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Amazon Redshift pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

3.9 out of 5

71 reviews
86% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Amazon Redshift offers strong performance, data compression, and scalability for significant data handling. Integration with AWS services like S3 enhances data management, while advanced analytics and query efficiencies suit large datasets. Competitive pricing and easy setup boost its appeal. However, query compilation time and handling unstructured data need improvement. Multibyte character set migration and integration costs present challenges, along with concerns about node stability.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon Redshift offers exceptional performance, scalability, and data compression capabilities, making it ideal for handling large datasets and complex queries.

The ability to integrate seamlessly with other AWS services and tools is a significant advantage, allowing users to leverage the entire AWS ecosystem effortlessly.

Machine learning capabilities and real-time analytics features in Amazon Redshift enable on-the-fly data analysis, adding value to data warehousing and business intelligence applications.

Amazon Redshift provides easy data migration from other databases, supported by dedicated migration tools that facilitate smooth transitions and automatic script conversion.

With its flexible and efficient data management abilities, Amazon Redshift supports parallel processing and can handle extensive data volumes, offering robust cluster and spectrum features.

CONS

Amazon Redshift's query compilation time requires significant improvement, particularly for dynamically generated queries.

Data migration challenges may arise, especially when dealing with multibyte character sets, and handling unstructured data has been found to be cumbersome and slow.

The pricing structure of Amazon Redshift is considered high compared to competitors, with customer support also cited for being costly and less responsive.

Handling concurrent queries results in poor performance, and there is a need for enhanced flexibility in processing different data formats effectively.

Amazon Redshift lacks features like a pivot function, cloning capabilities, and more comprehensive integration with non-AWS services, making it less competitive in certain scenarios.

Amazon Redshift Pros review quotes

Tamás Srancsik

Data Analyst Lead at Vectornator

Sep 7, 2023

The solution has very competitive pricing.

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LS

IoT Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 28, 2022

The main benefit is that our portal for end users is running in AWS, so we can easily connect it to other AWS services.

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reviewer2179353

Soullution Architech at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 9, 2023

Redshift has an advantage when it comes to administration, making it easier to manage and collaborate.

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BR

BarathwajRamamoorthy

Senior Director Data Architecture at Managed Markets Insight & Technology, LLC

Jul 27, 2023

Redshift allows you to transform different data formats and consolidate them into one Redshift cluster. This means you can transform various siloed data sources like Excel files and CSV files into Redshift.

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SN

Chief Executive Officer at Ampcome

Jun 21, 2020

The most valuable feature is the scalability, as it grows according to our needs.

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TD

Thomas Dallemagne

Cloud & Data - practice leader at Micropole Belgium

Jul 19, 2020

I like the cost-benefit ratio, meaning that it is as easy to use as it is powerful and well-performing.

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V.P. Digital Transformation at e-Zest Solutions

Jun 29, 2022

It's scalable because it's on the cloud.

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Project Manager at Softway

Feb 13, 2023

Though Amazon Redshift is good, it depends on what kind of business you're trying to do, what type of analytics you need, and how much data you have.

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Venkata Maniteja Alapati

Senior Director of Product Management at Sprinklr

Apr 4, 2024

Redshift is a major service of Amazon and is very scalable. It enables faster recalculations and data management, helping to retrieve data quickly.

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GV

Girubakaran Velusamy

Data Engineer at GISbiz

Jun 13, 2024

With the APIs that are available, it can be easily integrated with other tools.

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Amazon Redshift Cons review quotes

Tamás Srancsik

Data Analyst Lead at Vectornator

Sep 7, 2023

It would be good to see Redshift as a serverless offering.

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LS

IoT Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 28, 2022

For people who struggle with IAM or role-based management, the setup isn't easy.

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reviewer2179353

Soullution Architech at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 9, 2023

Amazon Redshift does not have the capability to dynamically increase the VM file.

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Amazon Redshift

Free Report: Amazon Redshift Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Amazon Redshift. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.

862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.

BR

BarathwajRamamoorthy

Senior Director Data Architecture at Managed Markets Insight & Technology, LLC

Jul 27, 2023

One area where Amazon Redshift could improve is in adopting the compute-separate, data-separate architecture, which Delta, Snowflake are adopting, and a few others in the cloud data warehouse spectrum.

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SN

Chief Executive Officer at Ampcome

Jun 21, 2020

The OLAP slide and dice features need to be improved.

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TD

Thomas Dallemagne

Cloud & Data - practice leader at Micropole Belgium

Jul 19, 2020

There are too many limitations with respect to concurrency.

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V.P. Digital Transformation at e-Zest Solutions

Jun 29, 2022

I would like to improve the pricing and the simplicity of using this solution.

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Project Manager at Softway

Feb 13, 2023

If you require a highly scalable solution, I would not recommend Amazon Redshift.

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Venkata Maniteja Alapati

Senior Director of Product Management at Sprinklr

Apr 4, 2024

When working with third-party services requires additional integrations and configurations, which can sometimes add more cost.

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GV

Girubakaran Velusamy

Data Engineer at GISbiz

Jun 13, 2024

It is not easy to deal with queries in Amazon Redshift and see the same data.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 62)

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Popular Comparisons

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