Azure Data Factory vs. Snowflake

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Data Factory
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Data Factory is a service built for all data integration needs and skill levels. It is designed to allow the user to easily construct ETL and ELT processes code-free within the intuitive visual environment, or write one's own code. Visually integrate data sources using more than 80 natively built and maintenance-free connectors at no added cost. Focus on data—the serverless integration service does the rest.N/A
Snowflake
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
The Snowflake Cloud Data Platform is the eponymous data warehouse with, from the company in San Mateo, a cloud and SQL based DW that aims to allow users to unify, integrate, analyze, and share previously siloed data in secure, governed, and compliant ways. With it, users can securely access the Data Cloud to share live data with customers and business partners, and connect with other organizations doing business as data consumers, data providers, and data service providers.N/A
Pricing
Azure Data FactorySnowflake
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Data FactorySnowflake
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Data FactorySnowflake
Features
Azure Data FactorySnowflake
Data Source Connection
Comparison of Data Source Connection features of Product A and Product B
Azure Data Factory
9.0
Ratings
7% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Connect to traditional data sources9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Connecto to Big Data and NoSQL9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Transformations
Comparison of Data Transformations features of Product A and Product B
Azure Data Factory
8.5
Ratings
4% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Simple transformations9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Complex transformations8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Modeling
Comparison of Data Modeling features of Product A and Product B
Azure Data Factory
7.2
Ratings
10% below category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Data model creation8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Metadata management7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Business rules and workflow7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Testing and debugging7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Governance
Comparison of Data Governance features of Product A and Product B
Azure Data Factory
7.5
Ratings
8% below category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Integration with data quality tools7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with MDM tools8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Data FactorySnowflake
Small Businesses
Skyvia
Skyvia
Score 9.9 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.0 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.0 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Data FactorySnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Data FactorySnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
In a data pipeline, you will be able to add different kinds of activities for example connect from your on-premise SFTP and move CSV files to storage accounts. As well data factory has its own data flow if you are an ETL developer who experimented with maybe you have worked with SSIS, thus, you will start quickly with this new feature of the data factory.
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If you need a quick query, snowflake is the way to go. It's super simple and scalable; we were struggling before with Azure, and with Snowflake, everything runs smoothly, and we have more control over our schemas and warehouses. Snowflake, in my opinion, is the next step when you want to scale your business and manage data. If your company is still small, there may be cheaper options.
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Pros
  • Creating ETL and ELT workflows as well as orchestrating and monitoring pipelines without writing any code.
  • Hybrid data integration is easily and agilely possible through this software.
  • It has lot of various useful components
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  • Snowflake scales appropriately allowing you to manage expense for peak and off peak times for pulling and data retrieval and data centric processing jobs
  • Snowflake offers a marketplace solution that allows you to sell and subscribe to different data sources
  • Snowflake manages concurrency better in our trials than other premium competitors
  • Snowflake has little to no setup and ramp up time
  • Snowflake offers online training for various employee types
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Cons
  • Learning curve for pipeline creation interface.
  • Alerting isn't necessarily built in. Had to work around this to meet team needs.
  • With GIT enabled, some features can only be done via git, while some need to be done via the portal.
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  • Add constraints for views and not just for tables
  • Do not force customers to renew for same or higher amount to avoid loosing unused credits. Already paid credits should not expire (at least within a reasonable time frame), independent of renewal deal size.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
SnowFlake is very cost effective and we also like the fact we can stop, start and spin up additional processing engines as we need to. We also like the fact that it's easy to connect our SQL IDEs to Snowflake and write our queries in the environment that we are used to
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Usability
So far product has performed as expected. We were noticing some performance issues, but they were largely Synapse related. This has led to a shift from Synapse to Databricks. Overall this has delayed our analytic platform. Once databricks becomes fully operational, Azure Data Factory will be critical to our environment and future success.
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The interface is similar to other SQL query systems I've used and is fairly easy to use. My only complaint is the syntax issues. Another thing is that the error messages are not always the easiest thing to understand, especially when you incorporate temp tables. Some of that is to be expected with any new database.
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Support Rating
We have not had need to engage with Microsoft much on Azure Data Factory, but they have been responsive and helpful when needed. This being said, we have not had a major emergency or outage requiring their intervention. The score of seven is a representation that they have done well for now, but have not proved out their support for a significant issue
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We have had terrific experiences with Snowflake support. They have drilled into queries and given us tremendous detail and helpful answers. In one case they even figured out how a particular product was interacting with Snowflake, via its queries, and gave us detail to go back to that product's vendor because the Snowflake support team identified a fault in its operation. We got it solved without lots of back-and-forth or finger-pointing because the Snowflake team gave such detailed information.
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Alternatives Considered
Azure Data Factory fits well into our overall systems architecture where we already utilize largely Azure services and also Microsoft based products in the on-premises environment. I think cost structure is also very competitive with Azure Data Factory. Most services provide a visual interface for designing ETL workflows, but our team found Azure Data Factory's interface more intuitive.
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Snowflake provides various features, such as integration with Python using Snowpark. The reporting feature that caters to your small reporting needs is Snowsight. The Snowflake data marketplace is where you can get multiple data for free and even some of the data which you can buy according to your needs. And the integration options with various tools like Sigma are add-ons.
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Return on Investment
  • Limiting the amount of data moving up and down from the cloud for cloud-native applications.
  • Overall simple to use interface which is actually easier for a first time ETL developer than SSIS.
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  • With separate compute and storage feature, the queries get executed quickly and it improves our overall productivity.
  • Earlier we were using a different product for analytical purposes, but with Snowflake's in-built analytical feature we are now able to save money.
  • Snowflake is cost efficient, features like auto suspend for compute resources helped to control the costs.
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ScreenShots

Snowflake Screenshots

Screenshot of Snowflake Installation