We use Microsoft Azure, but one of our clients is on AWS, so we did a POC for Amazon Redshift. Now, it's up to them to make the call on whether to continue with the solution based on pricing and their needs.
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Its encryption features help us secure our data on the cloud
Pros and Cons
- "Redshift's versioning and data security are the two most critical features. When migrating into the cloud, it's vital to secure the data. The encryption and security are there."
- "Redshift's GUI could be more user-friendly. It's easier to perform queries and all that stuff in Azure Synapse Analytics."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Redshift's versioning and data security are the two most critical features. When migrating into the cloud, it's vital to secure the data. The encryption and security are there.
What needs improvement?
Redshift's GUI could be more user-friendly. It's easier to perform queries and all that stuff in Azure Synapse Analytics.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working on Amazon Redshift for six months, but I haven't used the solution extensively because we only did a POC for one client.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I think Redshift is stable. There shouldn't be any issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Redshift is serverless, so you can scale it as needed. If the amount of data increases, the nodes will automatically be connected.
How are customer service and support?
We haven't contacted Amazon support yet because we didn't encounter any issues that required support from Amazon, but I imagine it's comparable to the service we get from Microsoft.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've worked with a couple of cloud-based database solutions like Amazon Redshift and Azure Synapses,
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Redshift is a little complex and requires some prior knowledge, whereas Azure's GUI is more intuitive and it's easier to navigate the steps.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Engineering Manager/Solution architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Fast and easy to manage; offers good API, analytics, and integration
Pros and Cons
- "Setup is easy. It's a fast solution with machine learning features, good integration, and a good API."
- "This solution lacks integration with non-AWS sources."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution for our enterprise data warehouse.
We use it for scaling our warehouse.
We also use it for analytics.
What is most valuable?
A feature I find most valuable in Amazon Redshift is that it's fast.
I also like that you can query the data lake using the Redshift spectrum.
You can build analytics on this solution, similar to QuickSight or Tableau, based on the Redshift Data API.
Amazon Redshift also has good integration and a good API. It's not hard to manage. It even has machine learning features.
What needs improvement?
This solution could be cheaper, but Amazon could constantly add new instances and decrease the size from previous ones, so it could be an AWS work model.
It would also be better if it can be integrated with non-AWS sources, e.g. additional open source connectors.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using Amazon Redshift for a long time. We've been using it for years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I find this solution scalable to a great extent.
How are customer service and support?
Amazon's technical support works fine.
How was the initial setup?
Setup was easy. This is a managed service, so you don't need to install anything. You just choose the size of the cluster and within 10 to 20 minutes, it's built.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
This solution implements the pay-as-you-use model, so no license. It's just for underlying infrastructure.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I evaluated Cloudera and Azure.
What other advice do I have?
We usually rely on some distribution, not like classic Hadoop. We do not use open source Hadoop because our customers prefer some distribution to get support. Some paid features from Cloudera and Amazon provide their own support.
We provide expertise for different services of AWS, e.g. most of them because we are a premium partner and we have program competencies. We develop data, big data, machine learning, and migration, so we cover a large field.
We have some clients with Azure, but most of our clients are with AWS.
The deployment of Amazon Redshift is through AWS. It's a home-based, proprietary solution. It's fully managed by AWS.
Amazon Redshift has implemented most of the features that we currently need, so I can't name additional features that I expect from them in the next release.
The number of people needed for the deployment and maintenance of this solution in our organization is just one: only to set up. It's just one DevOps.
I would recommend Amazon Redshift as a solution for others who are thinking about using it.
I'm rating Amazon Redshift an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Buyer's Guide
Amazon Redshift
January 2026
Learn what your peers think about Amazon Redshift. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,515 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Solutions Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Merges and integrates well with all databases; lacks transparency
Pros and Cons
- "This service can merge and integrate well with all databases."
- "Planting is the primary key enforcement that should be improved."
What is our primary use case?
We are premium partners with Amazon.
What is most valuable?
This service can merge and integrate well with all databases.
What needs improvement?
Planting is the primary key enforcement that should be improved but there is probably a reason that they don't follow the reference architecture. It means they are creating clones of the data shading. Cost control measures could be improved along with added transparency.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for nine months.
How are customer service and technical support?
AWS technical support is very good.
How was the initial setup?
We needed some help from experienced professionals for our initial setup.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing costs are reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution depending on the scale. You need to decide whether you want to be lined up with a single cloud provider or go over the service and have it deployed on multi cloud. There are many factors to take into consideration.
I rate this solution seven out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Data Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Full AWS integration, well maintained, but lacking main features from competitors
Pros and Cons
- "I find the most valuable features to be the MPP style of processing, which mostly all of the data warehouses provide. The ability to integrate all other AWS services, such as NSS and S3, with little effort is very helpful. The service is well maintained, there are update patches frequently."
- "We recently moved from the DC2 cluster to the RA3 cluster, which is a different node type and we are finding some issues with the RA3 cluster regarding connection and processing. There is room for improvement in this area. We are in talks with AWS regarding the connection issues."
What is our primary use case?
Redshift is a managed service for data warehouses.
What is most valuable?
I find the most valuable features to be the MPP style of processing, which mostly all of the data warehouses provide. The ability to integrate all other AWS services, such as NSS and S3, with little effort is very helpful. The service is well maintained, there are update patches frequently.
What needs improvement?
We recently moved from the DC2 cluster to the RA3 cluster, which is a different node type and we are finding some issues with the RA3 cluster regarding connection and processing. There is room for improvement in this area. We are in talks with AWS regarding the connection issues.
In an upcoming release, I would like to have a Snowflake-like feature where we can create another cluster in the same data warehouse, with the same data. You can create a different cluster and compute nodes for each of your use cases, for retail, and for your data analyst all while keeping your underlying data safe.
Additionally, the cluster resize process takes down the cluster for too long, approximately 15 minutes. There are limitations to the size, you can resize only by a multiplier of two, for example, if you have four nodes then you can either go to eight nodes or you can come down to two nodes. There should be fewer limitations.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon Redshift for approximately one year.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There are three people in my organization using this soltuon.
How are customer service and technical support?
Their technical support is good. They provide assistance when we need it but since we were experiencing a connection issue it was taking longer to get a resolution. We had to involve a vendor to get it resolved for us.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have previously used ClickHouse.
How was the initial setup?
The installation was easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of the solution is reasonable. According to the RA3 cluster particularly, it provides 128 GB of storage with only four nodes. If you can manage your computations processes with the help of materialized views and proper queries. I think the IP clusters are very useful and overall fair for the price.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have been evaluating Snowflake and are in the POC phase. If it passes our quality tests then we will be moving to it soon.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Amazon Redshift a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Service Manager & Solution Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Easy to use and simple to setup, but the performance is low, and there is no tool to support the CDC
Pros and Cons
- "It is quite simple to use and there are no issues with creating the tables."
- "It takes a lot of time to ingest and update the data."
What is our primary use case?
We stored all of the data in the S3 bucket and would like to have it stored in a data warehouse, which is why we chose this database.
It would be very easy for us as an end-user, who would like to access the data, rather than draw it post-transformation and store it at a database level.
What is most valuable?
The TP transactions for the creation of the tables does very well.
It is quite simple to use and there are no issues with creating the tables.
What needs improvement?
The managing updates, deletes, and role-level change performance is very low. For example, while you are doing inserts, updates, deletes, and amalgamates, the performance is very, very poor.
If you want to query the database after you have a lot of terabytes of data, the load, performance-wise, is very low.
Looking at the performance of the query, querying the database, and especially with the amalgamates when it is getting updated, it is really poor.
We like this solution and have tried all of the native services; they were working quite well. The only concern about Redshift was managing the cluster, especially the EMR cluster. Our company policy was not to use EMR clusters, especially with the nodes failing. There were many instances of downtime happening. Essentially, there was too much data traffic.
The other drawback was the CDC, as we do not have any tools that can support it.
Creating the structure is easy on the DDL side, but after you create the table and you want to transform the data to store it in a database, the performance is poor.
It takes a lot of time to ingest and update the data. After you ingest the data and someone wants to fetch it in the table, it takes a lot of time performance-wise to return the results.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for three months.
We are using the latest version.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There are issues with stability and it should be compared with Snowflake.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This solution is scalable. We scale up and scale down manually when we are required to, we do not have an automatic setup.
We have three or four people using this solution.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have contacted technical support to give our opinion and recommendations or feedback and they agreed that it needs improvement.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we tried the Snowflake database, which works really well. The expectations were really good with the performance, also the DDL, DML operations on the processing of the data.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is simple and we did not find it very complex at all.
The time it takes to deploy depends on how many tables you want to create, or how many tables will you merge the data with.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are switching to Azure, although not because of the product or the services that we did not like. It's about AWS being competitors for logistic companies that we are working with. Also for security reasons, we do not know how secure the data is on the cloud.
If you are competitors then you don't know if the data can be accessed by your competitor, and the team can be looking at a demographic, which could impact your sales.
What other advice do I have?
We have only just started using Redshift, but we are not really satisfied with it.
I would rate this solution a six out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Business Analyst at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Easy to deploy and offers easy computing services
Pros and Cons
- "I found the Amazon Redshift computing services easy. I found the computing instances the most incredible in the solution."
- "What would make Amazon Redshift better is improvising on the pricing structure. For example, Acronis provides backups in cybersecurity, yet the pricing is a bit lesser than Amazon Redshift."
What is our primary use case?
We use Amazon Redshift as our data warehouse.
What is most valuable?
I found the Amazon Redshift computing services easy. I found the computing instances the most incredible in the solution.
What needs improvement?
What would make Amazon Redshift better is improvising on the pricing structure. For example, Acronis provides backups in cybersecurity, yet the pricing is a bit lesser than Amazon Redshift. I was comparing AWS, Amazon Redshift, Azure, GCP, and Acronis, and I found that Acronis has a lesser price than the other solutions in the archiving space.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have at least two months of familiarity with Amazon Redshift.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Amazon Redshift is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon Redshift is a scalable solution that also suits enterprise companies.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't contacted Amazon Redshift support because I'm not a client, but according to my subordinates, the support is excellent.
How was the initial setup?
Amazon Redshift is very easy to deploy, and deployment-wise, it's impressive. It only takes two to three minutes max to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing for Amazon Redshift is reasonable, though it could be somewhat higher than other solutions, such as Azure. Still, when you base your comparison on the services offered and the pricing, it's the most reasonable versus its competitors, such as RDS.
What other advice do I have?
My company provides backup solutions.
I'm a business analyst with little expertise in a specific service or solution, but I've gone through all the solutions.
I have experience with Amazon Redshift.
What I'd tell others looking into implementing Amazon Redshift is that it's one of the market's best databases or data warehouses right now.
My rating for Amazon Redshift is nine out of ten.
I'm an Amazon partner.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
High performance, efficient, and helpful support
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of Amazon Redshift are that its fast and efficient. We have lots of TBs of data and it's very fast."
- "Amazon Redshift could improve the user interface support."
What is our primary use case?
We are using Amazon Redshift services to query the data and to perform certain data science operations on that data, such as applying a machine learning algorithm or doing an analysis.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Amazon Redshift are that its fast and efficient. We have lots of TBs of data and it's very fast.
What needs improvement?
Amazon Redshift could improve the user interface support.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon Redshift for approximately one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Amazon Redshift is a stable solution. However, there are many times the environment configuration changes very quickly without any intimidation and it creates a lot of problems for running our codes.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Amazon Redshift is good. The solution is best suited for larger-scale businesses because the price is affordable for them and they need the complexity.
How are customer service and support?
The support from Amazon Redshift is very good.
How was the initial setup?
Amazon Redshift is somewhat complex to deploy. The process could improve.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Amazon Redshift is an expensive solution. Larger organizations can afford this solution, but smaller businesses would struggle to afford it.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Amazon Redshift an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner
Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good prediction modeling and reporting features, but customer support should be improved
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is its scalability."
- "The technical support should be better in terms of their knowledge, and they should be more customer-friendly."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use Amazon Redshift for prediction modeling and business reporting.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is its scalability.
What needs improvement?
The technical support should be better in terms of their knowledge, and they should be more customer-friendly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon Redshift for approximately one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is a stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is very good, and it is one of the best features of this solution.
We have approximately 10 people who use it, four of which are engineers. At this point, we do not have plans to increase the number of users.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. I do not recall, however, how long it took to deploy.
What other advice do I have?
In summary, this is a good solution and I recommend it. That said, the customer support needs to be improved.
I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Updated: January 2026
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