Softwr

Software · head to head

ADP vs Amazon Redshift

ADP logo

ADP

Software

Always Designing for People

From
$29/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Software

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: ADP no pricing is published; every quote is custom and driven by employee count and which services are taken; Amazon Redshift on-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery
  • They diverge on capability: ADP covers Payroll, Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which ADP and Amazon Redshift actually diverge.

Attributes where ADP and Amazon Redshift differ
AttributeADPAmazon Redshift
Starting price$29/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionusage-based
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, Ios, AndroidWeb
Founded19492012

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Unknown).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in ADP

  • Payroll
  • Tax services
  • HR management
  • Time & attendance
  • Benefits administration
  • QuickBooks
  • Sage
  • Oracle

Only in Amazon Redshift

  • Columnar Storage
  • Massively Parallel
  • Machine Learning
  • AQUA Acceleration
  • Data Sharing
  • Federated Query
  • Concurrency Scaling
  • S3

Both cover

  • Web support

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

ADP

  • Payroll processing and tax filingnot Amazon Redshift
  • HR administration and employee recordsnot Amazon Redshift
  • Time and attendance trackingnot Amazon Redshift
  • Benefits administrationnot Amazon Redshift
  • Talent management on the mid-market and enterprise productsnot Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift

  • Business intelligencenot ADP
  • Data warehousingnot ADP
  • Real-time analyticsnot ADP
  • Reportingnot ADP
  • Machine learningnot ADP

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

ADP

  • No pricing is published; every quote is custom and driven by employee count and which services are taken
  • Split into three separate products by company size, RUN for 1 to 49 employees, Workforce Now for 50 and above, and Lyric HCM for enterprise, so growing across a threshold means changing product rather than plan

Amazon Redshift

  • On-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery
  • Requires significant manual tuning including managing concurrency scaling costs and configuring Workload Management queues
  • Performance degrades without proper design of distribution keys and sort keys
  • Limited elastic resize options - can only halve or double current cluster size
  • AWS lock-in makes it unsuitable for multi-cloud architectures

Pricing, plan by plan

ADP

$29/month
  • Essential$79/month
    • Payroll
    • Tax filing
    • Direct deposit
  • Enhanced$139/month
    • HR tools
    • Background checks
    • Job posting

Amazon Redshift

Free
  • Free TrialFree
    • 750 DC2.Large hours
    • 2 months free
    • Full features
  • On-Demand$0.25/hour
    • Pay per node hour
    • All features
    • Standard support

Which should you pick?

Choose ADP if

  • You need payroll.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want tax services.
ADP review

Choose Amazon Redshift if

  • You need columnar storage.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want massively parallel.
Amazon Redshift review

Questions people ask

Is ADP or Amazon Redshift better?
Neither clearly leads. ADP starts at $29/month and Amazon Redshift at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, ADP or Amazon Redshift?
Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $29/month for ADP and Free for Amazon Redshift.
Does ADP or Amazon Redshift run on more platforms?
ADP runs on Web, Ios, Android. Amazon Redshift runs on Web.
Can I use Amazon Redshift for free?
Yes. Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. ADP starts at $29/month.
What is ADP best used for?
ADP is most often used for payroll processing and tax filing, hr administration and employee records, time and attendance tracking, benefits administration. Of those, payroll processing and tax filing and hr administration and employee records are not what Amazon Redshift is typically brought in for.
What can ADP do that Amazon Redshift cannot?
ADP covers Payroll, Tax services, HR management, Time & attendance. Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. Both handle Web support.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Amazon Redshift: What deployment options does Amazon Redshift offer?

Redshift offers Provisioned Cluster (with RA3 or DC2 nodes) and Serverless options to match varying workloads. The new Redshift RG instance family, powered by Graviton, delivers 2.4x faster performance than RA3 at 30% lower cost per vCPU.

Source
Amazon Redshift: What does Amazon Redshift cost?

Provisioned cluster pricing: RA3 on-demand starts at $1.086/hour for ra3.xlplus. Serverless costs approximately $0.375 per RPU-hour with 4-RPU minimum (roughly $1.50/hour active workload). Managed storage costs $0.024/GB-month.

Source
Amazon Redshift: Does Redshift work with data lakes?

Yes, Redshift's integrated data lake query engine processes workloads on Apache Iceberg tables and other supported formats in Amazon S3, allowing you to run SQL analytics across your data warehouse and data lake from the same engine.

Source
Amazon Redshift: Is there a free tier for Amazon Redshift?

AWS offers a free trial with $300 USD in Serverless credits valid for 90 days, but Redshift is not part of the permanent AWS Free Tier.

Source
ShareXLinkedInRedditWhatsAppEmail

Related pages

More on ADP

More on Amazon Redshift

Keep looking

Other head to heads