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Snowflake pros and cons

Vendor: Snowflake Computing

4.2 out of 5

104 reviews
97% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Snowflake's distributed architecture offers scalability, rapid data processing, and efficient handling of structured and semi-structured data. Its separate storage and compute ensure cost-effectiveness. Features like Time Travel and cloning enhance collaboration, while fast query responses integrate well with other systems. However, improvement is needed in geo-spatial queries, pricing, SQL-based stored procedures, ETL functionality, and tool integration. Excellent technical support adds to its cloud service appeal with minimal maintenance.

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 provides scalability and rapid data processing, making it capable of handling both structured and semi-structured data efficiently.

The separation of storage and compute in Snowflake enables independent scaling, ensuring cost-effectiveness and flexibility in resource management.

Data sharing features, such as Time Travel and cloning, allow for seamless data access and collaboration across various platforms, enhancing business operations.

Snowflake is renowned for its outstanding performance, providing fast query responses and the ability to quickly integrate with other systems.

Technical support from Snowflake is highly regarded, contributing to its usability as a managed service in the cloud with minimal maintenance requirements.

CONS

Snowflake needs to enhance its support for geo-spatial queries as its spatial features are limited.

Pricing remains a significant issue, with many customers finding Snowflake expensive.

There is a need to improve support for SQL-based stored procedures to ease migration from on-prem solutions.

ETL functionality in Snowflake requires improvement; it is currently inadequate compared to other tools like Talend.

Integration with external tools and more robust connectors are areas where Snowflake can advance to enhance user experience.

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: January 2026.

882,606 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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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