
No
Ability to implement immediately
Yes
Yes
Access to live support and training
Yes
No
Advanced editing and markdown support
Yes
No

3. Data Governance & Security

To meet the needs of enterprise data governance, data catalogs should offer strong support for workflows like version control, version history, publishing, role-based permissions, assignments, and access controls. Secoda fulfills these requirements by providing customized experiences for non-data team users based on their organizational roles. For instance, the head of marketing will have access to different reports than the director of analytics.

Secoda prioritizes the security and protection of client data by maintaining compliance with SOC 2 Type 1 and 2, meeting the rigorous standards set by the AICPA. It offers hosting flexibility, enabling you to securely host Secoda within your own VPN and VPC in a self-hosted environment. The deployment process is convenient and efficient with options like Terraform or Docker.

Secoda offers seamless integration with various authentication services, including Google and Microsoft SSO, Okta, MFA, and SAML, enabling users to sign in using their existing credentials.

To guarantee secure data transfers from private databases to Secoda, a protected process is established using SSH tunneling. Users are given granular control over their datasets, enabling them to selectively remove or exclude sensitive data during synchronization or automatically label it within Secoda.

Secoda ensures the privacy and confidentiality of data by fully encrypting it both during transit and at rest. This guarantees that the data remains protected at all times. Importantly, Secoda upholds data security by strictly adhering to the principle of not accessing or viewing the data being transferred.

3. Data Governance & Security
Secoda
Modern
Select Star
Modern
Ability to assign unique roles and access permissions per role
Yes
No
Ability to automatically identify and tag PII data
Yes
No
Ability to require documents to be approved before publishing
Yes
No
Version history
Yes
No
Version control with Git
Yes
No
SOC 2 Compliance
Yes
Yes
SSH Tunnelling
Yes
Yes
Included SAML, SSO, and MFA
Yes
Yes
Self-hosted Deployment
Yes
No
Private Cloud Deployment
Yes
No

4. System Maintenance & Innovation

Secoda is the first AI-powered catalog with integrated search capabilities. Secoda AI is fully operational, encompassing search, lineage, and documentation features. Unlike being in beta, Secoda AI is already being utilized by our customers to automate 90% of their documentation efforts.

Secoda is built on modern infrastructure and seamlessly integrates with both modern and legacy data stacks. New features are shipped on a weekly basis and on-demand training is available for any users who may require assistance.

4. System Maintenance & Innovation
Secoda
Modern
Select Star
Modern
Weekly feature releases
Yes
No
High feature development velocity
Yes
No
Public roadmap
Yes
Yes
Ability to implement immediately
Yes
Yes
Open product feedback cycle
Yes
Yes

5. Customizability

Customizability plays a vital role in the effective adoption of a data catalog and other data products. If a data catalog does not align with existing workflows, it is likely to face rejection. Seamless integration with workflows, without causing disruptions, is essential for a data catalog's success. Secoda surpasses in customization capabilities by offering features like granular user permissions and API integration for creating custom integrations. With Secoda, data teams enjoy the flexibility to personalize alerts, notifying stakeholders about changes that impact downstream assets. Additionally, Secoda provides the advantage of using Terraform.

5. Customizability
Secoda
Modern
Select Star
Modern
Out of the box integrations with modern cloud warehouses
Yes
Yes
Out of the box integrations with modern data stack tooling
Yes
Yes
API access to create custom integrations
Yes
No
API access to build data discovery process into existing workflows
Yes
No
Customizable broadcasts from changes to documents
Yes
No

6. Price

To cater to the unique requirements of organizations, data catalogs should be customizable, and their pricing should be flexible and scalable. It is crucial for a data catalog to offer a pricing structure that can accommodate the organization's needs without any concerns about the number of assets, viewers, or integrations. This scalability is a key distinguishing factor between point-solution data catalogs and all-in-one solutions.

Secoda provides transparent pricing options with four different tiers: Free, Growth, Business, and Enterprise. We are more than happy to assist you in setting up a trial so that you can experience firsthand how seamlessly Secoda integrates into your workflow and enhances your data management processes.

6. Price
Secoda
Modern
Select Star
Modern
All-in-one pricing
Yes
No
Public, transparent pricing
Yes
No
Under $1000/month for base plan
Yes
No
Implementation fees
No
Yes
Unlimited viewer roles
Yes
No
Unlimited data assets
Yes
No

Why People Choose Secoda versus Competitors Like Select Star?

People choose Secoda over our competitors due to the array of useful features we offer that the alternatives don’t. Here are some of the best features that you gain when you sign up for Secoda:

Charting + querying abilities

A good data catalog tool should have advanced features for charting and querying your data. Secoda offers charting and querying abilities that are superior to the other options out there and we make these features highly intuitive so that any member of the team can use them.

Unlimited viewers + guests

Your data catalog tool should scale with you as you grow, which is why we let our users have unlimited viewers and guests at no extra charge. Most competitors will charge you more for viewers, making their data sharing and discovery capabilities limited.

Simple, no code set up

You can truly use Secoda right out of the box. Unlike other tools, Secoda can be connected and set up in minutes, with no coding required. You can get back to work right away.

Role based permissions

When you need to share data with stakeholders and customers, you can easily send them customer links and invitations with Secoda. We make sure those who need information are able to get it without obstacles.

Workspace analytics

Secoda provides features for in-depth workspace analytics, so you can get a deeper understanding of your data.

Version control with Git

Secoda can easily integrate with Git. Additionally, it provides you with version control so you can merge changes or roll back changes to a previous version.

Data Q&A and Requests

Data Q&A and requests are no problem for Secoda. Any member of your team can easily make requests, saving the data team time and reducing bottlenecks. Your team will be more empowered to use data than ever before.

Flexible, Notion-like docs

Secoda makes documentation and collaboration simple with our flexible, Notion-like docs. Team members can easily collaborate using these docs and make company-wide updates that everyone will be able to see.

Confluence / Jira integrations

Secoda provides more integrations than competitors like Seelct Star. With Secoda, you can integrate Confluence, Jira, and more.

Discover and Understand All of Your Data in One Place

Secoda is built to make data discovery and querying intuitive. From our platform, any team member can search and access the data they need. When team members are empowered to use data, you can increase data literacy and enable more data-driven decisions.

Collaborate With Your Team and Document Changes

Secoda is a holistic platform that allows for collaboration among all of your team members. With our data catalog, teams get a comprehensive view of metadata, lineage, data usage, and more.

Document changes are simple too, with flexible Notion-like documents.Secoda also makes external sharing and collaboration simpler, with customer links and invitations. Data sharing and collaboration shouldn’t be difficult.

Make Your Data Easily Searchable

Secoda is the platform to make your data easily searchable. In our platform, you can combine your data catalog, data documentation, data dictionary, and data management.

When data is easily searchable by all of your team members, users won’t be slowed down by bottlenecks from data team requests. Data teams will also have more bandwidth since they’ll be dealing with fewer requests. It’s a win-win for everyone in your company.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of using Secoda?

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Here are some of the primary benefits of Secoda:Secoda is built to be intuitive and usable for every team member, including nontechnical users. Our name stands for “searchable company data” and that’s where we strive. Put all of your data in one, easily searchable place.Secoda is a holistic tool that is collaborative and searchable. While other competitors focus on hyper-technical metadata, we provide you with a more comprehensive view of your data.Secoda makes it easy to integrate Slack, Linear, Jira, Confluence, Notion, and more. With easy integrations, Secoda can seamlessly be added to your workflows.Secoda is simple to set up and get started. You can start using Secoda in minutes. We have transparent and straightforward pricing too, with no extra fees for more users.

How is Secoda different from Select Star?

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Secoda offers various features that Stemma doesn’t. Secoda offers advanced charting and querying abilities, is simple to set up, and has simple pricing that allows for unlimited viewers. Additionally, Secoda offers these features:

Customer links and invitations - Share data with customers and collaborate with the external team
Workspace analytics - Get in-depth data analytics
Version control with Git - Merge changes and roll back to previous versions in Git
Data Q&A and Requests - Make data requests accessible to the whole team
Flexible, Notion-like docs - Team members can easily collaborate with Notion-like docs
Confluence / Jira integrations - Integrate the tools you use, such as Confluence, Jira, and more
API access - Secoda provides access to our API.
Self-Hosted - Secoda can be hosted in a self-hosted environment.

What makes Secoda a better alternative to Select Star?

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Secoda is a better alternative to Select Star because it provides more versatility, flexibility, and collaborative tools. This allows Secoda to be the easiest tool to adopt by business users. Secoda is also easier to use, designed with business users and data teams in mind to make data more accessible and easier to understand.

What metadata does Secoda extract?

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Secoda does not pull in your data. Instead, Secoda pulls in metadata about your data. For a majority of the integrations connected to Secoda, this means Secoda pulls in resource names, popularity, lineage, queries, descriptions and frequent usage. For more information about our integration, you can visit our integration docs.