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Amazon EMR vs Vertica comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (3rd)
Vertica
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vertica is 5.6%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless data integration enhances reporting efficiency and an easy setup
Amazon EMR has multiple connectors that can connect to various data sources. The service charges are based on processing only, depending on the resources used, which can help save money. It is easy to integrate with other services for storage, allowing data to be shifted to cheaper storage based on usage.
T Venkatesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Processes query faster through multiple systems simultaneously, but it could support different data types
We use the solution for various tasks, including preparing data marts and generating offers. It helps extract data based on rules from the policy team and provides insights to enhance business operations. We also analyze transactions to target customers and improve business performance The…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The ability to resize the cluster is what really makes it stand out over other Hadoop and big data solutions."
"When we grade big jobs from on-prem to the cloud, we do it in EMR with Spark."
"It allows users to access the data through a web interface."
"In Amazon EMR it is easy to rebuild anything, easy to upgrade and has good fault tolerance."
"The solution is scalable."
"The solution helps us manage huge volumes of data."
"We are using applications, such as Splunk, Livy, Hadoop, and Spark. We are using all of these applications in Amazon EMR and they're helping us a lot."
"This is the best tool for hosts and it's really flexible and scalable."
"I appreciate the flexibility offered by Vertica's projections. It allows for modifying the primary projection without altering the tables, which helps to optimize queries without the need to modify the underlying data."
"I don't need any special hardware. I can use commodity hardware, which is nice to have in a commercial solution."
"Vertica uses advanced Azure technologies to compress raw data using indexing, allowing a large amount of data to be stored with minimal physical space. Advanced algorithms are employed in data compression."
"I have found the solution to be scalable."
"Vertica has a few features that I like. From an architecture standpoint, they have separated compute and storage. So you have low-cost object storage for primary storage and the ability to have several sub-clusters working off the same ObjectStore. So it provides workload isolation."
"The product's initial setup phase is extremely simple."
"The feature of the product that is most important is the speed. I needed a columnar database, and its speed is what it's built to do, and so that's what really does differentiate Vertica from its competitors."
"Vertica gives knowledgeable users and DBAs excellent tools for tuning."
 

Cons

"Amazon EMR is continuously improving, but maybe something like CI/CD out-of-the-box or integration with Prometheus Grafana."
"As people are shifting from legacy solutions to other technologies, Amazon EMR needs to add more features that give more flexibility in managing user data."
"The solution can become expensive if you are not careful."
"Modules and strategies should be better handled and notified early in advance."
"The product must add some of the latest technologies to provide more flexibility to the users."
"Spark jobs take longer on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences."
"The initial setup was time-consuming."
"We don't have much control. If we have multiple users, if they want to scale up, the cost will go and increase and we don't know how we can restrict that price part."
"When it is about to reach the maximum storage capacity, it becomes slow."
"We are looking for a cheaper deployment for the solution. Although we did a lot of benchmarks, like Redshift. We tried Redshift, it didn't work. It didn't work out for us as well."
"Suboptimal projection design causes queries to not scale linearly."
"I think they need an easy client so that you can write queries easily, but it's not necessarily a weak point. I think some users would need them."
"Fact-to-fact joins on multi-billion record tables perform poorly."
"Support is an area where it could get better."
"It would be great if this were a managed service in AWS."
"Vertica can improve automation and documentation. Additionally, the solution can be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You don't need to pay for licensing on a yearly or monthly basis, you only pay for what you use, in terms of underlying instances."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Amazon EMR's price is reasonable."
"The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive."
"Amazon EMR is not very expensive."
"There is no need to pay extra for third-party software."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It can be expensive since it's a managed service, and if you are not careful, you can run into unexpected charges. You can make a mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars. That's happened to us twice, so I'm sensitive to it. We're still trying to work on that. Our smallest client probably spends a hundred thousand dollars yearly on licensing, while our largest is well over a million."
"There is a small fee for the EMR system, but major cost components are the underlying infrastructure resources which we actually use."
"Vertica has a perpetual license, but they are currently trying to convert all those licenses to subscription-based licenses on a yearly basis."
"The price could be cheaper and it is best to negotiate the price."
"It is fast to purchase through the AWS Marketplace."
"It's free up to three nodes and 1TB, and then get in contact with their sales guys."
"I think it's starting to get a little expensive. Open source products are starting to get more robust, so I think that's something that they need to start looking at in terms of licensing."
"The pricing for this solution is very reasonable compared to other vendors."
"The pricing depends on the license model because there are several. It depends on the client, but it's cheaper than other solutions. I think it's cheap for all the functionality and robustness. It's not very expensive to deploy."
"It's an expensive product"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EMR?
Amazon EMR is a good solution that can be used to manage big data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?
The cost of Amazon EMR is a little bit expensive, especially considering the support package, which includes a gold package.
What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?
Spark jobs take longer on Amazon EMR compared to previous experiences. This aspect could be improved to make them more efficient.
What do you like most about Vertica?
Vertica is easy to use and provides really high performance, stability, and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vertica?
The solution is relatively cost-effective. Pricing and licensing are reasonable compared to other solutions.
What needs improvement with Vertica?
The product could improve by adding support for a wider variety of data types and enhancing features to better compete with other databases.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce
Micro Focus Vertica, HPE Vertica, HPE Vertica on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yelp
Cerner, Game Show Network Game, Guess by Marciano, Supercell, Etsy, Nascar, Empirix, adMarketplace, and Cardlytics.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EMR vs. Vertica and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.