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reviewer2108010 - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Data Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
MSP
Top 5Leaderboard
Cheapest tool available in the market for data warehousing
Pros and Cons
  • "The tool is very easy to use. The solution’s desktop features are also very easy to use. Also, the product’s SQL-based connectivity is also good. It can connect with any tool."
  • "Snowflake needs to improve its programming part. Though the tool has Snowpath, it doesn’t support all features like its competitor, Databricks. Snowflake doesn’t support external data ingestion capabilities. You need to have third-party tools for that. Also, the tool needs to incorporate data integration features in its future releases."

What is our primary use case?

We use the product as a data warehouse.

What is most valuable?

The tool is very easy to use. The solution’s desktop features are also very easy to use. Also, the product’s SQL-based connectivity is also good. It can connect with any tool.

What needs improvement?

Snowflake needs to improve its programming part. Though the tool has Snowpath, it doesn’t support all features like its competitor, Databricks. Snowflake doesn’t support external data ingestion capabilities. You need to have third-party tools for that. Also, the tool needs to incorporate data integration features in its future releases.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with the solution for two years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is scalable. You can scale the solution’s computation and storage features separately.

How are customer service and support?

My company is a direct partner of the product. We have a lot of Snowflake experts who can resolve any doubts. Hence, I haven’t felt the need to contact customer service and support.

How was the initial setup?

The solution’s setup is easy since it's a SaaS product. The tool’s deployment is fast and wouldn’t take more than two minutes.

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

Snowflake’s pricing is transparent. It is one of the cheapest cloud database warehouse providers. The tool follows a credit cost model. Everything on Snowflake is charged on the basis of credits. The credits depend on the cloud region and the public cloud provider that we use. Hence, the cost per credit will be different for AWS in Frankfurt and AWS in India. I think North Virginia is the cheapest region in terms of cost per credit. You will be consuming around 16 credits for large data warehouses.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. Snowflake is the market leader in data warehousing and cloud database. I don’t think that it has a direct competitor. I would suggest you give Snowflake a try if it fits your use case. You can open up a trial version for 45 days and convert it to a regular account. There are different tiers in the solution like business critical, standard, etc. The tool gets updates every week.

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
Adnan Shafiq - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President - Database Management (Principal Solutions Architect) at Northbay
Real User
Highly scalable, full featured, and simple setup
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Snowflake is it's an all-in-one data warehousing solution."
  • "Snowflake could improve migration. It should be made easier. It would be beneficial if it could offer some OLTP features. One of our customers was using Oracle for both data warehousing and OLTP workloads, and they were able to migrate their data warehousing workloads to Snowflake without major issues. However, for some of their OLTP requirements, such as needing a response time of fewer than 10 milliseconds for certain queries, Snowflake is currently unable to provide that."

What is our primary use case?

I am using Snowflake for all our apps and data warehousing requirements.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Snowflake is it's an all-in-one data warehousing solution. 

What needs improvement?

Snowflake could improve migration. It should be made easier. It would be beneficial if it could offer some OLTP features. One of our customers was using Oracle for both data warehousing and OLTP workloads, and they were able to migrate their data warehousing workloads to Snowflake without major issues. However, for some of their OLTP requirements, such as needing a response time of fewer than 10 milliseconds for certain queries, Snowflake is currently unable to provide that.

It would be beneficial to see more integration and reporting tools embedded within the platform, similar to what Microsoft offers with its data warehouse and database solutions. Oracle, on the other hand, does not have such features. While Snowflake has a lot of options available on its marketplace, it would be helpful if it could provide more optimal options for users who are migrating from other environments. It would be great if they could follow the same path as Microsoft in this regard.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for approximately one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Snowflake is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have two clients using this solution.

The solution is highly scalable.

How are customer service and support?

We don't have direct support for Snowflake as we support our clients. If any support is required, our clients connect with Snowflake's support team and get the necessary assistance. They own the support account.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Snowflake is easy. We only need to create a login, there is no conventional setup.

When it comes to migrating from a previous platform to Snowflake, it largely depends on the size of the data warehouse, the number of integrations, the existing data pipelines, and the type of data sources. The complexity and size of the current deployment will determine how difficult the migration process will be.

What was our ROI?

The ROI appears good on paper, particularly in terms of cost reduction in operations. However, as companies have only been using Snowflake for a year and it's hard to say for sure. It looks promising for now, but it will take a year or so to see if it holds up in practice.

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

Snowflake is a cloud-based solution that uses a pay-as-you-go model. The storage and processing are separated, and you are mainly charged for the processing power you use. Additionally, there is a charge for storage, but the primary cost comes from the processing. You can choose different sizes of processing units, also known as warehouses, for your specific workload or requirements. You pay for the per-second utilization of those computing resources.

Snowflake is cost-effective. However, the cost can depend on how it's being used and how efficiently the code is written. If engineers don't write efficient code and usage is billed based on processing, it can become costly. If they write optimal code and choose the best solution, it can reduce costs in comparison to other options, such as Oracle.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Snowflake 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
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it_user1251369 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal IT Technologist- BI Platform Architect at Medtronic
Real User
Data storage and analytics solution that offers value to our business through insights and its clone copy feature
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the clone copy."
  • "In a future release we would like to have a link which would allow us to connect to an external database and create certain views in your own database. This is because it is becoming hard for us to compare the data between multiple sources."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the clone copy.

What needs improvement?

In a future release we would like to have a link which would allow us to connect to an external database and create certain views in your own database. This is because it is becoming hard for us to compare the data between multiple sources.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for two 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?

The technical support of Snowflake is good. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI when using Snowflake based on the insights we get.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend the SaaS version for their organization. It is not complicated to use. Establishing a private link with current cloud services has been challenging so I would recommend having some kind of a block.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Varun Garg - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Vice President at Polestar Solutions & Services India Pvt Ltd
Reseller
Top 10
Good at autoscaling and has a nice time machine feature but they need to add a basic ETL framework
Pros and Cons
    • "It's difficult to know how to size everything correctly."

    What is our primary use case?

    We primarily use the solution for the data warehouse.

    What is most valuable?

    The solution offers everything you'd find on Azure or AWS. It has a lot of industry-standard features and capabilities.

    The product has excellent autoscaling. We can actually compute and scale-out at the same time without having to depend on other tools. You can do it on the fly, or within queries, etc.

    The Visual Copy Cloning is definitely one feature that everyone looks forward to due to the fact that it gives you regular backups. 

    The solution offers a very good time travel function that allows you to travel back in time to before your systems we corrupted. You can go back into your history and grab the last backup before corruption so that you regain almost everything you need. It gives you 90 days to fetch the data back if you need to. It's better than Azure options.

    What needs improvement?

    We've spoken with Snowflake about the fact that there are a few bare minimum requirements now these days for any data cloud, data lake, or platform. They've lacked a bit here, however, they're adopting some new measures that will be available in the next release, so that is sorted.

    Snowflake is partners with only AWS as a cloud platform. However, in India, Microsoft has got a big subscription. The product needs to be able to adapt to Azure a bit more in order to meet the local market demands. 

    It's difficult to know how to size everything correctly.

    They should incorporate at least a basic ETL framework.

    It's early days, however, I would put the solution at a seven out of ten. It needs a bit more time to mature. If I were to look at it strictly from a warehousing perspective, I'd rate it at an eight out of ten.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using the solution for about ten months. I started using it originally when we started our partnership with the organization.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The one thing that seems to be unclear for Snowflake customers is the cluster sizing. No one seems ot know how to compute that.

    For example, if I'm running a warehouse that is extra small, as per my query performance, if I see like if this query will run perfectly on the machine I will have. However, I don't know which machine to go for. There's no direct comparison between an extra small, or a small, or a medium warehouse. I never get to know, unless I run the case query on different sizes, which to go for. It's hard to say "Buy only this and go for that particular size". Sizing seems to be a bit of trial and error. If they had some sort of benchmarking around their cluster size, that would be helpful.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is pretty straightforward. We didn't have any issues with implementation. It's not too complex.

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

    The pricing of the solution is fine. The storage is pretty cheap. They also offer a lot of discounts. The cost shouldn't really be a problem. 

    That said, the agreement should be more of a subscription basis instead of asking for a commitment. For example, Microsoft tells your the price and allows you to subscribe to that, whereas, Snowflake wants you to commit to a certain amount of time before they really give you firm pricing. 

    What other advice do I have?

    We're partners with Snowflake. We've been partners for just under a year at this point.

    I'd definitely recommend the product. It's worked quite well for us. 

    A new customer needs to understand, however, that they need a roadmap of at least five years when they are deciding on their data warehouse. They should compare costs and sizing to make sure they are getting the solution that makes sense for their current and future needs. 

    The solution integrates well with other applications, and if you need it to integrate with existing applications, you still should check to make sure it's possible.

    I wouldn't necessarily recommend Azure over Snowflake, as they aren't really a good comparison. Snowflake is more focused on data repositories and data warehouses. AWS does give you many options, however.

    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
    NitinKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
    NitinKumarDirector of Enginnering at Sigmoid
    Real User

    Very good review on Snowflake, very helpful.

    SaravananThiagarajan - PeerSpot reviewer
    Data Scientist at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 10
    Good performance and it is easy to write queries
    Pros and Cons
    • "The querying speed is fast."
    • "We would like to have an on-premises deployment option that has the same features, including scalability."

    What is our primary use case?

    I work as a data scientist and our primary use of Snowflake is for machine learning.

    Recently, we were trying to extract data to determine the best configuration settings for one of our products.

    What is most valuable?

    As it is SQL-like, it is easy to write queries.

    The querying speed is fast.

    What needs improvement?

    We would like to have an on-premises deployment option that has the same features, including scalability.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been working with Snowflake for six or seven months.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    From what I have seen and heard, I think that Snowflake is pretty stable. I haven't faced any such problems, myself. I am not aware of the entirety of the lifecycle, but I haven't heard any complaints.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    My impression is that this product is pretty scalable.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    I have not been in contact with technical support, although my team has been and they are okay with it. My impression is that they are good.

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

    The pricing for Snowflake is competitive.

    What other advice do I have?

    My advice for anybody who is considering implementing Snowflake is that from a user's standpoint, it is a good product. Having a database in a cloud setup means that you don't have to scale and it has got many features already included.

    For our use case, we found this Snowflake was good enough and did not need any enhancements. I recommend using it.

    I would rate this solution a ten 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
    Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Stable and capable of processing data in bulk but needs to have SLAs in place
    Pros and Cons
    • "The solution is very stable."
    • "They don't have any SLAs in place. It would be better if they did."

    What is our primary use case?

    We primarily use the solution in order to have the daily transactions of trades. It's to manipulate and find out the benchmark of every broker and institutional manager.

    What is most valuable?

    The solution's most valuable aspect is the ability to process the bulk amount of data and try to clone the database. We try to clone the production database. Instead of syncing the whole database, we can just clone it up and start working on it. Basically, the cloning and the database are very user-friendly.

    The solution is very stable.

    What needs improvement?

    Right now, Snowflake doesn't have any analytical functions, especially in comparison to Oracle and other databases. The analytical performance needs to improve. It would be ideal if Snowflake was able to use the analytical functions, and what we have in the relational database. That would be really helpful. 

    They don't have any SLAs in place. It would be better if they did.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been working with the solution for two years now. The company, however, has been using it for three years at this point.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The solution is quite stable. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The solution is definitely scalable. We're able to add nodes to grow it out when we need to. If an organization needs to expand the solution, they can do so easily. We find it to be very reliable.

    There are about 300 people using the solution at this time. We don't plan on increasing usage at this time.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Technical support is very, very good. It's a responsive and knowledgable team. We're quite satisfied with the level of service we receive.

    That said, Snowflake technical support doesn't have any SLAs. If they had a small amount of SLAs, then it would be helpful for us to clear or solve any production issues, etc. that we may run into.

    How was the initial setup?

    We need about 50-60 people to maintain the solution.

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

    Snowflake's pricing is a bit higher than other competitors.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We were looking at Amazon Redshift previously. However, we decided that Snowflake was more reliable and scalable.

    What other advice do I have?

    We're a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the solution.

    Users considering adding the solution should understand that Snowflake can be used only for transactional processing, not for analytical processing. If they want to go for transaction processing, they can go for Snowflake and if they want to go for analytical processing, they should look at or go for an Oracle database.

    I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    DominicMackenzie - PeerSpot reviewer
    Senior data architect at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
    Real User
    Top 5Leaderboard
    It is very fast and the performance is great but has some technical quirks
    Pros and Cons
    • "It is very fast and the performance is great."
    • "It doesn't enforce typical relational database constraints. Quite expensive."

    What is our primary use case?

    I use it for data warehousing. I just design databases, put data in there, and get data out.

    What is most valuable?

    Although I haven't used it much, it is very fast and the performance is great.

    What needs improvement?

    It has some technical quirks that whoever is using it needs to be aware of. It doesn't enforce typical relational database constraints. If you're not aware of that, you can really put some bad data in there.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've been using it for about three months.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I would give it a ten out of ten. I haven't seen it failover.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I've never had any issues with it. It is being extensively used. We have between a hundred and a thousand users using Snowflake.

    How are customer service and support?

    I have not had any experience with customer support, but I've heard it's good.

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

    I've heard it's quite expensive.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would give Snowflake a seven out of ten.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Marketing Communications Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 10
    Configurable and scalable
    Pros and Cons
    • "The feature that is really striking is the ability to translate the SQL workloads into the NoSQL version that can be used by Snowflake."
    • "I have heard people having difficulty with the machine learning model, so there may be room for improvement."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use the solution to support our data infrastructure.

    What is most valuable?

    The feature that is really striking is the ability to translate the SQL workloads into the NoSQL version that can be used by Snowflake. We can configure the size of our workloads because Snowflake gives us control over the use of resources and costs.

    What needs improvement?

    I have heard people having difficulty with the machine learning model, so there may be room for improvement.

    The cost of the solution is high and has room for improvement.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using the solution for over one month.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

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

    The solution is expensive but worth the cost because the quality is there.

    What other advice do I have?

    I give the solution an eight out of ten.

    I advise people to do as much research as they can before utilizing the Snowflake.

    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
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Snowflake Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: January 2025
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Snowflake Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.