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Simen Mikkelsen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at ITMatter
Real User
Top 10
Good for handling large datasets and helpful in areas like data
Pros and Cons
  • "The integration capabilities of the product are good and you get what you pay for when it comes to Snowflake."
  • "I don't think that the AI tools in Snowflake are good."

What is our primary use case?

Our company uses the solution for building a data platform, data warehouse, and data transformation.

The product is somewhat used for data analytics, but it is mostly for data engineering.

What is most valuable?

The tool is good for handling large datasets, and since the tool is fully managed by Snowflake, you can scale up the compute part.

What needs improvement?

I don't think that the AI tools in Snowflake are good. AI tools in Snowflake can be improved. Even if the AI tools in Snowflake are good, I feel that it would be expensive. The cost of the AI part does not justify what you get from the product.

The price of the product can be lowered.

I think Snowflake should integrate with some tools like ChatGPT.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for a year.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is scalable and can be considered a good fit for small and medium businesses.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't directly contacted the technical support team of the product.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory. My company decided to use Snowflake since we wanted to be able to get up and running fast without much configuration-related mess. Snowflake doesn't give you the options with the configuration part since, by default, it is available out of the box. In terms of machine learning, Azure Databricks has the upper hand over other products.

How was the initial setup?

The product's deployment phase was quite okay.

The solution can be deployed in a few days or up to a week.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The product's price range falls between average to a bit expensive range. I think the tool is worth the money if you use it properly. It is difficult for me to speak about the number of users who use the product. My company pays around a couple of thousand dollars a month to 10,000 dollars or more.

What other advice do I have?

I think the main benefit is that with the tool, you can easily get things going without problems since you don't need to configure all the parameters manually. If you buy the tool for a bigger computing purpose, the engineer can pay more attention to the tool, and I guess after that, you can do more with the solution. I would ask others not to think about the data warehouses, as Snowflake takes care of such areas.

The benefits from the use of the product can be realized in around 40 minutes. It is a good technology for getting up and running quickly.

Snowflake is integrated with Azure Data Platform and other ETL tools in our company's ecosystem.

The integration capabilities of the product are good and you get what you pay for when it comes to Snowflake.

I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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IT Consultant at Independent Consultant
Real User
Top 20
Straightforward deployment, stable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "Snowflake has three great features: Snowpiping is proving to be very valuable, Time Travel is excellent, and Snowpipes are another great functionality the solution has made available."
  • "Snowflake needs transparency over costs and pricing."

What is our primary use case?

I mostly build or design data warehouse analytics solutions using Snowflake.

How has it helped my organization?

The productivity across the teams that use Snowflake I believe is higher than it would be without the solution.

What is most valuable?

Snowflake has three great features: Snowpiping is proving to be very valuable, Time Travel is excellent, and Snowpipes are another great functionality the solution has made available.

What needs improvement?

Snowflake needs transparency over costs and pricing.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I give the stability an eight out of ten. We rarely have issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used many on-premise solutions in the past and also Azure Synapse Analytics.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. I give the setup an eight out of ten.

A basic implementation is quick and we only have to set up Snowflake and the cloud service. We need one engineer and one designer for the implementation.

What about the implementation team?

Depending on the complexity of the implementation, we may need to use a third party or help from the vendor.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Part of the problem with the pricing is that it is very difficult for businesses to get an idea of how expensive it might be until they actually start using Snowflake. Until they start pushing large amounts of data through, we will not really know. I believe that it is very difficult for businesses to make a commitment.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

My advice is to start Snowflake and not spend too much time thinking about how we could use the solution or what it could be used for. The key is just getting started.

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?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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January 2025
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Stephen Ebrey - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Consultant at Omaze
Real User
Data warehousing solution that is straightforward to setup and used to analyze e-commerce advertising data
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature has been the Snowflake data sharing and dynamic data masking."
  • "The cost efficiency and monitoring of this solution could be improved. It's easy to spend a lot on Snowflake and it does offer monitoring tools but they're pretty basic."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution to ingest e-commerce advertising and web analytics data and completing an analysis. There are 60 people using this solution in our business. 

How has it helped my organization?

We are working with a TV advertising agency and they were able to set up a Snowflake data share to share ad spend with us and it was very quick to integrate.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature has been the Snowflake data sharing and dynamic data masking.

What needs improvement?

The cost efficiency and monitoring of this solution could be improved. It's easy to spend a lot on Snowflake and it does offer monitoring tools but they're pretty basic.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for three years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution. 

How are customer service and support?

I would rate the technical support for this solution a four out of five. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Amazon Redshift.

How was the initial setup?

 The initial setup was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We did have a consultant help us.

What was our ROI?

We do see a return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing is based on usage. It is the most expensive of our data tools.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others to check costs when implementing any changes, such as new BI tools or a new data source. Set up different warehouses for your different tools so that you can track cost.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Owner at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Real User
A true elastic data warehouse where you can scale computing by just issuing a SQL query

What is our primary use case?

We use Snowflake for our data warehouse. Amazing product. Redshift cannot compete with a true elastic data warehouse where you can scale computing by just issuing a SQL query (increase computer power) and resizing it down or putting computing unit to sleep. 

Snowflake has many more features:

When combined with Alooma, it's the best data integration system. No need for Talend and all these cumbersome tools.

How has it helped my organization?

We were able to implement the entire data eco-system in less than five months, from data integration, data warehousing, ELT, producing fact and dimensional tables, and finally reports.

What is most valuable?

  • Computing unit is accessible via SQL: being able to turn them on or off as needed.
  • Snowpipe (ingesting data)
  • Looking back in time (being able to look at data in the past within a query)
  • No data warehouse management
  • Support for JSON.

The list is pretty long.

What needs improvement?

  • Snowpipe auto-ingest should be automatic.
  • A better client UI or command line tool: I think SnowSQL is a little awkward.

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Excellent.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Used it at a previous company.

How was the initial setup?

Yes. No hardware or server config is needed. Just create a user account.

What about the implementation team?

In-house.

What was our ROI?

Very good.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Snowflake computing is very affordable. Less expensive than Redshift.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes. I looked at Redshift and Vertica.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sushrit Moundekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Manager at InfoCepts
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
A scalable and cost-effective solution that stores data streamed from the source system
Pros and Cons
  • "The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power."
  • "Currently, Snowflake doesn't support unstructured data."

What is our primary use case?

We use Snowflake as a database to store all the data we stream from the source system.

What is most valuable?

The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power. If I want to change the computation with other tools like Netezza, I would have to add a hard disk to it. With Snowflake, being on the AWS side, changing warehouses provides me with faster execution of my queries.

What needs improvement?

The real-time streaming feature is limited with Snowflake and could be improved.

Currently, Snowflake doesn't support unstructured data. With Snowflake, you need to be very particular about the type of data in your source systems. It has to be in a proper structure. You cannot push data to Snowflake in any possible way.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for a couple of years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Snowflake is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Around 400 users are using the solution in our organization.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used IBM Netezza. We switched to Snowflake in 2020 because it provided us control over its scalability and costing model.

How was the initial setup?

The solution’s initial setup is comparatively easier.

What was our ROI?

Snowflake is a cloud-based, scalable solution that provides strong data security. Handling all the data is much easier in Snowflake, and it has a very nice interface to control user access. The administration of Snowflake is also comparatively easier.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Snowflake is a cost-effective solution.

What other advice do I have?

Choosing Snowflake completely depends on the quantum of data your organization has and the requirements. Snowflake is suitable for someone looking for a scalable and cost-effective solution that provides quick analysis.

Overall, I rate Snowflake a nine 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: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Iqbal Hossain Raju - PeerSpot reviewer
Junior Software Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
Stable product with good analytics features
Pros and Cons
  • "The product's most important feature is unloading data to S3."
  • "The product's performance could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

Snowflake is good for analytical purposes when you have a lot of historical or sales data that you need to release and use for different types of analysis, such as tracking sales and measuring the performance of your sales team and product.

What is most valuable?

The product's most important feature is unloading data to S3. It provides a single syntax query to analyze data directly from a database to an S3 bucket.

What needs improvement?

The product's performance could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for a couple of months. We are using the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We did not need to scale our Snowflake environment beyond what we needed. We have a fixed amount of traffic from a fixed number of clients. We know the load we need to handle, and based on that, our subscription is made.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Snowflake is cost-effective. The pricing is better than Firebolt. Firebolt is better when there is idle time. If we run Snowflake all the time, the cost will be higher.

What other advice do I have?

We are working on two solutions for Snowflake, one for the cloud and one for on-premises. It has good documentation. If someone goes through it, they will quickly understand how it works. However, Firebolt's documentation is more comprehensive. If I need faster results, I'll prefer the Firebolt; if I need performance, I'll use Snowflake.

Overall, I rate it a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
KumarRajeev - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Reasonably priced solution but credit performance could be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "The features I found most valuable with this solution are sharing options and built-in time zone conversion."
  • "I see room for improvement when it comes to credit performance. The other thing I'd like to be improved is the warehouse facility."

What is our primary use case?

Our current plan and use case for this solution is to migrate the data from on-premises to the cloud. We are currently using on-prem monitor data and providing it on the cloud. We are using Snowflake so that once the data is in there, we are trying to create shares over it so that external systems can't consume it.

What is most valuable?

The features I found most valuable with this solution are sharing options and built-in time zone conversion.

What needs improvement?

I see room for improvement when it comes to credit performance. The other thing I'd like to be improved is the warehouse facility. 

In the next release, I'd like to see easier connectivity to the on-premises tools.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My impression from using this product for the last three years is that it is quite stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My impression is that this is a scalable solution. There are around 200 users of this solution at our company, including three administrators.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup process was not that complex and it took around six months.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was done by an in-house team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

My impression is that the pricing of this solution is reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
VipinGupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Manager at Publicis Sapient
Real User
Standard and competitive pricing, excellent starting place, with straightforward in-house deployment
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the ability to work with a managed service on the cloud and that is easy to start with."
  • "From the documentation, the black box is not very descriptive. Snowflake does not reveal how exactly the data is processed or sourced."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is for building a database and data link.

What is most valuable?

I like the ability to work with a managed service on the cloud and that is easy to start with.

What needs improvement?

From the documentation, the black box is not very descriptive. Snowflake does not reveal how exactly the data is processed or sourced.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for three years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is reliable and a standard product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is very good and we have around two hundred data sets currently operating.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is good. It is readily available and they are very responsive.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

You can do the implementation in-house since it is a managed service and only takes a few hours.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is economical as compared to traditional solutions like Oracle and competitive pricing.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Snowflake a nine 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
PeerSpot user
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Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Snowflake Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.