Snowflake Reviews

We're running a POC to test scalability, performance, on-demand resource management, workload management, et cetera. The security aspect will also be important for us.

The product offers a lot of great features.

Architectural-wise, it's got great architecture. That's what we are looking for. It's kind of decoupled from storage and has virtual warehouses. We like that we can travel and keep things virtual. For us, the virtual warehousing is likely the most valuable aspect. You can spin up as many virtual warehouses that you want. That's quite useful as a feature.

I haven't found that the solution is lacking any features. It's quite complete.

I would like to see a client version of the GUI. Right now, it is a web GUI, which has stored the SQL, the worksheets. We are asking for that from Snowflake. We'd like to understand how can we save these worksheets on our local desktop. That is not there at this point.

I've been using the solution for about the past year as part of a POC.

In the past, we've used an SQL server. On the cloud side of it, we do have some experience. Snowflake, however, is the new data warehouse solution that we are looking into it.

If necessary, we may have to get into Synapse, and do a kind of a pilot project with that as well. We may evaluate them both to see which is better. We are not there yet. We are just working on Snowflake.

We are a direct customer and end-user.

We've been using the solution during a POC for the last year or so. It's a pilot project to test its feasibility for our company. We're just starting to get performance stats and stuff like that.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we are currently using. I don't recall the exact version number. Usually, people are running the latest version. Whatever the latest available option is is likely the number we are on.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We're still in the POC phase, however, based on what we have seen, we are quite satisfied.

We have different data models established on Snowflake so our primary use case is to store data from different sources, such as Azure Data Factory, or Databricks. We use it to create the data coming from different sources, and then we store the data. In addition, we also have a reporting structure that we use. We are partners with Snowflake and I'm a lead data engineer. 

The most valuable feature of Snowflake is the Mbps they have established because it's quite a bit faster than any other data warehouse. The solution has different warehouse sizes in place, and we're able to switch through and choose what we want. It can be done in one or two seconds. In other data warehouses, it may take around one minute to set up a different configuration. In Snowflake, it can be done in, two or three seconds. And apart from that, the most important thing given that I have to analyze all this, is that it's very good with the time travel, it's a great feature. 

One thing which I believe Snowflake needs to improve is related to product activation queries. It's not possible to change the warehouse size while executing. It means, for example, that the query is sometimes activated on a larger surface even if I've switched to extra small, the grading in the background is running on extra large. The result is that I have to pay for extra large until the execution is complete. The cost implications can be quite large. There should be a system where they provide a prompt so you can know the current warehouse size.

It would also be helpful if they would simplify the process of using Snowpipe. The way it works now is quite complicated. There are certain steps that you have to follow which is fine but if they could simplify that process, it would be helpful. 

I've been using this solution for a year. 

I've only had one issue related to stability in the past year. 

It's a scalable solution, we have unlimited storage in Snowflake.

The technical support is quite good. We've used them when we've had to implement something and we need some guidance.

The amount of data which we are currently handling, cannot be handled yet in any other data warehouse, but we do have experience with Azure Data Warehouse. We don't have to manage anything with Snowflake, but with Azure we do. Snowflake is much faster, and I believe it is cheaper as well. They have developed it on top of their own system and integrated the concept.

The initial setup is straightforward. It doesn't require any hardware. It's just about getting the account access and having a browser. Everything is done by Snowflake. There is a set process that you need to follow. It is a really fast process, and it helps that the entire migration can be done within minutes. The solution is used on a daily basis by hundreds of people. 

It's pay-as-you-go with Snowflake. The cost is around $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month. There are no additional costs. They are divided into two steps to assist the computer power as well as the storage power. Computation cost is relative to the warehouse size. However long our warehouse is up and running, we are charged.

I would definitely recommend this solution. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We use the product as a data warehouse.

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.

I have been working with the solution for two years.

The solution is stable.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have used this solution for two years.

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The technical support of Snowflake is good. 

Positive

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

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. 

We primarily use the solution for the data warehouse.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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. 

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.

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.

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

The querying speed is fast.

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

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

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.

My impression is that this product is pretty scalable.

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.

The pricing for Snowflake is competitive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I've been using it for about three months.

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

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

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

I've heard it's quite expensive.

I would give Snowflake a seven out of ten.