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Amazon Redshift pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

3.9 out of 5

72 reviews
87% 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.

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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

Big Data Solution Architect - Spatial Data Specialist at SCIERA, INC

Apr 10, 2017

With Amazon Redshift, we gained a lot in terms of timing, as well as project completion.

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Senior Engineer, Big-Data/Data-Warehousing at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 16, 2016

We found AWS Redshift to be the leader in capability and provides an ecosystem of related services from AWS, many of which are free.

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BI Architect & Developer (contract) at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 15, 2016

We imported 20 million rows of sales facts in less than 15 seconds, and the content was query-able immediately.

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Amazon Redshift

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Senior Software Engineer [Redshift Programmer] at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 22, 2016

As of now, Redshift is far better than the other products in the market.

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Rails Developer at a recruiting/HR firm with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2016

It is based on PostgreSQL, it’s managed so AWS takes care of handling infrastructure, deployments, encryption, and uptime for you, it’s cheap when you consider the price per terrabyte per year, and it’s integrated into the AWS stack.

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Data Science Lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2016

Redshift has been the data warehouse in at least three of my previous companies.

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Manager BI Development at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 22, 2016

All this at an extremely low price makes it possible for small to medium sized organizations to use Redshift’s power to get business insights.

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BI Architect at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 9, 2017

Based on quality of the product and its price, it is the one of the best options available in the market now.

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Director at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 23, 2017

AWS Redshift is one of the fastest and most cost-effective cloud-based databases.

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Full Stack Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Jun 22, 2017

The valuable features are performance, data compression, and scalability.

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Amazon Redshift Cons review quotes

Big Data Solution Architect - Spatial Data Specialist at SCIERA, INC

Apr 10, 2017

If we are in a rush to deliver something for a client and encountered these issue, we are really screwed.

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Senior Engineer, Big-Data/Data-Warehousing at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 16, 2016

Integrating database security/access rights with AWS IAM would be great.

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BI Architect & Developer (contract) at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 15, 2016

I’d like to see these RedShift features arrive in other languages, such as SQL's ColumnStore index.

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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: March 2026.

885,286 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Senior Software Engineer [Redshift Programmer] at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 22, 2016

There is a need for improvement in these aspects, mainly in the scope of data types and some complex functionalities which we can perform in RDBMS.

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Rails Developer at a recruiting/HR firm with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2016

The main issue people complain about, and I agree with the claim, is that it's hard to load your data into it.

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Data Science Lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2016

Currently, Amazon does not provide real-time or near real-time integration with other products like RDS or DynamoDB out-of-the-box.

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Manager BI Development at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 22, 2016

Amazon should bring more SQL functions that are required in data warehouse implementations.

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BI Architect at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 9, 2017

We did encounter stability issues, i.e., if you are using more than 25 nodes (ds2.xlarge), the cluster is totally unstable.

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Director at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 23, 2017

We would really like to see a few more connectors included that would enable connecting with other databases and services.

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Full Stack Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Jun 22, 2017

Query compilation time needs a lot of improvement for cases where you are generating queries dynamically.

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Cloud Data Warehouse

Database Management Systems (DBMS)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Cloud Data Warehouse

Database Management Systems (DBMS)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Databricks vs Amazon Redshift

Teradata vs Amazon Redshift

Azure Data Factory vs Amazon Redshift

Snowflake vs Amazon Redshift

Oracle Exadata vs Amazon Redshift

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs Amazon Redshift

OpenText Analytics Database (Vertica) vs Amazon Redshift

Dremio vs Amazon Redshift

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Amazon Redshift

IBM Netezza Performance Server vs Amazon Redshift

Amazon EMR vs Amazon Redshift

Apache Hadoop vs Amazon Redshift

Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs Amazon Redshift

SAP IQ vs Amazon Redshift

SAP BW4HANA vs Amazon Redshift

See all alternatives

Related questions

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