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Snowflake pros and cons

Vendor: Snowflake Computing

4.2 out of 5

103 reviews
97% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Snowflake's distributed architecture offers high scalability, enabling independent scaling of compute and storage. It supports structured and semi-structured data, beneficial for data warehouses and data lakes. It excels in ease of setup, performance, and integration. However, enhancements are needed in spatial query support, system integration connectors, pricing transparency, and SQL migration. It lacks on-premises deployment and comprehensive third-party integration options, affecting ETL functionalities. Users appreciate its flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and query speed.

Buyer's Guide

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

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Snowflake's distributed architecture enables fast processing of large datasets with the ability to scale up and down as needed.

The separation of compute and storage allows independent scaling, enhancing flexibility and cost-efficiency.

Data sharing features, including inbound and outbound sharing, facilitate easy access and collaboration on datasets across platforms.

Snowflake provides strong performance and speed, reducing query times significantly compared to other platforms.

With its support for unstructured data and multiple data engines, Snowflake efficiently handles diverse data types and processing needs.

CONS

Snowflake needs to enhance its geo-spatial query capabilities and spatial features.

Pricing remains a significant challenge for many Snowflake users.

Migration from other data warehouses is not seamless and could benefit from improvements.

Snowflake lacks support for SQL-based stored procedures, requiring users to use JavaScript.

Additional ETL functionality and more native connectors are needed within Snowflake.

Snowflake Pros review quotes

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

Jul 27, 2018

The distributed architecture of Snowflake has the capacity to process huge datasets faster and allows us to scale up and down according to our needs.

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VG

Valai Gunapalan

Architect at Sony Corporation of America

Aug 2, 2019

As long as you don't need to worry about the storage or cost, this solution would be one of the best ones on the market for scalability purposes.

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Business Intelligence Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Oct 10, 2019

The most valuable features are the clustering, LS50, being able to change the size, the pay per use feature, the flexibility with many different sources and analytic applications.

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reviewer1175826

Data & Analytics Practitioner at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 21, 2019

They separate compute and storage. You can scale storage independently of the computer, or you can scale computing independently of storage. If you need to buy more computer parts you can add new virtual warehouses in Snowflake. Similarly, if you need more storage, you take more storage. It's most scalable in the database essentially; typically you don't have this scalability independence on-premises.

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Data Engineer at Celebal Technologies

Dec 5, 2019

The initial setup is straightforward. You just need to follow the documentation.

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Vice President of Business Intelligence and Data Engineering at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Dec 12, 2019

The thing I find most valuable is that scalability, space storage, and computing power is separate. When you scale up, it is live from one second to the next — constantly available as you scale — so there is no downtime or interruption of services.

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Principal IT Technologist- BI Platform Architect at Medtronic

Jun 1, 2020

The snapshot feature is good, the rollback feature is good and the interface is user-friendly.

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Sr. Consultant cum Assistant Manager & Offshore Lead at Deloitte

Jan 9, 2020

It has great flexibility whenever we are loading data and performs ELT (extract, load, transform) techniques instead of ETL.

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reviewer1077408

R&D Operations Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 15, 2020

I like the idea that you can assign roles and responsibilities, limiting access to data.

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reviewer1364460

Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jun 15, 2020

From a data warehouse perspective, it's an excellent all-round solution. It's very complete.

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Snowflake Cons review quotes

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

Jul 27, 2018

Snowflake has to improve their spatial parts since it doesn't have much in terms of geo-spatial queries.

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VG

Valai Gunapalan

Architect at Sony Corporation of America

Aug 2, 2019

There are some stored procedures that we've had trouble with. The solution also needs to fine-tune the connectors to be able to connect into the system source.

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Business Intelligence Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Oct 10, 2019

Support needs improvement, as it can take several days before you get some initial support.

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Free Report: Snowflake Reviews and More

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

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reviewer1175826

Data & Analytics Practitioner at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 21, 2019

The solution should offer an on-premises version also. We have some requirements where we would prefer to use it as a template.

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Data Engineer at Celebal Technologies

Dec 5, 2019

The solution could improve the user interface and add functionality to the system.

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Vice President of Business Intelligence and Data Engineering at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Dec 12, 2019

Maybe there could be some more connectors to other systems, but this is what they are constantly developing anyway.

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Principal IT Technologist- BI Platform Architect at Medtronic

Jun 1, 2020

Availability is a problem.

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Sr. Consultant cum Assistant Manager & Offshore Lead at Deloitte

Jan 9, 2020

They do have a native connector to connect with integration tools for loading data, but it would be much better to have the functionality built-in.

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reviewer1077408

R&D Operations Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 15, 2020

If you go with one cloud provider, you can't switch.

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reviewer1364460

Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jun 15, 2020

The user interface continues to be an issue, especially when we need to get data out of Snowflake. It's very easy to get data in, but it's not too easy to get it out or extract it.

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