Azure Blob Storage vs. Snowflake

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Blob Storage
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Blob Storage system on Azure is designed to make unstructured data available to customers anywhere through REST-based object storage.
$0.01
per GB/per month
Snowflake
Score 8.8 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 Blob StorageSnowflake
Editions & Modules
Block Blobs
$0.0081
per GB/per month
Azure Data Lake Storage
$0.0081
per GB/per month
Files
$0.058
per GB/per month
Managed Discs
$1.54
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Blob StorageSnowflake
Free Trial
YesYes
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 Blob StorageSnowflake
Considered Both Products
Azure Blob Storage
Chose Azure Blob Storage
We didn't actually evaluate anything but Azure Blob Storage since it worked so well for backups and Audit logs and the price point was good enough for us.
Snowflake

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
Azure Blob StorageSnowflake
Small Businesses
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Score 9.2 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage
Score 8.8 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage
Score 8.8 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Blob StorageSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(9 ratings)
8.8
(43 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.3
(19 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
9.9
(8 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Blob StorageSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Blob storage is well suited to hosting/sharing zipped files rather than several smaller files, as folder enumeration/listing is not supported. Files uploaded are case-sensitive, so users need to be educated on the correct naming convention format if they are delegating the file-sharing process outside of IT.
Read full review
Snowflake Computing
Snowflake is well suited when you have to store your data and you want easy scalability and increase or decrease the storage per your requirement. You can also control the computing cost, and if your computing cost is less than or equal to 10% of your storage cost, then you don't have to pay for computing, which makes it cost-effective as well.
Read full review
Pros
Microsoft
  • Easy to work with - drag and drop
  • Capable of long term retention
  • Relatively low cost
  • Good for different data formats
  • Allows archival storage
Read full review
Snowflake Computing
  • 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
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • If we are transferring huge amount of data (outbound), it can get quite expensive.
  • With new features being added constantly, although a good thing, at times it becomes difficult to keep up with the changes. Documentation needs to keep UpToDate and should include best practices.
  • Performance can be improved especially when it comes to cold storage.
Read full review
Snowflake Computing
  • 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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Snowflake Computing
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
Read full review
Usability
Microsoft
Blob storage is fairly simple, with several different options/settings that can be configured. The file explorer has enhanced its usability. Some areas could be improved, such as providing more details or stats on how many times a file has been accessed. It is an obvious choice if you're already using Azure/Entra.
Read full review
Snowflake Computing
Because the fact that you can query tons of data in a few seconds is incredible, it also gives you a lot of functions to format and transform data right in your query, which is ideal when building data models in BI tools like Power BI, it is available as a connector in the most used BI tools worldwide.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
Microsoft has improved its customer service standpoint over the years. The ability to chat with an issue, get a callback, schedule a call or work with an architecture team(for free) is a huge plus. I can get mentorship and guidance on where to go with my environment without pushy sales tactics. This is very refreshing. Typically support can get me to where I need to be on the first contact, which is also nice.
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Snowflake Computing
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.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Azure Blob Storage is the best choice to store files when the app runs in Azure. It also has some advantages over S3, like Shared Access Signatures, that make it easy to control access to files directly via a URL. Azure Blob Storage is very fast and we have not had any major issues with it after using it for several years.
Read full review
Snowflake Computing
I have had the experience of using one more database management system at my previous workplace. What Snowflake provides is better user-friendly consoles, suggestions while writing a query, ease of access to connect to various BI platforms to analyze, [and a] more robust system to store a large amount of data. All these functionalities give the better edge to Snowflake.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Azure has increased the flexibility of where we place data within our organization.
  • It has proven to be very reliable and always accessible.
Read full review
Snowflake Computing
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Snowflake Screenshots

Screenshot of Snowflake Installation