Amazon Redshift Reviews

Name: Amazon Redshift
Brand: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Rating: 3.9 (71 reviews)

3.9 out of 5

71 reviews
86% willing to recommend

1,160 followers

What is Amazon Redshift?

Amazon Redshift is a fully administered, petabyte-scale cloud-based data warehouse service. Users are able to begin with a minimal amount of gigabytes of data and can easily scale up to a petabyte or more as needed. This will enable them to utilize their own data to develop new intuitions on how to improve business processes and client relations.

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Amazon Redshift is the #6 ranked solution in top Cloud Data Warehouse solutions. PeerSpot users give Amazon Redshift an average rating of 7.8 out of 10. Amazon Redshift is most commonly compared to Azure Data Factory: Amazon Redshift vs Azure Data Factory. Amazon Redshift is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 45% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a educational organization, accounting for 35% of all views.

Helped 859,687 peers since 2012

Featured Amazon Redshift reviews

Sriram-Natesan

Tech Lead at Impetus

Improvement in the immediate response and the process of getting into a call could be helpful. We have had to wait for at least twenty-four hours to get a call and then wait for a couple more hours for a solution. Improved connectivity to different BI tools and already published connectors for major tools in AWS could enhance the service.

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FNU AKSHANSH

Senior Data Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

The tool is the one place where the company’s data is stored. We use it extensively. Previously, we had data in multiple databases and structures. Since we started using Redshift, everything is in one place. We have multiple supporting layers and dashboards connected directly to Redshift. It helps and supports all the different businesses.

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Ved Prakash Yadav

Senior Data Platform Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

In terms of improvement, I believe Amazon Redshift could work on reducing its costs, as they tend to increase significantly. Additionally, there are occasional issues with nodes going down, which can be problematic. We often encounter issues like someone dropping a column or changing the order of columns, which can cause synchronization problems when pushing data through our pipeline. It's a minor issue, but it can be annoying.

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Amazon Redshift mindshare

As of July 2025, the mindshare of Amazon Redshift in the Cloud Data Warehouse category stands at 7.5%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse

PeerResearch reports based on Amazon Redshift reviews

Type	Title	Date
Category	Cloud Data Warehouse	Jul 2, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Jul 2, 2025	Download
Comparison	Amazon Redshift vs Snowflake	Jul 2, 2025	Download
Comparison	Amazon Redshift vs Azure Data Factory	Jul 2, 2025	Download
Comparison	Amazon Redshift vs BigQuery	Jul 2, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Azure Data Factory	4.0	7.5%	92%	91 interviews Add to research
Teradata	4.1	9.1%	87%	76 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

Amazon Redshift is valued for its scalability, allowing users to manage enormous datasets efficiently. Its fast query performance, thanks to columnar storage and Massively Parallel Processing (MPP), enhances data loading and processing speed. Redshift supports multiple data formats and integrates seamlessly within the AWS ecosystem. The flexibility and ease of scaling, alongside cost-effectiveness, make it appealing. Its managed infrastructure ensures users focus on analytics rather than maintenance.

"The most valuable features of Amazon Redshift include everything being integrated within Amazon, making it really easy to run queries faster, allowing us to retrieve data as soon as possible compared to other tools."
"I would rate Amazon Redshift a ten on a scale of one to ten."
"With the tools we have, Amazon Redshift has the features to query efficiently."

Room for Improvement

Amazon Redshift experiences delays in snapshot restoration for large datasets, lacks AWS IAM security integration, and has limited real-time data integration. Users find its ETL process challenging, face compatibility issues with traditional RDBMS, and encounter poor performance in query execution and data vacuuming. It lacks certain SQL functions and needs improvements in database connectors, GUI, and pricing. Redshift's scalability and support for unstructured data could also be enhanced, along with better customer support and integration with third-party tools.

"During the setup, whenever we try to give any permissions, if I have a data warehouse in Amazon Redshift and want to provide access to a user to just check the data without making any changes, it is a long process to create a policy in Amazon and share it with that policy."
"Pricing needs improvement as the solution is expensive."
"I rate their support seven out of ten. It's costly when you enable support. The price is high for technical support."

ROI

Organizations indicate that calculating ROI specific to Amazon Redshift is challenging due to its integration with other tools. While some note significant returns after moving to a cloud-based platform, others mention the costs increasing with usage. The addition of BI capabilities with Redshift has enhanced competitiveness and sales. However, effectiveness diminishes without sufficient data, and in some cases, previous databases outperformed Redshift. Many are still gathering data to assess its financial impact.

Pricing

Amazon Redshift's pricing is perceived as relatively high, with users advising cost-saving practices like starting small and using features like snapshotting to optimize costs. The pricing model offers flexibility through pay-as-you-go and reserved instances, making it suitable for scaling needs. While considered cost-effective for enterprises, smaller businesses might find it expensive, particularly compared to competitors like BigQuery. Licenses are billed monthly, with discounts for annual commitments, and users highlight its balance between cost and performance.

"It is an expensive product."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The product is quite expensive."

Popular Use Cases

Companies use Amazon Redshift for storing and querying data, creating data warehouses, and supporting analytics and business intelligence efforts. It provides a centralized location for merging data from diverse sources, facilitating machine learning and predictive modeling. Users export data to external tools like Tableau and Power BI for further analysis and reporting. Organizations upload transactional data for reporting and employ it in data science projects, benefiting from its ability to handle vast structured datasets.

Service and Support

Amazon Redshift's customer service is responsive and helpful, with timely assistance for most inquiries. Technical support varies depending on the subscription plan, often rated highly for basic issues but less consistently for advanced problems. Users note that assistance is paid and sometimes costly. Communication channels primarily include web UI interactions, as direct calls are often unavailable. Some users experience delays, but prompt resolution is frequently reported when dealing with technical challenges.

Deployment

Amazon Redshift's initial setup is often seen as straightforward and simple, especially for those familiar with AWS. Users find it beneficial as a managed service, requiring minimal installation steps. However, some note challenges with complex configurations, particularly for those unfamiliar with AWS or Redshift specifics. Setting up ETLs and migrating data from other sources like MongoDB can be demanding. Prior knowledge and documentation can expedite the process, with sizing and permissions sometimes complicating deployment.

Scalability

Amazon Redshift is highly scalable according to user input. It allows easy adjustments in cluster size on AWS with simple clicks, meeting varying data processing needs. Some users noted potential issues with response times at very large scales and query efficiency impacting scalability. It is mostly favored across different businesses, from small to enterprise levels, handling scalability effectively. Users find its serverless capabilities beneficial, allowing dynamic adjustments based on resource needs.

Stability

Amazon Redshift's stability is generally good, although experiences vary. Many users report no issues, praising its reliability and rating it highly. Some note stability improvements over time, yet others encounter problems, particularly with larger or overloaded clusters. A few mention issues like hardware failures or complex query handling. AWS support is often seen as responsive. While stable for many, certain cases reveal challenges, highlighting the need for monitoring and optimization for consistent performance.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Amazon Redshift Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Review data by company size

By reviewers

By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

35%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Transportation Company

Retailer

University

Healthcare Company

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Performing Arts

Real Estate/Law Firm

Media Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Hospitality Company

Construction Company

Legal Firm

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Outsourcing Company

Wholesaler/Distributor

Non Profit

Logistics Company

Consumer Goods Company

Compare Amazon Redshift with alternative products

Learn more about Amazon Redshift

Initially, users start to develop a data warehouse by initiating what is called an Amazon Redshift cluster or a set of nodes. Once the cluster has been provisioned, users can seamlessly upload data sets, and then begin to perform data analysis queries. Amazon Redshift delivers super-fast query performance, regardless of size, utilizing the exact SQL-based tools and BI applications that most users are already working with today.

The Amazon Redshift service performs all of the work of setting up, operating, and scaling a data warehouse. These tasks include provisioning capacity, monitoring and backing up the cluster, and applying patches and upgrades to the Amazon Redshift engine.

Amazon Redshift Functionalities

Amazon Redshift has many valuable key functionalities. Some of its most useful functionalities include:

Cluster administration: The Amazon Redshift cluster is a group of nodes that contains a leader node and one (or more) compute node(s). The compute nodes needed are dependent on the data size, amount of queries needed, and the query execution functionality desired.
Cluster snapshots: Snapshots are backups of a cluster from an exact point in time. Amazon Redshift offers two types of snapshots: manual and automated. Amazon will store these snapshots internally in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) utilizing an SSL connection. Whenever a Snapshot restore is needed, Amazon Redshift will create a new cluster and will import data from the snapshot as directed.
Cluster access: Amazon Redshift provides several intuitive features to help define connectivity rules, encrypt data and connections, and control the overall access of your cluster.
IAM credentials and AWS accounts: The Amazon Redshift cluster is only accessible by the AWS account that created the cluster. This automatically secures the cluster and keeps it safe. Inside the AWS account, users access the AWS Identity and IAM protocol to create additional user accounts and manage permissions, granting specified users the desired access needed to control cluster performance.
Encryption: Users have the option to choose to encrypt the clusters for additional added security once the cluster is provisioned. When encryption is enabled, Amazon Redshift will store all the data in user-created tables in a secure encrypted format. To manage Amazon Redshift encryption keys, users will access AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS).

Reviews from Real Users

“Redshift's versioning and data security are the two most critical features. When migrating into the cloud, it's vital to secure the data. The encryption and security are there.” - Kundan A., Senior Consultant at Dynamic Elements AS

“With the cloud version whenever you want to deploy, you can scale up, and down, and it has a data warehousing capability. Redshift has many features. They have enriched and elaborate documentation that is helpful.”- Aishwarya K., Solution Architect at Capgemini