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Amazon Redshift vs QuickBooks

Amazon Redshift logo

Amazon Redshift

Software

Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
QuickBooks logo

QuickBooks

Software

Smart, simple online accounting software for small business

From
$30/month
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: Amazon Redshift on-demand pricing runs up to 75% higher than competitors like Snowflake and BigQuery; QuickBooks chart of Accounts is capped on every QuickBooks Online tier except Advanced; Simple Start, Essentials and Plus all have a limited entry count
  • They diverge on capability: Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, QuickBooks covers Income & expense tracking.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Amazon Redshift and QuickBooks differ
AttributeAmazon RedshiftQuickBooks
Starting priceFree$30/month
Pricing modelusage-basedsubscription
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWebWeb, Ios, Android, Api
Founded20121983

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 Amazon Redshift

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

Only in QuickBooks

  • Income & expense tracking
  • Invoicing
  • Payment processing
  • Financial reporting
  • Tax preparation
  • Bank reconciliation
  • Bill management
  • Mobile apps

What people use each for

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

Amazon Redshift

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

QuickBooks

  • Bookkeepingnot Amazon Redshift
  • Invoicingnot Amazon Redshift
  • Expense trackingnot Amazon Redshift
  • Financial reportingnot Amazon Redshift
  • Tax preparationnot Amazon Redshift

Where each one falls short

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

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

QuickBooks

  • Chart of Accounts is capped on every QuickBooks Online tier except Advanced; Simple Start, Essentials and Plus all have a limited entry count
  • Even the top Advanced tier caps bulk invoice uploads at 1,000 transaction lines per batch
  • Payroll is a separate paid add-on billed per employee per month (USD 6 to 10 depending on plan) on top of the base subscription

Pricing, plan by plan

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

QuickBooks

$30/month
  • Simple Start$30/month
    • Income & expense tracking
    • Invoice & payments
    • Tax deductions
  • Essentials$60/month
    • Everything in Simple Start
    • Bill management
    • Time tracking
  • Plus$90/month
    • Everything in Essentials
    • Inventory tracking
    • Project profitability
  • Advanced$200/month
    • Everything in Plus
    • Dedicated account team
    • 25 users

Which should you pick?

Choose Amazon Redshift if

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

Choose QuickBooks if

  • You need income & expense tracking.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android, Api.
  • You also want invoicing.
QuickBooks review

Questions people ask

Is Amazon Redshift or QuickBooks better?
Neither clearly leads. Amazon Redshift starts at Free and QuickBooks at $30/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Redshift or QuickBooks?
Amazon Redshift has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Amazon Redshift and $30/month for QuickBooks.
Does Amazon Redshift or QuickBooks run on more platforms?
Amazon Redshift runs on Web. QuickBooks runs on Web, Ios, Android, Api.
Can I use Amazon Redshift for free?
Yes. Amazon Redshift has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. QuickBooks starts at $30/month.
What is Amazon Redshift best used for?
Amazon Redshift is most often used for business intelligence, data warehousing, real-time analytics, reporting. Of those, business intelligence and data warehousing are not what QuickBooks is typically brought in for.
What can Amazon Redshift do that QuickBooks cannot?
Amazon Redshift covers Columnar Storage, Massively Parallel, Machine Learning, AQUA Acceleration. QuickBooks covers Income & expense tracking, Invoicing, Payment processing, Financial reporting.

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
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