We use the solution to migrate data from old legacy ERP systems into Snowflake which reduces our work by 70 percent.
Principal Director at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Easy to use, stable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is easy to use."
- "The price could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The solution is easy to use. We have third-party integrations, which make it easy to migrate from our landing to our warehouse. Inside Snowflake, we can convert what we create, unlike other hyperscalers.
What needs improvement?
The price could be improved. The more data we consume, the higher the cost becomes. Our licensing will also increase. How can we use our licensing system effectively? We have expertise and experience in different implementations, and we have control of our licensing. Therefore, there is an accelerator that allows us to control these effective methods of licensing.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for three years.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have had no issues with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I give the scalability an eight out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not complex.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is costly, making it unsuitable for midsize organizations due to its price.
I give the cost of the solution a seven out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
I give the solution an eight out of ten.
For organizations that do not wish to be confined to one type of hyperscalar, such as VM Azure, I recommend Snowflake as it provides greater flexibility.
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
Marketing Communications Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
Buyer's Guide
Snowflake
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Snowflake. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
823,875 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sr Lead Data & Information Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Easy to use, flexible, and very stable
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is very easy to use."
- "The solution needs more connectors."
What is our primary use case?
The solution is primarily used as a data warehouse.
What is most valuable?
The solution is very easy to use.
The product is very stable and flexible. The performance is good.
The product is quite scalable.
What needs improvement?
The solution needs to offer more functionality related to machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The solution needs more connectors.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for close to two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable and extremely reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of the solution is very good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so with ease.
We have about 100 people on the product currently.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support overall has been good. They are helpful and responsive. We have no complaints.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have some experience with Teradata.
How was the initial setup?
There is no installation process, as it is run as software as a service on the cloud.
For deployment, I would say two to five people would be enough. It depends on the size of the project and can have from one person to 20 people supporting it. It really depends on the implementation. The people would likely be admins, engineers, and managers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product requires the purchase of an annual license.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing this solution, we looked at SQL Server and Teradata.
What other advice do I have?
We're customers and end-users.
We're using the latest version of the solution. I can't speak to the exact version number.
I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been mostly very happy with its capabilities.
I'd recommend the solution to other users and companies.
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.
Founder & CIO at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Reasonable pricing with a straightforward setup and a good user experience
Pros and Cons
- "The technical support on offer is excellent."
- "There are always a few operation updates here and there that can be made."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution to build some cost-effective solutions for a data warehouse, mostly for all non-transactional data.
What is most valuable?
The solution is very fast. It's not clunky or slow.
The product, overall, is quite inexpensive. It's very cheap to use.
The solution is extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate. The user experience is very good.
The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's simple.
We found that the initial setup was pretty easy.
The solution has been stable and has provided good overall performance.
A company can easily scale the solution. It's not too difficult to pull off.
The technical support on offer is excellent. They're helpful for the most part.
What needs improvement?
There are always a few operation updates here and there that can be made. However, overall, there aren't any features or glaring shortcomings. It's pretty good. We can't complain.
While the solution is quite inexpensive, there is always a push from clients that want it to be cheaper in the future.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have about six years' worth of experience with the product. I've been using it for a while. I'm comfortable with its aspects. I've used it over the last 12 months as well.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. The performance is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product scales quite well. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so without any problem.
We deal mostly with clients that have medium to large-scale organizations. It works well for both.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support has been excellent. I'd rate them nine out of ten. They are knowledgeable and responsive. We are quite happy with the level of assistance we receive if we need help.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We've used a few other solutions including MySQL and a few other notable databases.
Right now, we are looking for some other options as well.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is quite simple. It's a straightforward process. It's not overly complex. A company shouldn't have any issues with the implementation process.
What about the implementation team?
We are implementors. We can implement the solution for clients if they need us to.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product is very reasonably priced. It's quite cheap to use. It's less expensive than, for example, Oracle.
What other advice do I have?
We are implementors of the solution.
We are using previous versions of the solution. It may not necessarily be the latest version all the time.
I'd advise other organizations to try it out and play with it a bit to see if it would fit their needs.
Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been mostly very happy with it.
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?
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
R&D Operations Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
You can assign roles and responsibilities, limiting access to data
Pros and Cons
- "I like the idea that you can assign roles and responsibilities, limiting access to data."
- "If you go with one cloud provider, you can't switch."
What is our primary use case?
We are a big data company. We have many thousands of devices deployed from our customer base. These devices upload data, on an hourly basis, to a central storage. Next, we run some ETF processes that crunch and process data, then we store that data in a structured way on Snowflake.
Over the past six months, it has been more of a development project.
I am using the latest version.
What is most valuable?
- I like the idea that you can assign roles and responsibilities, limiting access to data. That has been very interesting to us.
- The robustness of the system is very useful to us.
- The availability of the system.
What needs improvement?
We would like Snowflake to be able to do inter-cloud migrations. That would be great. I want to be able to switch clouds.
For how long have I used the solution?
Six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
If you go with one cloud provider, you can't switch.
We have very few users. There is just a very limited number who are mostly developers. We did not roll out the end product. We did not roll out product and services based on that foundation/infrastructure yet.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have not personally contacted technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used HPE and Microsoft Insight. We switched to Snowflake for the availability, security, and loading times.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was very straightforward. It was very quick. The complexity came from our specific use case scenario.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We also looked at HPE and Microsoft Insight.
What other advice do I have?
Analyze your user scenario. If your scenario is managing large amounts of data in extremely, different environments in a structured way, then this is a good option.
I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10).
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.
Director Consultoria at tecnoscala consulting
Simple importing, but reporting and documentation could improve
Pros and Cons
- "Once you have finished your designs they can be easily imported to Snowflake and the information can be readily accessed without an IT expert."
- "The documentation could improve. They should provide architecture information."
What is our primary use case?
We use Snowflake for data warehouse modeling and reports.
What is most valuable?
Once you have finished your designs they can be easily imported to Snowflake and the information can be readily accessed without an IT expert.
What needs improvement?
The documentation could improve. They should provide architecture information.
There could be better integration with tools other than the common databases used to receive data. There are other tools that have ETL tools within, such as Tableau. You are able to work with information prior to sending it to Tableau. This feature would be nice to have in a tool from Snowflake.
In a future release, they should make it easier to do reporting. A drag and drop type feature would be good. If not a drag and drop feature, there should be some other easier way to do it than it is now.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Snowflake for approximately six months.
How are customer service and support?
The experience that we have had until now is that we can use the Snowflake very well from the videos on the web. The knowledge that our company already has regarding this solution has helped. We are producing some very sophisticated solutions. There is plenty of material on the web that you would be able to have lessons and learn.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have worked a lot with Tableau previously.
How was the initial setup?
We deploy the solution on-premises because we are developers, the customer is the one who has it on the Cloud. We helped them with the on-premises deployment and then we install the software and we deployed our solutions made on-premises. We complete any changes that need to be done in order to work in the customer's landscape.
The time of the deployment depends on the solution the customer requires. If it's a small solution, typically it will take approximately two weeks. A medium solution, that takes from two weeks to eight weeks. However, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish with the solution. If you are trying to do a very complex data warehouse, it's not the tool that times the most time, it's the analysis and design that takes the most time for deployment. Once that you have the analysis, design, and you transport them to Snowflake this is not difficult.
In any BI solution, you have a lot of changes because of what you need to do with the end-users, there are a lot of changes to the end-user. This can also take up some time for the deployment for the first time. It can take two to six weeks for a medium-sized project.
What about the implementation team?
On average a small project can take three people. That's in small BI projects, in some customers that we have the project takes a maximum of six weeks in order to have all the data fields. This is not for a whole data warehouse but for sales and customers. Those are all small to medium-sized projects, that require three people maximum for deployment. You might always want to have in addition, an analyst and the senior architect.
Most of our team are technicians.
What other advice do I have?
Snowflake has a lot of capabilities and performance. However, the tool is not a silver bullet and can do everything. If you designed what you need according to the tool, then everything is going to be okay.
This is true for any tool. Many people start the projects without validating what they are going to expect to have at the end, they receive a big surprise. They were thinking that the tool has this capability and it doesn't have it or perhaps it has the capability but the design you have does not work correctly.
If you see the percentage of projects in the different customers in many places, such as in Mexico, Florida, and Miami. Snowflake is a tool that is currently being used but has not been in the past. There is not a lot of history.
I rate Snowflake a six out of ten.
We have not used Snowflake long enough to better rate it. If we had a lot more formal education or had more information or reference manuals our experience would be better.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Consultant
Sr. Technical Architect - Business Intelligence / Data Warehouse at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
A stable and scalable solution with very good memory management and easy installation
Pros and Cons
- "Snowflake is a database, and it is very good and useful. The most interesting part is that memory management is very good in Snowflake. For a business intelligence project, SQL Server is taking a lot of time for reporting services. There are a lot of calculations, and the reporting time is shown as two minutes, whereas Snowflake is taking just two seconds for the same reporting services."
- "For the Snowflake database, there should be some third-party features for the ETL. It would also be good to be able to use some kind of controls to get the data either from another database or a flat file. Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper than Microsoft."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution for business intelligence. We have three persons in the team for developing the end product.
What is most valuable?
Snowflake is a database, and it is very good and useful. The most interesting part is that memory management is very good in Snowflake. For a business intelligence project, SQL Server is taking a lot of time for reporting services. There are a lot of calculations, and the reporting time is shown as two minutes, whereas Snowflake is taking just two seconds for the same reporting services.
What needs improvement?
For the Snowflake database, there should be some third-party features for the ETL. It would also be good to be able to use some kind of controls to get the data either from another database or a flat file.
Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper than Microsoft.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for eight to ten months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
Their technical support is good. I always get a response from them when I send an email to their support team.
How was the initial setup?
It is very easy to install. After the installation, you just have to input some information into the Snowflake database. It is very easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper than Microsoft.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution. I would rate Snowflake an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
Data Architect and ETL Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
A stable data warehousing solution that is simple to set up and has good support
Pros and Cons
- "The initial setup is very simple."
- "We would like to see more security including more masking and more encryption at the database level."
What is our primary use case?
We use Snowflake for data warehousing.
What needs improvement?
We would like to see more security including more masking and more encryption at the database level.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Snowflake for three months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability-wise, this product is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Snowflake is quite scalable. We have four people who are using it.
How are customer service and technical support?
So far, technical support has been good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very simple.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for anybody who is implementing Snowflake is to start small, then prove out the value and you can grow.
I would rate this solution an eight 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.
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Updated: November 2024
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