What users are saying about
44 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.7 out of 100
Based on 44 reviews and ratings
Top Rated
139 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.5 out of 100
Based on 139 reviews and ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon EMR
Amazon Elastic MapReduce is useful in cases where two conditions are met. First, that you are planning on using multiple big data tools simultaneously to analyze big data sets. And second, that you need a tool that simplifies managing big data tools. If these two conditions are met, MapReduce does a great job. The user interface is simple. The program eliminates some programming requirements. The software also makes setting up big data analyses much easier. With these benefits acknowledged, MapReduce is not a good tool for "small" data analyses, given that there are other tools that do the job quicker and much more professional output. If you're on the fence, try out MapReduce with competing "small" data tools and see if you really need big data software.
Owner, previous CEO
Econometric StudiosFinancial Services, 11-50 employees
Heroku Platform
Heroku is very well suited for startups looking to get a server stack up and running quickly. There is little to no overhead when managing your instances. However, you'll need a background in basic DevOps or system management to make sure everything is set up correctly. In addition, it's easy to accidentally go crazy on pricing. Make sure you're only creating the server instances you need to run the base application and set up an auto-scaler plugin to handle peaks.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Corporate
Financial Services Company, 11-50 employeesFeature Rating Comparison
Platform-as-a-Service
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
8.6
Ease of building user interfaces
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
8.7
Scalability
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
9.6
Platform management overhead
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
8.2
Workflow engine capability
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
8.4
Platform access control
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
8.2
Services-enabled integration
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
9.0
Development environment creation
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
9.1
Development environment replication
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
8.9
Issue monitoring and notification
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
7.8
Issue recovery
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
8.4
Upgrades and platform fixes
Amazon EMR
—
Heroku Platform
8.7
Pros
Amazon EMR
- Easier to implement than older on-premise solutions
- Works with open source technologies.
- Keeps processing cost low.
- It is flexible and works also for short term workloads and the pricing changes to that model.
Director of Customer Operations & Account Management
KoombeaInternet, 51-200 employees
Heroku Platform
- Heroku has a very simple deployment model, making it easy to get your application up-and-running with minimal effort. We can focus on our efforts the unique aspects of our application.
- The robust add-on marketplace makes it easy to try out new approaches with minimal effort and investment -- and when we settle on a solution, we can easily scale it.
- Heroku's support is quite good -- their staff is quite technical and willing to get into the weeds to diagnose even complicated problems.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Other
Consumer Services Company, 1-10 employeesCons
Amazon EMR
- It could have been more matured with machine learning capabilities.
- The support material available online on Elastic MapReduce is limited and we might end up spending more time in understanding/researching the tool.

Verified User
Analyst in Research & Development
Information Technology & Services Company, 1001-5000 employeesHeroku Platform
- Large price jumps between certain resource tiers (2x Dyno for $50 per month versus Performance Dyno for $250). Free Postgres next jumps to $50 per month.
- Marketing/Branding to non-technical stakeholders. As the years pass, I've had to fight more to convince stakeholders on the value of Heroku over AWS.
- Improve Buildpack documentation. This is one area where Heroku's documentation is fairly confusing.
Co-Creator
Flights MachineLeisure, Travel & Tourism, 1-10 employees
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon EMR
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.5
Based on 6 answers
Heroku is easy to use, services a ton of functions for you out of the box, and provides a means to get a software product off the ground and managed quickly and easily. The tools provide allows a small to medium size org to move very quickly. The CLI tools provided make managing an entire technical infrastructure simple.
Software Engineer
ShiptInternet, 51-200 employees
Usability
Amazon EMR
Amazon EMR 8.2
Based on 4 answers
I give Amazon EMR this rating because while it is great at simplifying running big data frameworks, providing the Amazon EMR highlights, product details, and pricing information, and analyzing vast amounts of data, it can be run slow, freeze and glitch sometimes. So overall Amazon EMR is pretty good to use other than some basic issues.

Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employeesHeroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.1
Based on 17 answers
Easy to use web based console and easy to use command line tools; deployment is done directly from a GIT repository. What more could you ask for?The one thing that keeps me from giving it a 10 is that custom build packs are almost incomprehensible. We used one for a while because we needed cairo graphics processing. Fortunately, I was able to figure out a different way to do what we needed so that we could get off the custom build pack.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Reliability and Availability
Amazon EMR
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 8.0
Based on 2 answers
Heroku availability correlates pretty strongly to AWS US EAST availability. We had a couple of times where there was a Heroku-specific issue but not for the last 7-8 months.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Performance
Amazon EMR
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.0
Based on 2 answers
The only issue that I ever have is that about 1 out of 20 deployments (git push) will hang and need to be cancelled and done again.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Support Rating
Amazon EMR
Amazon EMR 9.3
Based on 4 answers
AWS and EMR support are on par with the best out there. You pay a premium for the support but they can save you time and money by quickly resolving issues or helping you get your problem taken care of. They are competing with Google and MS, and it shows in their support.

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employeesHeroku Platform
Heroku Platform 8.6
Based on 38 answers
I've used it for many years without facing any major problem. It's not hard at all to get used to it, it's documentation is outstanding and simple. We are close to 2020 and I don't think most of the existing companies or startups should still face old problems such as wasting time deploying code and calculate computing resources.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Information Technology and Services Company, 1-10 employeesImplementation Rating
Amazon EMR
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.0
Based on 6 answers
Be ready to pay a bit more than expected in the beginning if you're migrating from a big server. The application is probably not ready for the change and you have to keep improving it with time.
It's also important to consider that you can't save anything to the disc as it will be lost when your application restarts, so you have to think about using something like S3.
Backend Engineer
DoistInternet, 11-50 employees
Alternatives Considered
Amazon EMR
The alternatives to EMR are mainly hadoop distributions owned by the 3 companies above. I have not used the other distributions so it is difficult to comment, but the general tradeoff is, at the cost of a longer setup time and more infra management, you get more flexible versioning and potentially faster access to newer versions of some frameworks such as Spark.

Verified User
Director in Engineering
Computer Software Company, 10,001+ employeesHeroku Platform
Heroku is the more expensive option for hosting compared to some of the cloud platforms we investigated, but it's worth it for us because of the plug-and-play nature of Heroku deployment. We can be up and running in a few minutes and know with precision how much it will cost us each month to run the application, unlike Amazon Web Services where you have to go to great pains to configure it correctly or else you might end up with a shocking monthly bill. Overall, spending the time to configure Amazon Web Services or one of its competitors is likely the more affordable and powerful choice, because you have control over so many specifics of the configuration. But it also requires the burden of continuing to maintain and update your AWS instance, whereas with Heroku they take care of security fixes and platform upgrades. It's a great service and we are happy to pay the extra cost for the value-adds Heroku provides.
Web & Mobile Developer
Bluefire ProductionsComputer Software, 11-50 employees
Return on Investment
Amazon EMR
- It was obviously cheaper and convenient to use as most of our data processing and pipelines are on AWS. It was fast and readily available with a click and that saved a ton of time rather than having to figure out the down time of the cluster if its on premises.
- It saved time on processing chunks of big data which had to be processed in short period with minimal costs. EMR solved this as the cluster setup time and processing was simple, easy, cheap and fast.
- It had a negative impact as it was very difficult in submitting the test jobs as it lags a UI to submit spark code snippets.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Automotive Company, 1001-5000 employeesHeroku Platform
- Heroku allowed us to get up and running fast. Deployment was really easy and connecting to our codebase was, too. The deployment integration with GitHub is pretty slick.
- The add-ons provisioning is so simple and the documentation is so thorough that, at least at first, it means you don't have to hire a dedicated devops person to manage this stuff.
- Heroku has tools that allow the collaborators (those with access to the Heroku dashboard) to be able to quickly and easily do triage from just about anywhere, including your smartphone.
VP of Engineering, Senior Web Developer
UnspecifiedComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Pricing Details
Amazon EMR
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Amazon EMR Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—Heroku Platform
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Heroku Platform Editions & Modules
Edition
Production | $25.001 |
---|---|
Advanced | $250.001 |
- Per Month