Section A4 Platforms
Independent No referral fees
Tools change. The questions stay the same.
We do not sell software and we do not earn commissions from vendors. We start from your data, your team, and your budget, and recommend the smallest setup that does the job. Sometimes that is a single well-run database.
How we choose
How data arrives
Daily batch, every few minutes, or a continuous stream. Each step toward real time adds cost and moving parts, so we ask what decision actually needs fresher data.
Who will run it
A team fluent in SQL will own a SQL-first stack well. A team of Python engineers may prefer code-first tools. The best platform is the one your people can operate.
How you want to pay
Pay-per-use pricing is cheap to start and can surprise you later. Reserved capacity is predictable but can sit idle. We model both against your actual workload.
How much data, and how fast it grows
Many companies with a few hundred gigabytes run well on one database. Distributed engines earn their keep at much larger volumes.
Managed or self-hosted
Managed services trade license fees for less operations work. Open-source tools trade operations work for control. Both are reasonable.
How hard it is to leave
We favor open file formats, SQL that ports between engines, and code in your repository, so a future move is a project and not a rewrite.
A4.1Selection matrix
Set your needs. Read the trade-offs.
Pick what describes your situation. Each option below shows how it fits and why. Options stay in the same order, grouped by layer: this is a way to think, not a ranking. Examples are listed alphabetically.
- Fits this need
- Works, with a trade-off
- Weigh carefully
General guidance at the category level, based on how these kinds of tools are commonly priced and operated. Features and pricing change; confirm current terms with each vendor. Flores DataCore is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any company named here.
Platforms you will hear us mention
Named in plain text, alphabetically within each layer. We have no partnership, reseller, or referral agreement with any of them.
- Warehouses and lakehouses
- Amazon Redshift, BigQuery, Databricks, PostgreSQL, Snowflake
- Transformation
- dbt
- Orchestration
- Apache Airflow, Dagster
- Ingestion
- Airbyte, Fivetran
- BI and reporting
- Looker, Power BI, Tableau
Facing a platform decision?
Send us the options on the table and what you need them to do. We reply by email with the questions we would ask before choosing.